It is easy to make a mistake of picking a more recent Desktop version only to realize later on that you need to publish your work in an older version on Tableau server or Tableau public. For this reason, I have had to use this technique recently to convert some version 10.0 files back to version 9.2 for publishing. Since I am a Tableau Beta tester, it is not uncommon for me to have multiple versions of Desktop installed. Click for exploded view to see the details. If I try to open this file in version 9.2, I get the error message shown in Figure 2.įigure 3 – A *.twb file that was originally created in Tableau version 9.3 but has been updated to look like a version 9.2 file. So if you find yourself in this situation, there is hope that you can use this technique successfully.įigure 1 shows the first 12 lines of a version 9.3 *.twb file I randomly picked from my working files. It normally takes us some time to discover these things and begin using them. The Backward Compatibility Techniqueįor a lot of the Tableau work we do, we probably have not implemented the newest features in our workbooks when a new release is issued. The good news is, in many cases, backwards compatibility will be possible. The technique I am about to show will only work if the features you have in your workbook were available (and unchanged in definition) in the version you are trying to revert to. To summarize, if you try to migrate a 9.3 file that has new features back to 9.2, you will not be successful. It has been a long time for this to have happened to me, so I can’t remember exactly what the error messages look like. The message will inform you that there is a problem reading the *.twb file. If you try this, the Tableau 9.2 XML parser will not understand the meaning of those elements (because they are not in the XML schema) and you will get some error message. The reason for this is obvious – the software feature described by those XML tags were not available in 9.2. When a user implements a new feature or object in 9.3, for example, it really is not possible to go backwards to version 9.2. When Tableau releases a new version, say going from version 9.2 to 9.3, this usually means that new features are being added to the software. What this means is that new XML fields (parents and children elements) are added to the the software platform and these elements are written to and stored in the *.twb file if the user has activated them in their Tableau workbooks. Having experience like that allows me to readily understand the XML files developed by Tableau. In fact, I wrote an extensive XML schemato verify input into a very sophisticated model that integrated groundwater and surface water flow. I’m not on the Tableau development team, but I’ve written enough software to understand the issues with compatibility. Since I had to show a few different people how to do it, I thought I’d write a quick note to share the technique. Also, some people are participating in Tableau Beta testing and they had some work completed in version 10 that they wanted to bring back to version 9.2 for the same reason. They did a lot of work in 9.3 only to find that they couldn’t publish those workbooks/dashboards on the version 9.2 server. First, some users popped forward to Desktop 9.3 when the Tableau server version they were using was 9.2. This question has arisen for a couple of reasons. The question is this: Can I make a version 9.3 Tableau file (*.twb) backwards compatible so that it works with Tableau Desktop 9.2? In the past couple of weeks, I have been asked the same question on a number of occasions, which is why I am motivated to write this article. Sometimes I decide to break the rules a little when there is good reason. You can now consider yourself forewarned. So if you decide to try this one, be sure to make a backup file of your original *.twb file before making any changes. It is really easy to corrupt a *.twb file. Unless the user has a fair amount of XML experience and is really comfortable with making changes, altering Tableau *.twb files can be a dangerous task to undertake. I also do not want to cause any problems for anyone in their work. I also do not want to impact the spirit of Tableau – which is to keep things simple, safe and reproducible. I normally don’t publish what I do to modify the XML commands inside the *.twb file, however, because the methods are not always guaranteed to work. I definitely have done my fair share of Tableau hacking through the years.
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