End-to-end user journeys for time series forecasting models

This document describes the user journeys for BigQuery MLtime series forecasting models, including the statements and functions thatyou can use to work with time series forecasting models.BigQuery ML offers the following types of time seriesforecasting models:

Model creation user journeys

The following table describes the statements and functions you can use to createtime series forecasting models:

Model typeModel creationFeature preprocessingHyperparameter tuningModel weightsTutorials
ARIMA_PLUSCREATE MODELAutomatic preprocessingauto.ARIMA1 automatic tuningML.ARIMA_COEFFICIENTS
ARIMA_PLUS_XREGCREATE MODELAutomatic preprocessingauto.ARIMA1 automatic tuningML.ARIMA_COEFFICIENTS
TimesFMN/AN/AN/AN/AForecast multiple time series

1The auto.ARIMA algorithm performs hyperparameter tuning for the trend module. Hyperparameter tuning isn't supported for the entire modeling pipeline. See themodeling pipeline for more details.

Model use user journeys

The following table describes the statements and functions you can use toevaluate, explain, and get forecasts from time series forecasting models:

Model typeEvaluationInferenceAI explanation
ARIMA_PLUSML.EVALUATE1
ML.ARIMA_EVALUATE
ML.HOLIDAY_INFO
ML.FORECAST
ML.DETECT_ANOMALIES
ML.EXPLAIN_FORECAST2
ARIMA_PLUS_XREGML.EVALUATE1
ML.ARIMA_EVALUATE
ML.HOLIDAY_INFO
ML.FORECAST
ML.DETECT_ANOMALIES
ML.EXPLAIN_FORECAST2
TimesFMAI.EVALUATEAI.FORECASTN/A

1You can input evaluation data to theML.EVALUATE functionto compute forecasting metrics such as mean absolute percentage error (MAPE).If you don't have evaluation data, you can use theML.ARIMA_EVALUATE function to output information about themodel like drift and variance.

2TheML.EXPLAIN_FORECAST function encompasses theML.FORECAST function because its output is a superset of theresults ofML.FORECAST.

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Last updated 2026-02-18 UTC.