What to Expect when Tableau Online Upgrades

One of the best parts of Tableau Online is that we take care of all the version upgrades and maintenance of the data center infrastructure for you. But it is still important to keep up-to-date on what’s happening. This page will help you plan for any occurrence that may affect your Tableau Online site. Below you'll find informational resources to make you aware of any upcoming events.

If you are not a Tableau Online Administrator, please refer to the following other resource pages:

Tableau Desktop upgrade resources.
Tableau Server upgrade resources.

Learn

Overview

If you would like more information about Tableau Online, start here to learn about self-service analytics in the cloud. Read more at Tableau Online Overview and Tableau Online Manual.

What's New?

New and improved functionalities are released regularly. See What's New in Tableau Online for details. After each upgrade, check out the Tableau Online New Features page for more info on all the new functionality.

Tableau Online Status

Visit the Tableau Trust site to learn more about the current status of your Tableau Online environment and upcoming scheduled maintenances.

Tableau Bridge

Tableau Bridge is a stand alone client. For more information about Tableau Bridge, see:

Tableau Bridge

Tableau Bridge Release Notes and Installer

A New Home Page

In 2019.2, a new home page experience will greet you when you log-in to your Tableau Online site. Your new home page is designed to help you locate the most relevant data, so you can get what you need faster. With dedicated sections for favorites and recents, a customizable navigation and a compact viz header, it’ll be easy for you to see what’s important to you.

Learn more

Ask Data

Ask Data continues to improve with significant updates in Tableau Online 2019.2. Replace a statement in an existing question by typing in your request. For instance to change “average sales by state” to “average profit by state,” simply type “replace sales with profit.”

Also new is the ability to add calculations, such as the sum, difference, and the ratio of two measures is as simple as typing "avg sales / avg profit." Plus with the ability to create multiple sheets, you can build full dashboards from Ask Data generated vizzes.

And finally, Ask Data now has usage analytics. Data source owners can see what questions their users are asking and the most commonly-used fields in their data sources.

Learn more about Ask Data

Tabcmd, API 2.0, and Tableau Data Extract Command-Line Utility

To publish or interact with a .hyper extract with Tabcmd, you will need Tabcmd 10.5 or later; see Install tabcmd in Tableau Help.

Using the Extract API 2.0, you will be able to open and create new .hyper extracts. Please note that the Extract API 2.0 cannot create .tde extracts.

Extract API 2.0 no longer includes the Server API, use the REST API to publish your extract.

Similar to Tableau Bridge, the Tableau Data Extract Command-Line Utility will also converts extracts in .hyper format. For more information about this topic, see Tableau Data Extract Command-Line Utility in Tableau Help.

Still have users who work with Tableau Desktop 32-bit versions? If your users need features from 10.5 or later, or need to download workbooks from Tableau Online, they would need to upgrade to a 64-bit operating system and the recent version of Tableau Desktop. For more information, see 32-bit Upgrade Resources.

Troubleshoot

If you notice that Tableau Online is experiencing refresh issues, see this article in Tableau Help.

If your users experience or report any of the following behaviors while performing an extract task, you may be running into an incompatibility scenario. Please redirect them to the following Knowledge Base articles to resolve the error(s).

"This workbook uses a .hyper extract and is not compatible with this version of Tableau. Open this workbook in Tableau 10.5 or later."

"Export as version" grayed out for workbooks with .hyper extract.

"The document cannot be downgraded, because it contains direct connections to Hyper extracts."

The View changes after upgrading (becomes blank, fewer marks in the view, more null values when you inspect the summary data, or the view itself has a different shape).

Known Issues & Release Notes

Unusual behavior or issues with Tableau Online, may be caused by a “known issue” with the product or a third party change in data delivery. These “known issues” are listed on the Tableau Support Known Issues site.

When an issue gets “fixed” it will appear in the Release Notes for Tableau Online.

Many “known issues” and their possible workarounds are documented in the Tableau Support Knowledge Base, which also contains resolutions for common problems and suggestions for how to use Tableau Online.