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Get started with metric forecasting and anomaly detection (New interactive experience)

This guide walks you through the procedure to create and view forecasts in Grafana Cloud.

The new interactive flow is available since 2025-01-20. Documentation for the old flow is still available.

Prerequisites

To create forecasts, you need the an Editor or Admin basic role.

Create a forecast

The following example uses a query to forecast and when you are predicted to go over your limits, or if an unexpected increase in metrics is likely to occur.

  1. Navigate to Alerts & IRM > Machine Learning > Metric Forecasts.
  2. Click + New Forecast.
  3. In the Query builder, choose Datasource grafanacloud-usage.
  4. Run the following query: sum(grafanacloud_instance_active_series).
  5. Click Next: Preview and tune.
  6. Preview the forecast. Your series appears in green while the forecast is blue.
  7. Drag the Uncertainty interval width slider to 0.8 and see how the bands in the preview get narrower.
  8. Click the Advanced Model Options section header and observe the tuneable knobs.
  9. Click Next: Set name and description.
  10. Name your forecast Grafana Cloud Active Series and click Next: Review.
  11. Review your forecast. Once you’re satisfied, click Create forecast.

On the Forecasts page, your forecast is ready to generate predictions when the Pending tag turns into a green Ready tag.

View your forecast

  1. Click View on the Grafana Cloud Active Series forecast you created in the previous section.
  2. Change the view to an interesting time frame for your forecast. By default the view is for the current week.

Explore how the forecast matches your actual result, and be sure to include some days in the future to see how the model thinks your active series will evolve.

At the top of the screen, the UI displays your original query, as well as how you can query the forecast (grafanacloud_active_series:predicted) or actual(grafanacloud_active_series:actual) data. You can use these series to create panels or alerts.

Use the forecast in a panel

From the view page:

  1. Click the Copy as panel button in the upper right.
  2. Open an existing dashboard or create a new dashboard.
  3. At the top of the dashboard, click Add and select Paste panel from the dropdown.
  4. Edit the new panel and view the generated queries.

Use the forecast in an alert

  1. Click the Create Alert button from either the view page or the list page.
  2. In the Alert evaluation behavior section, choose a folder in which to save the alert.
  3. Tune the alert conditions and labels, if desired.
  4. Click Save or Save and exit to create the alert and navigate back to the previous page.

See Grafana Alerting for more information on alerting.