Monitoring and estimating your WATS data usage

This article will explain how you can check your WATS data usage compared to your agreed quota, and to estimate future data usage.

How to check your data usage in the Control Panel

Using the Control Panel > System & Account > Account, a window showing account related information is displayed. In this window, in the the tab Subscription Plan a chart will display your monthly data usage.

Here you can also see information about your price plan and agreed data quota. 

 NOTE: Resending (replacing) reports will be included in the calculation. In the Test reports column options (as below) you can select the Receive # (count) to se if reports have been overwritten (received multiple times).

How to estimate your average report size & data usage of future uploads.

To estimate you future data usage, you can use the Test Reports report to first determine an average report size. Depending on your data, and the variation in report sizes, you might want to do this separately for different types of tests, depending on how accurate you want your estimate.

Finding your average report size

Open the Test reports report, adjust the filter to include reports relevant for size comparison. Apply the filter, and use the Column options to add the column Report size. Now use the export feature of the report grid to export the data to Excel. From excel you can select all report size cells from and see the calculated average size in your excel status bar. 

Multiply this report size with the expected number of reports to get you estimated data usage.

 NOTE: The file size is calculated from the received report on the internal WATS XML (WRML) format (stored on your WATS account Azure storage plan) 

Estimate how your data usage is split between your virtual levels.

Using the dynamic yield report, click "new view" and select the template Level. Adjust and apply the filter to populate the report, and then select column options to enable the column "Test report #". The report will reload with a report count for each row.

The grid will now display a row containing individual report counts for each level. Multiply this report count by the average report size for the estimated upload size. Keep in mind that the report sizes are in kilobytes (KB).

Estimate across other parameters

If you want to estimate upload size based on other parameters than the levels, use the column options to remove the level column, and add any other column you want to include, such as Product group, Station Name etc.

Accuracy

These estimates will be somewhat inaccurate, since we are using an average of the report size. If you suspect the average report size is significantly different from one data set to the next, you can calculate separate averages for the separate data-sets for higher accuracy.