Availability Forecast vs Delivery Forecast vs Delivery Forecast and contending line items tab

[v...@ualberta.ca]

Hello,

I have been comparing the data returned from availability and delivery forecasts to the information displayed under the "Delivery forecast and contending line items" tab of a individual line item. 

For the availability forecast, the value of getPossibleUnits is very different from what is often displayed beside the "Likely to deliver, but may impact same-or-lower priority items" tab. Often if an item is unlikely to deliver, the tab value is much higher (thousands of units higher) than the getPossibleUnits value. Why is this? Are these two not related? The rest of the methods align within a reasonable number of units to the rest of the tab values. 

For the delivery forecast, does the getPredictedDeliveryUnits include the already Delivered units?

I have read through the following posts and docs 

https://support.google.com/dfp_premium/answer/2913775?hl=en

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/google-doubleclick-for-publishers-api/rMgoUl54E-8

https://developers.google.com/doubleclick-publishers/docs/forecasting

But I am still confused with above questions I mentioned. 

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

[Vincent Racaza (DFP API Team)]

Hi,

Availability forecast is the same with "Check inventory" feature in the DFP UI, while delivery forecast is the same with the sales management forecasting in the DFP UI. For these two forecasting methods, not all the UI fields (e.g. "Unlikely to deliver") being returned are also returned in the DFP API for the ForecastService. Also, aside from this, since this is about forecasting, then the results would vary from time to time or from request to request in both DFP UI and API.

If you can observe a big difference from the results of your simultaneous requests (based on your second paragraph), can you provide to me your complete SOAP request and response logs so I can further check? You may use the Reply privately to author option.

For your concern on the predictedDeliveryUnits, I believe that it does not include the "already delivered units" as based on the field description, this will return the number of units that will be delivered by the line item. I would also recommend you to post in the DFP product forums for your product level concerns as they are more equipped to answer product level inquiries.

Thanks,

Vincent Racaza, DFP API Team

[nick.h...@realself.com]

Hi, 

In the DFP UI I'm required to include a start and end date for an availability forecast, but there are no dates involved in the API request or response for forecast_service.getAvailabilityForecast. I was just wondering what sort of timeframe I should use to interpret the results of an availabilityForecast API call.

Thanks

-Nick

[Vincent Racaza (DFP API Team)]

Hi Nick,

For the getAvailabilityForecast for prospective line item, you can set the fields of the lineItem object specifically the start date and end date fields, so this is basically the same with the start and end dates in the UI's "Check Inventory" feature. You can check the Java example here which is also available to other languages that DFP API supports.

If what you meant is different, please provide a UI screenshot on this so I can further check. You may use the Reply privately to author option.