Can Looker studio be used to forecast/predict active users?

[tejasdandekar]

Hi,

I have GA4 that I use for various tracking and monitoring activities of my application. It is a non-ecommerce application, so no purchases etc. GA4 gives me the till date insights into active users as expected.

My question is, can Looker studio be useful to forecast active users based on past data? The requirement is that we want to be able to somehow predict/forecast the active users for the next few weeks/month(s) so that the engineering team can plan their stuff.

Any pointers if this is possible in Looker studio? In GA4 the predictive analysis is only available for 3 events purchases, in_app_purchases, and ecommerce_purchase.

[Lobo-Google]

Hi @tejasdandekar, thank you for your post!

There's currently no built in way to forecast in Looker Studio, but that is a great feature idea for us to add in the future! If you are able, can you file a feature request and let our team know more about your use case, and functionality you are looking for? Here are directions on how to do so: https://support.google.com/looker-studio/answer/7340016

In the meantime, I did come across this resource that seems to provide a workaround: https://help.funnel.io/en/articles/5140183-how-to-create-a-forecast-for-your-monthly-advertising-spe.... I want to add the caveat that this method is not officially supported, but wanted to share in case it might be helpful.

Another alternative is using the Looker application, which does have a built-in forecasting feature, as documented here: https://cloud.google.com/looker/docs/forecasting-in-visualizations. If you are able to access your data from a Looker Explore, I highly recommend trying that out!

I hope that this is helpful!

[tejasdandekar]

Thanks Lobo. I will try the forecasting in visualization option. One more question, would a Google Analytics admin be able to provide Looker admin access or the right permissions for forecasting? I don't see the forecasting option in Looker visualizations.

[Lobo-Google]

If your organization administers Looker on the Google Cloud Console - Looker (Google Cloud Core) - Looker admin access is governed by IAM roles (documented on the Looker (Google Cloud Core) access control with IAM documentation page). 

If your organization uses Looker original, admin access is separate and will not be inherited by IAM roles. 

To be able to use forecasting, your Looker admin will need to make sure you have the can_create_forecast permission. 

If you have that permission, you just need to make sure your query meets the requirements, as documented in the Explore query requirements for forecasting section, and are using a supported visualization type for forecasting. All the supported vis types are documented in the Supported visualization types section.

[tejasdandekar]

This part is clear. Thanks a lot.

Going a bit behind, sorry, but in Looker studio how I am able to associate my existing GA4 project as the data source and that works. I am the admin for my GA4 project. However, in IAM console how can I associate my looker studio to the right project? I am able to grant myself looker admin access but the project is not the one I want it displays some random projects.