Recommendation Management: Prioritize and Share

Overview

Recommendation Management in Spotto is the workflow layer on top of cloud optimization: it helps you triage, prioritize, document, and share recommendations in a way that survives contact with real teams. It covers Spotto recommendations and enhanced provider recommendations (for example Azure Advisor recommendations), then adds the missing “so what?” signals and collaboration tools.

If you are looking for the list/table view and filtering basics, start with Recommendations. For tracked delivery and automatically curated priorities, see the Kanban Board.

Feature overview

Recommendation Management is how you take “we should probably do this” and turn it into a decision: prioritize vs dismiss, capture the rationale, and push it to the right channel (email, Jira, Autotask, Halo, ConnectWise, Slack/Teams). You can discover work manually in the inbox-style All view or start with Spotto's bounded Highest-impact priorities on the Kanban Board.

Why use this? (Jobs, pains, gains)

Jobs to be done

• When I’m building an optimization backlog, I want to prioritise recommendations and add context, so the work is actionable and doesn’t get re-litigated next week.
• When a recommendation is noise (or not worth it right now), I want to dismiss it with a reason (and optionally a time window), so it stops distracting everyone but stays auditable.
• When a recommendation needs an owner, I want to share it into the team’s workflow (ticketing or chat), so it turns into work instead of a dashboard screenshot.
• When stakeholders need a decision, I want the risk/effort/benefit context on the same page, so we can say “yes/no/not yet” without a separate meeting.

Common pains

• Provider-native recommendations are often correct but not backlog-ready: limited context, scattered across subscriptions, and hard to route.
• “Why did we ignore this?” gets lost when decisions live in Slack threads or someone’s notes.
• Low-value recommendations crowd out high-value work unless you can filter, prioritise, and record intent.

What you gain

• A repeatable triage workflow: filter → decide → document → route.
• Better decision signals than “High/Medium/Low”: effort, risk, cost impact, performance impact, confidence, and considerations when available.
• An audit trail (history + comments) so recommendation status changes are explainable, not mysterious.

Key capabilities

Inbox-style triage (Outlook interface)

Recommendations are designed to behave like an inbox:

• A fast list/table view optimized for scanning and sorting.
• A detail view that answers “what is this, why does it matter, what do we do next?”.
• Defaults that bias toward impact-first triage (higher impact, lower effort, cost-first categories).

Tracked board and Highest-impact priorities

Use All in Recommendations for manual discovery. Switch to Prioritized to open the Kanban Board, where your Team board appears above Spotto's automatically curated Highest-impact priorities.

Each system track shows up to five untouched candidates from the selected subscriptions. Spotto ranks them using Cloud Strategy, Spotto Score, and track-specific evidence. Opening a candidate only marks it as viewed. Dragging it from Backlog to a durable workflow column turns it into tracked work without creating a duplicate card. Backlog cards do not have an Add button or ellipsis movement menu.

System candidates can be recommendation-level or resource-level. A recommendation-level card represents one policy or control decision and shows its affected-resource scope. A resource-level card represents one independently actionable resource, so the same recommendation wording can appear on several cards with different resource names. Spotto uses distinct recommendation families in the five-card window when enough are available, then fills any remaining positions with the next-highest-ranked resources.

The Team board uses Prioritized, To do, In progress, Blocked, and Completed. System tracks replace only the first column with the virtual Backlog; their other four columns are the same durable workflow stages. Blocked requires a reason. Completed means the board workflow is finished; it does not automatically mean the Azure change was implemented or validated. Completed cards are filtered to recent items by default.

See Tracked Recommendations for Focus Mode, candidate scope, system tracks, duplicate precedence, collapse behavior, and Return to Backlog.

Filtering for triage

Recommendation Management is only useful if you can cut through noise quickly. The Recommendations view supports filtering/slicing by common routing and prioritisation signals, including:

• Category (Cost, Performance, Security, Reliability, Operational Excellence)
• Impact and effort
• Resource type, location, and tags (ownership slicing)
• Created window (for “what’s new?” triage)
• Thresholds like minimum cost and minimum affected resource count
• A “From Spotto” filter for Spotto-generated recommendations

Prioritise, dismiss, and restore (with rationale)

From the recommendation detail view you can:

• Prioritize a recommendation to mark it as backlog-worthy.
• Dismiss a recommendation (and capture why you dismissed it).
• Restore previously dismissed recommendations when circumstances change.
• Implement a recommendation to automatically fix it when supported; this only applies to a subset of recommendations.
• Schedule a supported implementation for a future one-time run when that action flow offers scheduling.
• Choose scope for actions when relevant (for example: a specific affected resource vs all resources under the recommendation).

After a recommendation becomes tracked work, use the Kanban Board to move it through delivery or into Blocked. Dismissal remains a recommendation-detail action; there is no separate Dismissed column on the board. Dismissing a recommendation suppresses its generated candidates in that subscription scope. When you dismiss only one resource, Spotto suppresses the exact resource candidate; if an indivisible compact candidate contains that resource, the compact candidate is suppressed instead. The next eligible candidate may then backfill the five-card window.

note

Recommendation status in Spotto is a workflow signal. It doesn’t change your cloud resources by itself.

Comments and rationale

Recommendation Management supports collaboration where it matters (and keeps “why did we do/ignore this?” from turning into archaeology):

• Add comments to capture business context, constraints, and decisions.
• Pin a comment when there’s one “source of truth” note you want everyone to read first.
• See who said what and when, without grepping through old chat logs.

History (audit trail)

The detail view can show a recommendation’s history: actions taken (prioritised, dismissed, restored) plus the actor and any captured reason. It’s intentionally boring — which is exactly what you want when someone asks “why is this dismissed?” six weeks later.

Share to the tools teams actually use

You can share a recommendation via channels configured for your company:

• Email (always available)
• Slack and Microsoft Teams
• The company's active ticketing provider: Jira, Autotask, Halo, or ConnectWise

Sharing supports a message + recipients, and (when configured) can create a ticket from the recommendation.

Tickets created through Jira, Autotask, Halo, or ConnectWise are recorded under Tasks -> Review -> Tickets so you can review history and status later.

If you use Spotto in an MSP / parent-child company setup, Spotto can also surface parent company share channels when the customer tenant doesn’t have an integration configured.

Better signals than provider-native recommendations

Provider recommendations like Azure Advisor are a useful starting point, but they tend to be lightweight. Spotto enhances recommendations with additional context when available, such as:

• Savings range and/or cost context
• Effort (sometimes with an approximate hours hint)
• Risk and “why this risk” reasoning
• Cost impact, performance impact, and confidence signals
• Considerations (tradeoffs, prerequisites, “check this before you touch prod”)
• Resource-level context like relevant settings notes/warnings when Spotto has enough configuration data to call them out

For stakeholder alignment, use the Business & Technical Toggle on the detail view to switch between decision-ready and implementation-ready language.

Supporting evidence and source links

Recommendation Management is designed to keep the decision trail close to the source data. On a detail view, use affected resource links, provider descriptions, remediation notes, comments, and history together. The goal is not just "what did the dashboard say?", but "what did we know when we decided?".

If the supporting evidence is thin, capture that in a comment or dismissal reason. "Validated in Azure, no owner found" is much more useful than silence pretending to be certainty.

Technical reference

Component	Details
Inputs	Provider recommendations (for example Azure Advisor), provider detail fields such as affected resources and extended properties when available, Spotto-generated recommendations, and Spotto resource context (type, location, tags, spend) plus any available impact/effort/risk metadata.
Outputs	Recommendation status (prioritized/dismissed/restored), durable Kanban workflow state, comments (including pinned comment), history entries, and share actions to email/chat/ticketing integrations.
Defaults	Manual recommendations are de-duplicated by recommendation ID across selected subscriptions. System tracks rank and group untouched candidates by their declared recommendation or resource scope, then show at most five per track.
Limitations	Sharing beyond email depends on integration configuration and permissions. Savings, score, impact, effort, and risk fields may be missing or unknown depending on the source. Treat ranking signals as prioritization inputs, not guarantees.

How it differs from Azure Advisor (and similar tools)

Azure Advisor tells you what it thinks you should do for a subscription.

Recommendation Management in Spotto focuses on making recommendations usable across a real organisation:

• Cross-subscription triage with de-duplication (one recommendation, many affected resources).
• Extra decision context (risk, effort, savings ranges, considerations) when available.
• Workflow support: prioritise/dismiss/restore with rationale, comments, history, and sharing into ticketing/chat.

It’s not a replacement for validating changes. It’s the missing layer that turns recommendations into a backlog you can execute.

How it works (high level)

1. Select one or more subscriptions in Recommendations.
2. Either filter All recommendations manually or switch to Prioritized and review the bounded Highest-impact priorities below your Team board.
3. Open a recommendation to view details, affected resources, and decision context.
4. Take an action:
   • For an untouched curated candidate, drag it from the system track's Backlog to a durable workflow column.
   • For a recommendation found manually in All, select Prioritize to add it to durable Team board work.
   • Dismiss with a reason (and optionally a time window), and choose scope if relevant.
   • Restore when it’s worth revisiting.
   • Implement to automatically fix the recommendation.
5. Add comments (and pin the “read this first” comment if you need a single source of truth).
6. Share it to the right place (email/chat/ticketing) so it becomes work, not a screenshot.

If you schedule an implementation instead of running it immediately, track that task later on Schedules.

If you accept a curated priority, Spotto keeps active durable work in its originating system track. Completed work follows the Team board's completed/history presentation. A durable system-origin card that already has a user-defined lane assignment appears in that lane instead. The durable item replaces the generated card; later scans do not create a second copy of the same scoped work. Completed work and an exact matching external ticket also prevent that scoped work from returning as a generated candidate.

Troubleshooting

I only see Email as a share option

What you’re seeing: The share dialog only offers Email (or ticketing/chat options are disabled). Likely causes:

• Jira, Autotask, Halo, ConnectWise, Slack, or Teams is not configured for the company.
• A different ticketing provider is active for the company.
• You don’t have permission to view company integration settings (some environments return 403 Forbidden for integration detail reads). How to fix:

1. Confirm the integration is configured (see Jira Integration, Autotask Integration, Halo Integration, and ConnectWise Integration).
2. If you expect an integration to be available but it isn’t, contact your Spotto admin/support and include the company name and the channel you’re trying to use.

I can’t prioritise, dismiss, or restore a recommendation

What you’re seeing: Actions fail, or the status doesn’t update. Likely causes:

• Your Spotto role doesn’t have permission to manage recommendation state (you may see 403 Forbidden / “Permission denied”).
• Temporary API error. How to fix:

1. Refresh and try again (it’s not glamorous, but it’s effective).
2. If you keep seeing 403 Forbidden, ask your Spotto admin to confirm your role/permissions for that company.
3. If you’re trying to apply provider-side changes (outside of “management” state), review the Portal write-permissions guide: Advisor Recommendations.

Savings / impact / risk fields are blank or inconsistent

What you’re seeing: Some recommendations show rich context; others show -/empty. Likely causes: Data quality depends on the source recommendation and available resource context; not every recommendation has savings, confidence, or risk signals. How to fix: Use the fields you do have to prioritise, then validate changes against resource-level cost and your operational constraints before implementing.

A curated priority is missing from the Kanban Board

What you're seeing: You expected a recommendation under Highest-impact priorities, but it is not visible.

Likely causes:

• The current Focus Mode or subscription selection excludes its track or scope.
• The recommendation or exact resource was dismissed.
• Spotto already has durable workflow state, completed work, or an exact matching external ticket for that scoped work.
• The latest compatible scan is incomplete or has not finished.
• The recommendation was not in the highest-ranked five untouched candidates for its track.

How to fix:

1. Change Focus to All and verify the selected subscriptions.
2. Check recommendation history for a dismissal, then search the Team board, completed history, and ticket history for the same recommendation and resource scope.
3. Open View all matching recommendations from the system track to review the broader detected set.
4. See Kanban Board troubleshooting for incomplete and unavailable priority-track states.

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