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Getting Started

Admin's first login

If you're a new admin to MCast™, the first thing you will want to do is to spend a couple minutes reviewing the Admin Info page. There you will you find information about how to invite other members of your company to join MCast™, how to manage accounts once users have joined, and what configuration settings are available to you as an administrator.

Browser requirements

The currently supported browsers are the most recent versions of

  • Google Chrome
  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Safari

We do NOT support Internet Explorer.

Note

The website has been developed with fixed text sizes, meaning that if anything is difficult to read you should try enhancing the zoom on your browser. The website was designed based on a default browser zoom of 100%, a "small" monitor size of 13", and a "large" monitor size of 23".

Acclimating to the User Interface

Depending on what product(s) your company licenses, the user interface of MCast could show up with a few different pages. Click on the relevant product(s) below to get a quick overview of the webpage you will be working with.

  • MCast™ GasDay, our daily gas demand forecasting product, forecasting out 8 days.
    • This product comes with the accompanying Performance Page, a suite of analytics tools designed to make assessing your GasDay model performance as easy as possible.
  • MCast™ GasHour, our hourly gas demand forecasting product, forecasting out up to 360 hours (or, 15 days).
  • MCast™ Power, our hourly electric demand forecasting product, forecasting out up to 360 hours (or, 15 days).
  • MCast™ Planner, our medium-range gas demand forecasting product, forecasting out 365 days and providing a number of probability scenarios for demand in the coming year.

Aside from the product-specific information, there are a handful of features common across all MCast™ product. Click the link below to get an overview of those and round out your knowledge of the user interface.

Configuring your Settings

The Settings button on the right side of the header allows users to manage account settings, make modifications to the application's configuration, and log out of the application. Depending on your role, some of the account and configuration options may be unavailable to you. For a full list of the permissions that each account type has, see the User Management section.

Users who sign in to MCast™ using their Microsoft account will not see the "Account" section because user management is handled directly through Microsoft Entra ID.

Setting Alert Preferences

Alerts will come in intermittently to inform users about a variety of things. There will typically be a visual indicator of each alert (such as an icon next to the affected OpArea, or a banner at the top of the screen) as well as a more detailed description under the "NOTIFICATIONS" pane.

Users can select which alerts they want to be notified about and which they do not by navigating to the "NOTIFICATIONS" pane, selecting the settings gear, and toggling different alerts on/off. For further information on that process and the options available to you, see the Notification Settings section of the "Notifications" page.

Managing Personal Email Notification Preferences

Every individual account on MCast™ configures its own email notifications. To manage these settings

  1. Log into MCast™ with your account credentials
  2. Click on "Notifications" in the top right corner of the page
  3. Click on the settings gear in the top right corner

At the top of the panel, you will see all the notification options for the webpage itself ("Display Alerts"), then on the bottom of the panel, you'll find all of the email notification options ("Manage Email Notifications").

These email notifications will be sent to the email address that is associated with your account.

For further information on that process and the options available to you, see the Email Notifications section of the "Notifications" page.

Managing Alerts as They Come In

Users can manage alerts by clearing them using the "Clear for me" button found on the "NOTIFICATIONS" pane, or restore alerts that have previously been cleared. Administrators can clear/restore alerts for the entire organization all at once. For further information on that, see the Managing Alerts section of the "Notifications" page.

Changing your Password

If you need to change the password associated with your account, you can do that through the "Account" tab by providing your current password and creating a new password.

Users who are locked out of their account and need to change their password in order to log back in can also do so by clicking "Forgot your password?" on the login page.

Users who sign in to MCast™ through their Microsoft account will not see the "Account" tab at all because user management is handled directly through Microsoft Entra ID. For managing that account, you will need to talk to the person(s) responsible for managing Microsoft accounts at your organization.

Generating demand forecasts

We offer a range of forecast generation options to ensure our software works with your workflow and preferences.

API

You can use the MCast™ API to upload data and trigger new forecast runs. You can upload the data as either a load file (in a format approved by your Marquette Energy Analytics support contact) or as a formatted JSON.

Check out our API Samples repository and our series of API introduction videos for further references.

SFTP File Transfer

You can upload flow measurement files via SFTP to send MCast™ ongoing load data, and then subsequently initiate a new forecast automatically. Your Marquette Energy Analytics support contact will be able to provide a login to this site for you as part of onboarding to the product. Files will be uploaded to the folder labeled "flow" on your Marquette Energy Analytics SFTP site.

Your support contact can then set up a trigger (sometimes referred to as a "watcher") so that new forecasts automatically run when new files appear. Once that trigger is in place, then every time a new file is uploaded the application will load that file's data, load the latest weather data, and produce a forecast.

Preserve Timestamps

If you are using a script to connect and upload to the SFTP site, it is important to ensure that the setting to preserve timestamps is disabled. The tool that MCast™ uses to start a new forecast relies on the timestamps of the file matching the time the file was uploaded.

Through the Web

When you log in to your web instance, you can generate a forecast using the Sidebar.

Clicking the "Generate a Daily Forecast" or "Generate an Hourly Forecast" button will initiate a process that checks for new flow or weather data, loads any new data found, and begins generating a new forecast.

Manual Entry

If you have manual entry enabled, you will have an option in the sidebar called "Manually Enter Load Values".

Selecting this will provide a pop-up box to enter observed load data. Upon clicking "Save", the new load value(s) will be saved and new forecasts will run, starting from the first day of new values through today.

Scheduled Forecasts

Your forecasts can be scheduled to run at specified times during the day, independent of when you upload your flow files.

If you would like to set this up, reach out to your support contact to establish the time(s) the forecast should run. When a scheduled forecast occurs, the application will load any new flow data, load the latest weather data, and produce a forecast.

Receiving demand forecast results

Outlined below are a few different ways to receive MCast™ forecast results to suit your company's needs.

Note that results can only be sent if a forecast completes successfully. If a forecast is not successful, then you will need to turn to your Notifications for further information on the failure.

API

Our recommendation for data transfers is the MCast™ API.

You can use the API to download forecast results as a formatted JSON.

Check out our API Samples repository and our series of API introduction videos for further references.

SFTP File Transfer

After each successful forecast, a CSV file containing the results is uploaded to the output/ folder of the SFTP site.

To configure the CSVs automatically uploaded to the SFTP site, go to the Configuration Settings.

To access an assortment of different data via CSV file on an ad-hoc basis, go to The Downloads Tab.

Note

The Configuration Settings that control the automated CSV output files control the settings for all automated forecast files (whether received via SFTP, email, or through the web)

Through the Web

When you log in, you will see a summary view of your most recent forecasts.

There is a button on every page of MCast™ to download the forecast you're viewing as a CSV file.

To configure the CSVs that are available for download, go to the Configuration Settings.

Note

The Configuration Settings that control the automated CSV output files control the settings for all automated forecast files (whether received via SFTP, email, or through the web)

Email

All users have the ability to manage email notifications for their own account by navigating to "NOTIFICATIONS" and clicking the settings gear. Admin users can also add addresses to a distribution list so that service emails (emails not tied to a specific account) can receive notifications via email as well.

For a detailed breakdown of the email options, see Email Notifications. To configure the CSVs emailed out, go to the Configuration Settings.

Note

The Configuration Settings that control the automated CSV output files control the settings for all automated forecast files (whether received via SFTP, email, or through the web)

Data available along with forecast results

After each forecast completes, the main data points provided are the load estimates produced by MCast™ models. Along with the load estimates, a number of other data points (the input weather and load data) and metadata points (like forecast timestamps) can also be received.

For API users, the "API Reference" documentation (found on the SETTINGS pane, under the dropdown "Configuration Settings") is the best resource for detailed information on all data available via API call.

For users receiving CSV files (via email, SFTP site, or website download), Admin users can modify the contents of output files directly from the SETTINGS pane. For more information, see the Manage Output Files section of the "Admin Info" page.

Access to forecast data

MCast™ API

Our recommendation for accessing your data securely and reliably is the MCast™ API. You can see the API section of our data page for more info broadly, you can refer to our API Samples repository for code to use as a starting point, and you can refer to our series of API introduction videos for help getting started. For a detailed list of that data, go to the "API Reference" documentation found on the SETTINGS pane, under the dropdown "Configuration Settings." If there is other data that you'd like to have available via the API, let us know so we can consider implementing it in future versions! We want to ensure you have access to all the data you need.

Note that our introduction videos are designed to cover all levels of comfort with APIs, from the "no-code" user up through experienced software developers.

MCast™ SFTP site

When setting up your application, a member of the Marquette Energy Analytics support team will provide you with a set of SFTP credentials for connecting to your SFTP site. These credentials will include a username, password, hostname, IP address, and Port number. Upon request, additional logins, including read-only credentials, can be provided

Note

For security reasons, many companies block connections to unknown hosts. If you have trouble connecting to the SFTP site, you may need to communicate with your IT department to get this address whitelisted.

MCast™ Website

Each company that licenses an MCast™ product has an admin(s) that is responsible for user management of the product. Reach out to that internal admin if account access is needed. If you need help determining who at your company is that admin, you can reach out to our team at support@marquetteenergyanalytics.com and we'd be happy to loop in the admin we are aware of.

If you are a company's internal MCast™ admin and are looking for information about inviting users and managing permissions, see our User Management section.

Common Questions

What are pinned forecasts?

A pinned forecast is a forecast that displays as the default for a given day and/or intraday period when you log in to GasDay.

Perhaps you wish to manually mark the specific forecast that you used to make nominations on a given day. You may even have a specific window of time on each day (or in each intraday period of a day) that you always want to be the default forecast flagged for future reference. These are two of the use cases in which pinning a forecast may benefit you.

There are 2 ways you can set pinned forecasts:

Manually, using the "Pin Forecast" flag

You can click on the "Pin Forecast" flag to pin an individual forecast for an individual date. This can be done at any time, but only one forecast can be pinned for a given date and intraday period.

  • The manual pinning of a forecast does NOT schedule any future forecasts to be pinned. It only places the pin on that individual forecast.
Automatically, by setting a "Pinning Period"

You can set a time range for your application to pin a forecast each day through the settings menu within the site. Once a "pinning period" is set up for each date or intraday period, then any forecast generated in that period will be marked as the "pinned" forecast.

  • At any time you can overwrite the automatically pinned forecast by going into the product and manually pinning a different forecast from the given day and intraday period.

Example

You set a pinning period to be between 6:00am and 7:00am. On Monday you run forecasts at 6:15am and at 6:45am; both forecasts get pinned when created, and when the 6:45 forecast is pinned it replaces the pin on the 6:15am forecast. On Tuesday you run forecasts at 6:07am and 8:30am; the 6:07 forecast gets pinned (the 6:07 forecast was the only one in the pinning period). On Wednesday you run forecasts at 5:08am and at 8:00am; neither forecast gets pinned automatically because neither was within the pinning period.

Pinned Forecasts Webinar

Hear our team talk about Pinned Forecasts and how to use them in the video below!

  • 0:00 - Introductions
  • 0:58 - Motivation behind developing Pinned Forecasts
  • 2:30 - What is a Pinned Forecast (and why is it useful)?
  • 5:35 - How do you set a Pinned Forecast?
  • 11:35 - How do you use Pinned Forecasts to analyze forecast data?
  • 13:15 - How do you set a Pinning Period?
  • 16:05 - Recapping how to set Pinned Forecast

What is "Perfect Weather"?

A Perfect Weather Analysis (sometimes referred to as a "PWA," a "Perfect Weather Forecast," or simply "Perfect Weather") is a way of testing the error in a load forecasting model by omitting errors in weather forecasting. In MCast™, daily Perfect Weather forecasts are generated using the same forecasting models deployed to your “normal” MCast™ GasDay instance, but using only observed weather values (temp and wind speed); they do not utilize forecasted weather values at all.

Perfect Weather forecast data is used on The Performance Page to provide you with ongoing model performance statistics. To keep the data on the Performance Page up-to-date and useful, Perfect Weather forecasts are automatically run once each week for all customers licensing MCast™ GasDay. If you want to update your Performance Page to have the latest possible Perfect Weather data, you can navigate to the Sidebar and click "Update Perfect Weather."

Can I test how the forecast would change if the weather is different than what's currently forecasted?

This is commonly referred to as a "What-If" analysis. Currently, we do not support performing this type of analysis directly within the product, but we know it's a common request and intend to implement it eventually.

If this type of analysis is of interest to you, we'd love to hear more about it! Please reach out to someone on our team to discuss what your needs would be so that we can keep them in mind when we do eventually add this functionality.