Keeping your report current

In most reports, you want to view the latest results. In a sales report, for instance, you may want to see results for the current and previous months. In a Power BI report, you can place a filter on the year and month to show results for that specific month. However, when a new month starts, each report user will have to change that filter manually to avoid looking at old data.

Power BI reports offer a feature to avoid having to do this: relative date filters. With a relative date filter, set in the reports Filter pane, you can set up a rule that is dynamic relative to the current date:

Figure 2.3.14: Relative date filters

While convenient, relative date filters have their limitations. For instance, you cannot set a relative date filter like "show the last two full months before today." Additionally, the relative date filters are based on the Gregorian calendar. When using a week-based calendar, you need to create an alternative...