Good afternoon all -
My client Lannois Carroll-Woolery at U Waterloo posted this in the Ideas Forum. Wondering if anyone has a solution / suggestion - or you may want to vote on it as an idea ...
Hello,
I work at a university that operates year-round (Fall, Winter and Spring semesters). Student enrollment has a definite seasonality, with highest numbers in the Fall and lowest numbers in the Spring. There is also a clear trend to the data (e.g. increasing enrollment). Official student enrollment counts take place on a specific day each semester (Feb 1, Jun 1, Nov 1).
I am trying to forecast future enrollment values but the only choices for date formats are Month, Quarter or Year. If I try to forecast using Month, the forecast fails because of "too many missing values". If I try using Quarter, only January numbers are displayed. If I try using Year, I lose the seasonality (the semester values are summed).
Below is screen shot of enrollment (number of students) over time for 3 distinct programs.
When I try to forecast I get an error "A forecast cannot be computer because there are too many missing values":
I would like Tableau to introduce Semester date formats so that I can easily forecast future enrollment values by school semester.
Regards,
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Manager, Data Analytics and Reporting
Institutional Analysis and Planning
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
