Allow Users to Save Revision History

Revision history enables your users to see how workbooks and data sources (content resources) have changed over time. Each time someone saves (publishes) a content resource, Tableau Server creates a new version, which becomes the current version. It makes the previous version the most recent revision in the revision history list. Revision history gives users confidence to experiment with their content, knowing that their older versions are available.

Notes

This information applies to Tableau Server, and is for server administrators who want to allow publishers to work with revisions.
On Tableau Cloud, workbook and data source revision history are enabled on all sites. Users can save up to 10 revisions.
For information about working with the content revisions themselves, including potential issues, see Work with Content Revisions(Link opens in a new window) in the User/Analyst section of the Tableau help.

Permissions users need to work with revision history

To access revision history, a user must have a site role of Creator or Explorer (Can Publish), plus the following permissions, depending on the content type:

Project: View and Save
Workbooks in the project: View, Save, and Download Workbook/Save As
Flows in the project: View, Save, and Download Flow/Publish As
Data sources in the project: View, Save, and Download Data Source

For virtual connections in the project, you must have a Creator site role and the View and Overwrite permissions. (Virtual connections require Data Management. See About Data Management for details.)

Enable revision history and set the number of revisions allowed

Revision history is set at the site level, and is enabled by default, with a limit of 25 revisions for each content resource.

Sign in to a site as a Server Administrator, and click Settings.
Under Revision History, select Save a history of revisions, and enter the maximum number of revisions you want to allow for each content resource.
Click Save.

When you lower the number of revisions, the most recent revisions are saved. For example, if you set the limit to 15, the 15 most recent versions of the workbook or data source are saved.

Note: A content resource’s revision history list might not show the changes to the limit until a background cleanup process runs on the server.

Clear all revisions

Server administrators can delete all previous revisions of published workbooks and data sources from a site. The most recent version of each published workbook and data source is always retained.

Sign in to a site as a Server Administrator, and click Settings.
Under Revision History, click Clear Revision History.
Click Save.

Security for previewing and restoring workbooks

When users select Restore or Preview for workbook revisions, user passwords are exchanged between the user’s browser and the server. Tableau Server encrypts these passwords using public/private key encryption. To ensure these public keys are provided by Tableau Server, you must configure the server to use SSL (HTTPS). For more information, see SSL.

Tableau Server on Windows Help