[role="xpack"]
[[ml-jobs]]
== Creating Machine Learning Jobs

Machine learning jobs contain the configuration information and metadata
necessary to perform an analytics task.

{kib} provides the following wizards to make it easier to create jobs:

[role="screenshot"]
image::ml/images/ml-create-job.jpg[Create New Job]

A _single metric job_ is a simple job that contains a single _detector_. A
detector defines the type of analysis that will occur and which fields to
analyze. In addition to limiting the number of detectors, the single metric job
creation wizard omits many of the more advanced configuration options.

A _multi-metric job_ can contain more than one detector, which is more efficient
than running multiple jobs against the same data.

A _population job_ detects activity that is unusual compared to the behavior of
the population. For more information, see
{xpack-ref}/ml-configuring-pop.html[Performing Population Analysis].

An _advanced job_ can contain multiple detectors and enables you to configure all
job settings.

{kib} can also recognize certain types of data and provide specialized wizards
for that context.  For example, if you use {filebeat-ref}/index.html[Filebeat]
to ship access logs from your
http://nginx.org/[Nginx] and https://httpd.apache.org/[Apache] HTTP servers to
{es}, the following wizards appear:

[role="screenshot"]
image::ml/images/ml-data-recognizer.jpg[A screenshot of the Apache and NGINX job creation wizards]

If you are not certain which type of job to create, you can use the
*Data Visualizer* to learn more about your data and to identify possible fields
for {ml} analysis.

[role="screenshot"]
image::ml/images/ml-data-visualizer.jpg[A screenshot of the Data Visualizer option when creating new jobs]

NOTE: If your data is located outside of {es}, you cannot use {kib} to create
your jobs and you cannot use {dfeeds} to retrieve your data in real time.
Machine learning analysis is still possible, however, by using APIs to
create and manage jobs and post data to them. For more information, see
{ref}/ml-apis.html[Machine Learning APIs].

Ready to get some hands-on experience? See
{xpack-ref}/ml-getting-started.html[Getting Started with Machine Learning].

The following video tutorials also demonstrate single metric, multi-metric, and
advanced jobs:

* https://www.elastic.co/videos/machine-learning-tutorial-creating-a-single-metric-job[Machine Learning for the Elastic Stack: Creating a single metric job]
* https://www.elastic.co/videos/machine-learning-tutorial-creating-a-multi-metric-job[Machine Learning for the Elastic Stack: Creating a multi-metric job]
* https://www.elastic.co/videos/machine-learning-lab-3-detect-outliers-in-a-population[Machine Learning for the Elastic Stack: Detect Outliers in a Population]