Automated Prediction Download

Automated Prediction Download provides secure, web-based access to your latest AutoML predictions.

What is Automated Prediction Download?
Automated Prediction Download allows you to retrieve your scheduled predictions via a URL and API key for all data providers that AutoML supports. It gives you the ability to access your latest predictions from virtually any application that supports HTTPS and can supply an API key in the Authorization header of the request.

How does it work?
Automated Prediction Download is an option available for any prediction dataset in AutoML. When you create a prediction dataset, AutoML securely stores the prediction results and makes them available via a URL and API key that is unique to each prediction dataset. Using that URL and API key, you can request the prediction dataset via applications like BI tools, ETL tools and database programs (just to name a few). This allows you to "pull" your AutoML predictions with the application(s) of your choice, without the need to give AutoML necessary permissions to write scheduled predictions to your database, data warehouse or S3 environment.

To access the Automated Prediction Download information, edit the prediction settings for the prediction dataset of your choice by clicking the "Settings" button on the right.

Once you've accessed the syncing options, you will see a section called "Automated Download Credentials" that provides the secure URL and API key for your prediction dataset. You can click the "copy" icon to the right of both the URL and API key to copy the respective value to your clipboard.

IMPORTANT NOTE: When adding the API key value to an authorization header in your application (e.g. Postman) you must add the word "Token " with a space before the API key value to ensure that AutoML processes the token correctly. (e.g. Token f96b7e0f-13ab-4ce1-a9ca-f1102f9bc44f)

IMPORTANT: anyone with the Automated Prediction Download credentials can access your prediction dataset, so keep the credentials secure! While you cannot generate new credentials for an existing prediction dataset if they are shared accidentally, you can generate a new prediction dataset for an existing analysis. The new prediction dataset will have a unique URL and API key that you can use to effectively replace the old credentials. Then, you can delete the old prediction dataset if it's no longer needed.

It's important to note that, while you can use Automated Prediction Download to pull predictions from AutoML at any time, the "freshness" of those predictions will be based on the last time the predictions were updated in AutoML, either manually by a user or by a scheduled prediction if the Keep Up To Date option is enabled for your predictions. In other words, Automated Prediction Download does not force AutoML to refresh the predictions; it simply provides access to the latest existing predictions.

Why (and how) would I use Automated Prediction Download?
While you don't have to use Automated Prediction Download to access your prediction datasets, it provides an additional level of flexibility beyond simply syncing predictions to a database or file. Depending on the database, ETL and/or BI environments in your organization, you can use Automated Prediction Download in ways such as:

• Configure AutoML to read data from your data warehouse (such as Snowflake or SQL Server) to generate predictions, without having to grant write access to AutoML for your data warehouse. Instead, you can "pull" the predictions from AutoML into your data warehouse using the Automated Prediction Download URL and API key with your database software or ETL software.
• Whether AutoML is configured to write predictions to your data warehouse, you may find it easier and/or more flexible to use the Automated Prediction Download URL and API key to "pull" your predictions into a BI tool that supports HTTPS calls to ingest data, instead of having to query your data warehouse to get the predictions into your BI tool.
• If your organization has more than one data warehouse (or data platform), you can use the Automated Prediction Download URL and API key to get AutoML predictions into multiple data stores, possibly for different uses or different parts of your organization.

How is Automated Prediction Download different from the Prediction API (a.k.a. PAPI)?
Automated Prediction Download is available to all AutoML customers and is specifically designed to allow you to retrieve ("pull") prediction datasets that AutoML has already generated. It is a "one-way street" from AutoML to your applications to access existing predictions.
The Prediction API is an optional component of AutoML that provides a programmatic way to interact with your models to generate predictions "on the fly" by passing data to a model and retrieving the prediction results in real time. It is a "two-way street" between AutoML and your applications.