Tableau Blueprint help

As part of defining your organisation's Analytics strategy, the cross-functional project team established the guiding principles for upgrades with the Tableau upgrade planning and process checklist The initial decisions about upgrade frequency, version selection and version compatibility define when and how upgrades are performed. When these areas are addressed early, administrators can better manage users' expectations, rather than having to react to business demands for new features and functionality. In addition, the communications, education and support plans should be created by the project team in preparation of the software upgrade process outlined in this topic.

Version compatibility

Tableau Server, Tableau Cloud, Tableau Desktop and Tableau Prep Builder are updated regularly. Releases may introduce new features that can have architectural changes to the platform. Due to these changes, upgrades require comprehensive testing in your test environment to mitigate post-upgrade issues. For each upgrade, you should evaluate version compatibility by reviewing the links below:

• Version compatibility between Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server
• Workbook Version Compatibility
• Version Compatibility with Tableau Prep
• Version compatibility with Tableau Cloud

Communicating the upgrade

To notify users of the pending upgrade, Tableau Server administrators should use a Tableau Server sign-in message and/or a welcome banner message to help communicate the downtime window. The sign-in message is found in Server Settings > General as shown below:

The welcome banner is found in Server Settings > Customisation as shown below:

Because Tableau Cloud is a fully hosted solution, Tableau maintains it. The maintenance window for Tableau Cloud is communicated in advance through a pop-up message after sign-in, as shown below:

Software upgrade process

For Tableau Server, the software upgrade process will be performed by the Systems Administrator and Tableau Server Administrator roles, who will upgrade the server environments beginning with the test environment. Once validated in the test environment, they will schedule the production environment upgrade and, if applicable, the disaster recovery environment upgrade. The Resource Monitoring Tool master server and agents should also be upgraded, if deployed.

The Desktop Administrator and Mobile Administrator roles will be responsible for packaging and updating Tableau Desktop, Tableau Prep Builder and Tableau Mobile, which apply to both Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud deployments. Review and upgrade other applications based on your installations, such as tabcmd, Tableau Bridge for Tableau Cloud and the Content Migration Tool.

For every upgrade, you should evaluate the following areas:

• Understand how Tableau is used: how an upgrade may affect existing use cases and enable new use cases.

• Assess the current deployment using monitoring and measurement data: topology, content, users.

• Compare with future state: sources of data, configuration changes, capacity vs. planned user onboarding schedule.

• Inventory existing software versions: client machines, drivers, mobile devices.

• Identify programmatic dependencies: embedded analytics, API-related, multi-instance deployments, client software versions and compatibility.

• Schedule a retrospective to understand what worked and what didn’t, including identifying opportunities for improvement.

Before you upgrade Tableau Server (Windows| Linux), you should review and complete the upgrade process checklist below. It is included in the Tableau Blueprint Planner, so that it can be customised for your requirements. Tableau Cloud customers should complete the first two tasks in Research the upgrade, then skip to the tasks labelled Perform the client upgrades. Additional input from the Enterprise Architect, Database Administrator, Security Administrator and Network Administrator roles may be needed if changes are required in their corresponding area of expertise.

Note: Specific tasks related to pre-TSM to TSM version upgrades are designated with an asterisk in the tables below.

Note: Specific tasks related to pre-TSM to TSM version upgrades are designated with an asterisk in the tables below.