In this recipe, you'll create a report that uses your existing ticket data to forecast anestimateof how many tickets you'll receive in future years. To be able to forecast results, Explore needs at least two cycles of data. A cycle is a period of time broken down into multiple periods. For example, if you are reporting by year, you'll need at least two years of data to generate a forecast.
This article contains the following sections:
What you'll need
技术水平:Advanced
Time required:25 minutes
- Zendesk Explore Professional or Enterprise
- Editor or Admin permissions (seeGiving agents access to Explore)
- Zendesk Guide with Answer Bot
- A blank Explore report using theSupport: Ticketsdataset. For help creating a new report, seeCreating reports.
Creating the report
To create the report
- In theMetricspanel of your blank report, clickAdd.
- From the list of metrics, chooseTickets>Tickets,然后单击Apply.
- In theColumnspanel, clickAdd.
- From the list of attributes, chooseTime - Ticket created>Ticket created - Year,然后单击Apply.
- Explore generates a chart showing the number of tickets created each year since you began collecting data. From the visualization type menu (), change the chart type toLine. You'll end up with something that looks like the following:
- Now, you'll add the forecast to your chart. From the result manipulation menu (), chooseForecast.
- In theForecastmenu, selectCalculate a forecast on the result.
- Leave all other values in the menu at their default values. Explore regenerates the chart showing one year into the future. The forecasted portion of the line chart is shown as a dotted line, for example:
- Click theNew reporttext, then enter a name for the report likeTicket volume forecast.
- Save your report.
You've now finished creating a simple forecasting example. In the next section, you'll dig a bit deeper into the forecasting options and customize the chart you just created.
Exploring forecasting options
In this section, you'll start with the ticket volume forecast chart you created and explore how the different forecasting options affect it.
To open the forecasting menu
- Open theTicket volume forecastreport you created previously.
- From the result manipulation menu (), chooseForecast.
TheForecastmenu contains the following options:
Calculate a forecast on the results
Select this checkbox to turn on forecasting.
Path
你可以计算预测基于列s, or the rows in your chart. However, whichever you choose must contain a date-based attribute. In the example in this article, you added theTicket created - Yearattribute to theColumnspanel, so in thePathdrop-down list, selectOn rows.
If you want to test how the path works, try dragging theTicket created - Yearattribute from theColumnspanel into theRowspanel. Then, change the path toOn rows. You'll end up with a table (instead of a chart) showing the ticket volume by year with the forecast.
Method
TheMethoddrop-down list selects the type of calculation that Explore uses to calculate the forecast. You can choose from two methods, each of which might return different results.
Explore uses the Holt Winters model as a forecasting method. Explore uses two sub-models that fit most use-cases, the AA and AM models which also take into account seasonal variations. If you want to read more about Holt Winters and the two models, seeUsing forecasting to predict results.
For this example, chooseAdditive trend and additive season.
Values to predict
选择val的数量ues that you want to predict. In our example, when this was set toAuto, Explore looked one year ahead.
ChooseCustomand then setSpecify the number of values to predictto5. This will make the forecast look five years ahead.
Values per cycle
Finally, this setting configures how many forecasts to make over each time period. In our example, when this was set toAuto, Explore forecast one result each year. Increasing the values per cycle increases the detail of your forecast.
ChooseCustomand then setSpecify the number of values per cycle your data containsto6. This will take 6 forecasts throughout each year.
Finishing up
You'll end up with a chart that looks something like this example:
Next steps
For in-depth information about how forecasting works in Explore, seeUsing forecasting to predict results.
1 Comments
THANK you for this article! For the life of me, I couldn't get it to work and now I have a few reports that are critical to my workforce planning.
Pleasesign into leave a comment.