Dates for Time Series Output

[DavidSta]

Hi all,

I recently had some conversations with users out there working with the Time Series Tools.

In general they are quite happy with it, but they struggled a little bit with the output on a daily base.

The challenge is the output of the TS Forecast Tool with its Period und Sub-Period. Yeah cool, it is counting up. But what is the real Timestamp behind? What is the meaning of Period 580?

Within the ETS/ARIMA Models you find the option to define a “Series starting period”. But this only works for Week, Month, Quarter and Year as an output.

So you need to calculate it based on the Period output by yourself. That is why I created a Macro to make this task a little bit easier for you folks out there.

The Macro require 2 inputs.

D-Input takes the original Data to identify the latest Timestamp in your source dataset. Based on this the following entries for the output are automatically calculated.

F-Input takes the values from the TS Forecast output.

In the configuration of the Macro you need to select your Date Column (used in D-Input) to calculate the Forecast Dates.

The other Option you need to choose is the Frequency. Here you can choose between Hours, Days and Weekdays as they are not available directly from the ETS/ARIMA Tools.

As an Output you receive the precalculated Timestamp column with the name of your original column.

You can find the Macro in the Gallery here: https://gallery.alteryx.com/#!app/TS%2BDates/60e721500462d70724368be8

Attached you find a sample workflow as well.

I hope this Macro is helpful to some of you out there.

--

David

[BrandonB]

Very clever @DavidSta! I'll be keeping this handy for my next Time Series adventure!

[gdemeo]

@DavidSta Can you please share this Macro again, it looks like it has been deleted from the Community page and I would really like to use it. Thanks!

[DavidSta · Accepted solution]

Hi @gdemeo, I uploaded the Macro to the new gallery (https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Community-Gallery/Dates-for-Time-Series/ta-p/1126486).

In the original post you can also find a sample workflow.

[AhmedLasisi]

Thanks for tool, quite helpful for use cases that deals with hour, days of week e.t.c

[anniephung]

Hi @DavidSta , thank you for this helpful macro! I tried it out and it worked fine for one group but would not work with Factory TS tools (when trying to forecast for different groups). Is there a workaround or do you plan to do a TS Dates Factory tool in the near future?

[DavidSta]

Hi @anniephung,

right now there is no plan to make it working with the "factory" Tools, but you can try making it a batch macro.

Best regards,

DAvid