I had the same issue, good that I found the entry. I also have a simple dataset with years, but they are numbers. The solution from @eduardo worked perfectly: I was able to add a time slider visualization to the dashboard.
One problem however: I’m selecting ranges in the Time Slider but nothing happens, I mean the yellow window in the time slider adjust perfectly, but I was expecting for it to filter the visuals for that year.
My derived field pretty much look like this: How to create a derived field for time.