Configuring Forecast Trends for a Forecast

Objective

Configure trends for a forecast as an Outreach Admin. Forecast Trends help revenue leaders and sales managers better understand forecast dynamics, identify risk early, and improve forecast accuracy.

With Forecast Trends, users will be able to view how key forecast metrics—such as Forecast Call, Commit, AI Projection and Won—trend over time, compare rollups vs. individual forecast calls.

Applies To

• Outreach admins

Before you begin

Below are the 6 components for Trends:

1. Forecast Over time- Compare your call v/s your team’s rollup call v/s outreach’s AI projection v/s actual won revenue
   • My forecast call- Forecast call for the selected user/territory hierarchy  
   • Rollup Call- Rollup (sum of your teams' submissions) value of the selected user/territory hierarchy
   • Won- Won revenue, user needs to select which metric captures the won amount
   • AI projection- Outreach projected won revenue
   • Quota- Quota linked to the forecast
2. Weekly Metric changes- Track how your auto-calculated metrics change week over week
3. Forecast Movement- Track why the metric value is changing for the selected time period,eg: deals moved, slipped etc
4. Total Projected Finish- Outreach's AI projected revenue
5. Leaderboard chart- Rank reps within the user rollup based on their quota attainment.
6. Submission history- Captures the history of forecast submissions

Procedure

1. Log in to Outreach as an Admin.
2. Click Administration.
3. Click Tools > Forecasting.
4. Click on the Forecasts tab within the Forecasting page.
   
5. Click on the forecast for which you want to configure trends.
6. Navigate to the trends tab. Forecast Trends is available only for opportunity forecasts for monthly/quarterly forecast periods.
7. Toggle Forecast report on.
   
8. Configure the following charts accordingly.
   1. Forecast Over Time
      1. Add metrics, for which you would like to see this chart
         • Only Forecast entry type metrics or formula metrics are supported for this chart
      2. Select a won metric to track the won revenue
      3. Select a metric which captures total projected finish number
         • Only metric of type total projected finish is supported here. If you have not configured total projected finish metric, you may do it from general tab under Forecast. In the metric configuration, select the metric type as Total Projected Finish
         • Note- Total projected finish trend line will not have historical data i.e. it will show data for the dates after this metric is published
   2. Weekly Metric changes
      1. Add metrics, for which you would like to see this chart
         • Following metric types are supported:
           1. Auto-calculate
           2. Forecast entry with auto-calculate as on.
   3. Forecast Movement
      1. Add metrics, for which you would like to see this chart
         • Following metric types are supported:
           1. Auto-calculate
           2. Forecast entry with auto-calculate as on.
   4. AI Projection
      1. Select a metric which captures AI projected revenue.
      2. Only metric of type AI projection is supported here. If you have not configured AI projection metric, you may do it from general tab under Forecast.
      3. In the metric configuration, select the metric type as AI Projection
      4. You can apply filters to consider only opportunities relevant to the respective forecast, for eg: For New Business Forecast, the metric can have filter--> Type equals New Business
      5. Please note that the view configuration for this metric is limited to cards/none, i.e. you can’t view this metric on the rollup table 

      6. 

      7. Once the metric is configured, select the metric under AI projection in Trends tab & click on Publish
         
   5. Leaderboard chart
      1. Select a won metric to calculate the quota attainment
         1. Note that formula metrics are not supported for leaderboard charts.
         2. Leaderboard chart is not supported for Territory based hierarchy
   6. Submission history
      1. This chart is configured out of the box and requires no additional configuration

9. Click Publish.
    

Click on the highlighted dropdown to view the chart for the desired metrics from the list of configured metrics.

Additional Information

Q: How is the x-axis defined for Forecast over time & weekly metric changes chart?

A: It groups the data as of every Fri of the week within the selected sales period. For the current week it will show the current day, until the Fri has arrived.

Q: What happens if a user doesn’t submit a forecast for a particular week?

A: The latest submitted value of my call & roll up call will be carried forward to the followings weeks if the weeks are in within the selected sales period.

Q: Will I be able to see the won metric changes in Forecast over time chart & changes for the other auto-calculated metrics in Weekly metric changes card for last quarter?

A: Outreach doesn’t have historical values stored before 4/30/25, so weekly changes are not available for the April month and before, but as you move into next quarters, the data will be available for last quarter as well.

Q: Is trends support for future sales periods?

A: No, it is supported only for current & last sales period