If you are a beginner user, you may have seen a chart like the one below. Predictive analytics seem to be all the rage in the data analytics world.
In order to create a chart with forecasting you will need a dataset with at least one date column and one measure. For more information about how it works, I found this article directly from the help.tableau site.
Steps to Create the Above Chart
Connect Tableau desktop to the Sample Superstore data set.
Once you have connected to the Orders sheet, go to Sheet 1.
Drag Order Date to the Columns shelf. (Make sure the date is set to continuous in a Month / Year format.)
Drag Sales to the Rows shelf.
Go to the Analysis menu and select Show Forecast from the Forecast menu.
Tableau will automatically add a line to your chart forecasting the sales for the next 12 months. The light color around the line is the estimated range for the sales.
You can adjust the forecast by going to the Analysis menu, selecting Forecast and then selecting Forecast Options.
You can set the Forecast Length in this menu.
You can also select what to aggregate your data by. In the picture below you can see that it is automatically aggregated by months since we selected continuous months for the Order Date.
You also have an option to aggregate the data by the date intervals specified in the aggregation drop-down as shown below;
There are also options to adjust the Forecast Model as shown below;
If you select Custom, you will need to set your trend and/or season to be none, additive or multiplicative.
You can also adjust the prediction intervals to 90%, 95% and 99%.
You can further set your forecast options by clicking on the pill for Sales on the rows shelf. Scroll down to Forecast result and there are several options on the expanded menu.
Detailed information about the Forecast options can be found here.
You can find this chart in my World of Charts dashboard in Tableau Public here.