TL;DR
Cloudability's date picker offers a Rolling option on custom ranges, but it operates at day level only — there is no way to define a rolling range that shifts by a complete calendar month, quarter, or half. Named calendar-aligned presets stop at Last Month and Last Quarter with no "Last N months" equivalent. There is no visualisation granularity control. Apptio BI — being discontinued — solves all of this today for Cloudability data and that capability must land natively in Cloudability before it is retired.
Description
Raised by TAM Thomas Kazmierczak on behalf of multiple customers, with urgency driven by the discontinuation of Apptio BI.
Current state
The Cloudability Dashboard date picker offers the following:
Named calendar-aligned presets: Yesterday, Today, This/Last Week, This/Last Month, This/Last Quarter, This/Last Year
Day-count presets: Last 7, 10, 14, 30, 60, 90 days — roll forward one day at a time
Custom and Custom Start Date-to-date: day-level calendar picker with a Rolling checkbox and a Compare checkbox
The Rolling checkbox is only available on Custom and Custom Start Date-to-date options — it is greyed out on all named presets. Critically, because the picker is always a day-level calendar, any rolling custom range rolls forward one day at a time. There is no concept of period granularity in the picker — it is not possible to say "roll this range forward by one complete month when a new month begins."
This means:
Last Month is correctly calendar-aligned but covers only a single month — there is no "Last 3 Months" or "Last 6 Months" named preset that behaves the same way
Wanting a rolling last 3, 6, or 12 months means using Custom + Rolling, picking specific day-level start and end dates, and accepting that the range drifts forward daily — crossing month boundaries and never containing only complete calendar months
Wanting a rolling last 2 quarters or last 2 years has the same problem — the only path is a day-level custom rolling range that does not respect period boundaries
The day-level calendar picker requires manually scrolling to find the right month, clicking a start day, and clicking an end day — there is no quick period-aligned selection for anything beyond the fixed named presets
This applies equally at widget level and at report level — the same friction and the same day-level limitation exists in both places
The Cloudability API already supports rich month- and quarter-boundary-aware dynamic date strings — none of which are exposed in the UI.
What Apptio BI delivers today
Period-type tabs: Day & Week, Month, Quarter, Half, Year — clicking a tab immediately scopes the entire picker to that period type; the calendar shows months not days when on the Month tab, quarters when on the Quarter tab, etc.
Named rolling presets per tab: Last 6 Months, Last 12 Months (and equivalents per tab) — a single dropdown selection, no calendar scrolling required
Rolling toggle: when ticked, the range shifts forward by one complete period at the start of each new period — Last 6 Months on the Month tab always contains exactly 6 full calendar months, never a partial month
Custom rolling ranges: define any start and end period at the chosen granularity, tick Rolling, and it advances automatically — never goes stale
View By granularity: independently controls how data is bucketed in the visualisation — Daily, Monthly, Quarterly, Half-yearly, Yearly; a 12-month range with View By Monthly renders 12 clean bars each representing one complete calendar month
Set as Default: saves the date and granularity configuration as the default for report consumers
When Apptio BI is discontinued, all of this is lost unless it exists natively in Cloudability.
What this idea requests:
Period-type tabs in the date picker — Day & Week, Month, Quarter, Half, Year — scoping the entire picker to the selected granularity at both widget level and report level
Named calendar-aligned rolling presets — Last 3, 6, 12 Months; Last 2, 4 Quarters; Last 2 Years — shifting forward by one complete period at the start of each new period, always containing only full calendar periods
Period-aligned Rolling toggle — when Rolling is selected on a custom range, advance by the period type of the active tab, not by one day; a custom range set on the Month tab rolls month by month, on the Quarter tab rolls quarter by quarter
View By granularity control — independently choose how data is bucketed in the visualisation: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Half-yearly, Yearly
Expose API dynamic date strings in the UI — the backend already supports them; surfacing them closes a large part of the gap with no new backend work required
Set as Default — save a date and granularity combination as the default for a widget or report
Example use cases unlocked:
Last 12 Months / View By Monthly — 12 clean rolling calendar-month bars for finance trend reporting; today the closest option is a day-level custom rolling range that drifts daily and crosses month boundaries
Last 4 Quarters / View By Quarterly — four complete rolling quarters for executive QBR reporting; today only achievable with a day-level approximation or in Apptio BI
Last 8 Weeks / View By Weekly — week-on-week anomaly detection without day-boundary noise
Last 2 Years / View By Yearly — clean year-over-year comparison in two bars
My customer relies on Apptio BI, so this will help smooth the process when Apptio BI ceases.