Predictive Trend Line Plugin

[intapiuser]

Forecast and Trends functionality is now available directly within Sisense. Learn how to enable it for Sisense versions Windows 8.1.1 and above or Linux 8.2.1 and above, here:

• Forecasting
• Trends

If you're using an older version of Sisense, or don’t have cloud access, you can still download and use the Forecasting add-on. Download this add-on from here. 

Introduction

This article explains how to add a predictive trend line to an existing chart in Sisense.  Linear, exponential, and logarithmic trend lines are currently supported.

Purpose/Benefits

The trend line allows an end user to predict future values/metrics based on historical data.  See the referenced wiki page on the regression analysis for more information.  

Steps

The following steps will walk through the process of adding the new chart type and creating a sample chart.

STEP 1 - ADD THE PLUGIN

Download the attachment and unzip the contents into your C:\Program Files\Sisense\PrismWeb\plugins\ folder. If the plugins folder doesn't exist, just create it. After those files have been unzipped there, you may also have to restart the web server. 

STEP 2 - CREATE THE CHART

On your dashboard, click the Create Widget button and select Advanced Configuration. Next, select the Column Chart from the chart types menu. Pick a datetime dimension for the CATEGORIES, and one or more measures under VALUES.   The most common scenario is to add the same measure twice, so that we can see the historical data as one series and then we can turn the second series into a trend line.

On the second measure, click on the Settings menu and you should see a new option for Regression.  This menu may be set to None by default, but you can select a prediction method to use against the data series.

STEP 3 - DEFINE THE TIME FRAME

The default view will predict future values based on the calendar year (see below).  If you want to change this, click on the Settings menu for the widget (top right corner of the screen)

• None - Show the trend for historical time periods only.
• Calendar End - This option will depend on your date dimension's level of aggregation
• Years - When viewing data at a yearly level, the next 5 years will be predicted out
• Quarters - When viewing data at a quarterly level, the plugin will predict through Q4 of the calendar year 
• Months - When viewing data at a monthly level, the plugin will predict through Dec of the calendar year
• Days - When viewing data at a daily level, the plugin will predict through the last day of the month
• Next 3 - This option will predict out the next 3 time periods
• Next 6 - This option will predict out the next 6 time periods
• Next 12 - This option will predict out the next 12 time periods

References/Notes

• This plugin was created by using the Highcharts API to update how standard bar charts are displayed by Sisense.  If further customization is required, the Highcharts API can be found here.
• This plugin also references the regression-js code created by Tom Alexander, which can be found here.
• This plugin also supports having multiple regression lines on the same widget.
• This plugin only supports one dimension on the x-axis (no hierarchies)
• If your regression line is not smooth, it may be because there are gaps in the dates of your data.  You can resolve this by turning on the Continuous Timeline option of the date dimension.

• If you set a value in the widget to use this plugin, you should not toggle the value off, if you want to disable it just delete it or set the regression to none and then toggle it off. leaving the value with regression but toggled to invisible will generate an error that will not allow to export the dashboard.
• Linear Regression Wiki