Working with dates

Date filters allow you to analyse data based on specific time periods.

With date range selections, you can add:

  • Relative start and end dates

  • More pre-defined date ranges

  • Financial dates (Including years, halves, and quarters), where supported

The date range dialog also populates from any date range criteria already set and adds the capacity for you to apply custom date ranges.

To begin working with dates, add a date variable to your filter.

Then, depending on your analysis goals, you can include the following dates:

  • Using ‘Is’: To filter only the selected time period

  • Using ‘Is Not’: To filter out, excluding them from the results

Preview

After configuring the date filters, a preview is displayed on how your specified date range appears on the current day.

Note: If you are using relative values, such as tomorrow, then these values change dynamically with each passing day. Similarly, if you select fixed dates, then they remain unchanged over time.

Types of date range

You can choose from three different ways to specify your date ranges:

Fixed range

Here you can specify start and end dates, these are fixed.

Dynamic range

Here you can use predefined date ranges such as ‘The Last Year’.

Notice that ‘last year’ and ‘the last year’ are listed separately, as is ‘next month’ and ‘the next month’. The difference between these options is that all the date ranges starting with ‘the’ are relative to the current date. Therefore, ‘the last year’ goes back a year from today, up to yesterday. Alternatively, if you select ‘last year’ instead, and we were in 2023, then the date range would be every day of 2022.

You can also specify date ranges that mix fixed start or end dates with relative dates, such as ‘1st January 2023 to today’.

Custom rule

Custom rules provide you with a lot of flexibility when defining your date range.

Using custom rules, you can select a date range From (Start of), To (End of):

  • Today

  • Tomorrow

  • Yesterday

  • This week

  • This month

  • This quarter

  • This year

Either moving:

  • Backwards

  • Forwards

By a number of:

  • Day(s)

  • Week(s)

  • Month(s)

  • Quarter(s)

  • Year(s)

Example: You may need to examine booking dates from your audience to a destination over the last few months. To do this you could set your custom rule from (Start of) today, to (End of) backwards, by two months.

Editing a date range

Once you apply the date range to the filter or audience a summary is displayed. Click the summary to edit the date range.