Looker has added a new tool to the product that you can now use in Analytics: a Forecast tool that draws upon your data and allows you to chart trends into the future.

Accessing Forecast

To find the "Forecast" tool, navigate to your report visualization above your data:

Once opened, you will see the "Forecast" tool to the right-hand side of the visualization bar:

This is where you can access the Forecast tools.

Using Forecast: Preparing data

Forecasting requires date-based data, so to use it, let's begin with a Recent Sales report:

In order to get a good sample, change the filters from the past 1 week to the past 12.

After running it, you'll have a lot of data to use:

You also need to make sure that you're sorting descending by date:

So your data is ready now for forecasting.

Building a Forecast

So let's open up the Forecast tool:

Start by choosing the measures to forecast on:

Choose Total, and that will add it to the selected fields:

Next, choose how far into the future you want to forecast for:

For example, enter 30 days

Next, you can optionally include a prediction interval, accounting for a certain degree of expected variance within a forecast. 

Next, enable it, and then select an interval of 95%

And then you can also account for Seasonality, considering the time of year in the forecast

When you've set the parameters the way you want, click Run.

Then, based on the data in the table, you'll have a broken line forecast into the future. You can also access the Prediction interval working in the range around the broken line:

Forecast Data

With the Forecast tool projecting activity, the numbers for the forecast will be added to the Results of your data in italicized numbers with a suffix of a star.

You can still access the forecast using calculations, so if you want to create a running 7-day average of your sales/and/or/forecast, you can: