is interaction with dashboards really that strict

hi i'm in the middle of a course and just learned that other than navigating to various reports etc there is no real interaction available to users looking at a dashboard.    at least at the time of that course's creation.   that sounds too restrictive to me.  is that still true?  if a kpi shows info for a specific year on the dashboard, wouldnt it make sense for that user to filter on a different year before being forced to navigate down specific paths?