We'll take a look at the special way Tableau handles dates in the Visualizing Dates and Times section of Chapter 3, Venturing on to Advanced Visualizations. For now, consider the options available when you drop an Order Date field onto the Filters shelf, as follows:

The options here include the following:

• Relative date: This option allows you to filter a date based on a specific date (for example, keeping the last three weeks from today, or the last six months from January 1).
• Range of dates: This option allows you to filter a date based on a range with a starting date, ending date, or both.
• Date Part: This option allows you to filter based on discrete parts of dates, such as Years, Months, Days or combinations of parts, such as Month/Year.
• Individual dates: This option allows you to filter based on each individual value of the date field in the data.
• Count or Count (Distinct): This option allows you to filter based on the count, or distinct count, of date values in the data.