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4. Formulate Use Case

Why Create a Use Case?

Creating a Use Case in FeatureByte, while optional, unlocks a range of powerful benefits. It serves as a clear blueprint for your prediction data, outlining its purpose and intended application. Moreover, Ideation leverages this information to suggest features specifically tailored to your use case, streamlining feature engineering.

Let's create a Use Case for our Store Sales Forecast dataset.

Store Daily Sales Amount Forecast: Predict daily sales amount (revenue) per store up to 28 days ahead based on historical sales patterns, calendar events, and SNAP eligibility.

Step 1: Create a Context

A Context defines the scope and conditions in which features will be served.

Steps to add a Context

  1. Navigate to the Context catalog in the 'Formulate' section of the menu.
  2. Click Add Context Button

  3. Define the Context for this use case:

    • Context Name: Store Daily Forecast
    • Description (optional): Daily forecasting per store across Walmart locations.
    • Primary Entity: Store
    • Type: Forecast
    • Granularity: Day
    • Data Type: TIMESTAMP
    • UTC or Local Time?: Local time, with Use timezone column checked
    • Timezone Column: timezone
    • Timezone Column Type: Timezone

Add Context

Forecast Point Schema

Since this is a forecasting use case, we configure the Forecast Point Schema to tell FeatureByte the granularity (daily), data type (timestamp), and timezone handling.

After adding the context, it appears in the Catalog:

Context Catalog

Step 2: Establish a Target

For this forecasting use case, we'll create the target directly from the SALES time series table.

Steps to add a Target

  1. Navigate to the Target catalog in the 'Formulate' section of the menu.
  2. Click Add Target Button

  3. Define the target from the time series by selecting From Table

    • Name: sales_amount
    • Table: SALES
    • Column: sales_amount
    • Target Type: Regression

Create Target

After adding the target, it appears in the Catalog:

Target Catalog

Step 3: Create a Use Case

Steps to add a Use Case

  1. Navigate to the Use Case catalog in the 'Formulate' section of the menu.
  2. Click Add Use Case Button

  3. Define the use case as follows:

    • Use Case Name: Store Daily Sales Amount Forecast for 28 Days
    • Primary Entity: Store
    • Context: Store Daily Forecast
    • Target: sales_amount
    • Description: Predict daily sales amount (revenue) per store up to 28 days ahead.

Create Use Case

Note

Detailed use case descriptions enhance FeatureByte's capability to provide relevant feature suggestions during Ideation.

Once created, the use case appears in the Catalog:

Use Case Catalog

Click on the use case to review it.

Review Use Case