Learn how to filter reports by relative dates like "this year" or "previous quarter" instead of fixed dates. Relative filters automatically update as time passes, so "this year" always shows the current year. Make your time ranges explicit in reports so users know exactly which periods they're viewing.
Now let's go to relative dates filtering by relative dates, which is actually one of the most popular ways to filter by date. So let's do the same thing. We move invoice date into the filter shelf and now we choose relative date. What is the difference between absolute and relative dates? Well, relative dates will filter your report based on a time bucket comparing to today's date. So for instance, right now, if I choose year in this line of options and I choose this year and I click apply now, this will always show this year. Let me click OK here and add our show quick filter. So this will only show this year. Or if I choose previous year, this will always be previous year. So if I'm 2016 this would show 2015. This is very helpful because people are often looking at reports this month or last month, this quarter, this year to date, last year to date. So using relative dates is very helpful because it moves along with today's date. And as you can tell, you can choose the kind of the time bucket. So if I say the previous quarter in this example is 2014 Q4, if I choose the last three quarters would be current quarter and the last two quarters. So very easy to use, very intuitive once you set it up. If people have, if other users have the ability to change filters, they can quickly look at this and see and choose a different option and narrow down the report. Now one thing we like to tell people, when you're building reports using filters, especially for dates, well actually for any kind of dimension, be sure to try to make the report informative to what you're looking at. Let's say right now I'm filtering this report by quarter and I'm showing the last three quarters. And if I look at this report, it's pretty obvious what I'm doing. I have three quarters and I see the data right, right here, exactly as it is. But what if I collapse all information and just show year? So this report is showing only information for the last three quarters. So in 2015 is only one quarter, in 2014 is the last two quarters. But if I don't explicitly show this to my users and they don't pay attention, they may get confused. They may be thinking this is 2014 versus 2015 sales, which actually it's not. So usually if you put some kind of indication like this now, it's more consistent. You know, it's three quarters and I can see the three quarters here. So when you're building reports and queries, pay attention to make the report obvious. Whatever you're applying as far as filters that people can see the filter, can see the data and make sense what they're looking at.
