Dynamic criteria from the Criteria Bar

in the bar chart, the time dimension has been expanded to the date level.
Dynamic criteria from the Criteria Bar

Now, if you open the drop down list from the time dimension in the Criteria Bar you will see all the pre-defined dynamic options – identical to what we saw in the Criteria Editor.

If we pick Previous month from the list, the bar chart will show data of the previous month (screen shot below is based Dynamic date origin set to July 2015).

If you want a handy way to change the Dynamic date origin, you can add it to the Criteria Bar so that it will always be visible while working with the analysis. Right-click somewhere on the Criteria Bar and select “Add dynamic date origin”.

E.g. if we want to see data three months back relatively to the current month, we should make a definition like this:

The necessary steps are these:

Select the correct Result level. With the result level, you determine whether the outcome should be data on year, quarter, month or date basis.
Add an Offset. In this sample, we picked a month offset in order to shift the criterion a number of months back in time. Add multiple offsets if necessary. The results in the right most column will reflect how each offset moves the criterion.
An offset can be Relative or Specific. In this case, we choose a relative offset of -3 months as we wish to see data for the month three months before the current month. Click the word “Relative” to change it to “Specific” which will enable you to select a specific month like “January”.

Another example on how to use custom dynamic criteria might be if we wanted to see a dynamic period of multiple months, e.g. the last three concluded months.
The dynamic criteria for this will have to use a starting point as well as an ending point. The operator “between” is useful for this purpose. When you have selected the “between” operator from the left hand side, you will be able to define these two points. Click on each line to define each one individually.

Because of the above definition, we will now see data for the last three concluded months. The screen shot is based on Dynamic date origin set to July 2015.