In How To Save and share Steampipe Cloud benchmarks and dashboards we introduced snapshots: saved renderings of dashboards that you can view instantly, share privately with your team in Steampipe Cloud, and optionally share to anyone with a link. The v0.17 release of Steampipe CLI added the ability to save snapshots from the CLI, view them locally, and share them to cloud workspaces. You can use cron to schedule such snapshots but now Steampipe Cloud provides an easier and built-in way: scheduled snapshots.
Scheduled snapshots provide you with a historical record of benchmark and dashboard runs. Use them to review changes over time, and to track progress toward compliance.
To create a scheduled snapshot, click Schedule in any dashboard view.
You'll land on the Create scheduled snapshot screen.
Configure your scheduled snapshot
All Steampipe Cloud accounts offer Weekly and Daily options. When using organizations you can also choose Hourly or Custom (using cron syntax).
To notify your team with a summary of results, add a Webhook URL for Slack or Microsoft Teams.
Test your scheduled snapshot
Once you've scheduled the snapshot, you can use the Run now button to kick off an initial run.
If you set a webhook URL for notifications, your team will soon see a message like this in the channel bound to the webhook. The notification summarizes the dashboard's cards.
Review your pipelines
Scheduled snapshots run in pipelines that you can view using the Pipeline tab.
You can view all runs of a pipeline.
And you can view a detailed log for each run.
Visualize change over time
Your inventory of cloud resources is a moving target, and your compliance status is a work in progress. Benchmarks and dashboards show inventory and compliance at a moment in time. Now, with scheduled snapshots, you can see how things change over time.
Try scheduling some of your own benchmarks and dashboards, and let us know how it goes!