Can I extend a trend line into future dates?

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1

I added a trend line to a 23-month data set and want to continue the trend line out another 5 months. Is there any way to force the trend line to continue into periods where there is no data? This type of very basic forecasting would be helpful! I want to avoid our users exporting data and taking it into Excel.

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-Becca

3

Hi @Becca_Perry, Thank you for sharing your use case. Currently, we do not support extending trend lines into future periods where there is no data.

However, we found a workaround to achieve it: Create a Date Dimension Model then use it as X-Axis and set the date filter to next x months end. You can check the demo below:

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I hope my reply is helpful to you. We also logged your request into our product backlog. We will certainly notify you if there are any updates regarding this feature.

4

Hi Tai,

That was helpful, but it’s still not quite s I was expecting, but I think it will be OK for my purpose. I followed the instructions to create a Date Dimension Model (thanks!). I used the date range 2010-01-01 to 2050-01-01.

  • When I explore the data from just my Date Dim model directly, I can correctly get it to display all the months within a year or all the days within a month.
  • I added this to a dataset and then tried to display a measure (sum total sales) for every month in the current year. Unfortunately it only shows 9 months January-September instead of all 12. I was expecting to see nulls or 0’s for the future months.
  • I can get all months to show up if I add another measure: a count of my date dim.
  • I can also get all months to show up if I select “Show rows with no data,” but we’ve avoided this because we’ve seen it interact oddly with conditions.

I think this will work when I get back into my forecasting use case because then I will have values to display in each month.

Thanks for the help – I would love to see more forecasting-focused features in the future!

1 Like
5

Hi @Becca_Perry ,

Thank you for giving it a try and sharing your experience with us.

Regarding the Show rows with no data feature, we have documentation that explains its behavior in detail. You can find it here.

I noticed you mentioned that you can display all the months by adding another measure, specifically a count of your date dimension. As an alternative, you can also achieve the desired result by moving the count of your date dimension to a filter and setting a condition like “is not null.” This approach will help hide the count from the chart result while still ensuring all months are displayed.

I appreciate your feedback regarding forecasting features, and I will let you know if there are any updates on this front.
Thanks again for your input and patience.