0:00Hey it's Tim here, in today's video Tableau
0:02is changing the release cadence for Tableau
0:05releases
0:05starting right now. To find out more let's
0:08get stuck in. Okay so Tableau posted this
0:11blog today,
0:12it's an update on the release cadence for
0:16Tableau. Now this has happened in the past,
0:19previously Tableau Server, Tableau Cloud,
0:21Tableau Desktop used to always be in lock
0:24step,
0:24you'd get four releases a year 2021/22.3.4
0:29and actually previous to that we used to
0:32have
0:32just version numbers, so you used to have
0:34version one, version two, version three,
0:36we got to version 10 and then after version
0:3910 they started switching to years to kind
0:41of make
0:41it more consistent. So this isn't unusual,
0:44this is pretty common and actually for you
0:46know technology
0:47the scale of Tableau you'd start to think
0:49that these kinds of changes are routine but
0:51this one
0:51is slightly different because it's actually
0:53not the kind of change I was expecting. So
0:56Tableau
0:56posted a blog post and in summary what they
0:58're going to be doing is going from four
1:01releases a
1:01year to just three releases a year and all
1:05the existing sort of cadence of Server
1:09stays as is.
1:11So what does that mean? Well what they've
1:13done here is they've sort of broken down
1:15the releases
1:16here and you can actually read this blog
1:18post, I'll put it in the link below, but I
1:20actually
1:20thought it'd be better to visualize, I
1:21thought I'd actually just explain releases
1:23for everyone's
1:24benefit. So if we go back to, I've got an
1:26Excalidraw page here, if we go back to this
1:29you'll know that Tableau releases sort of
1:32work in this way 23.2.2 and if you go look
1:35at the version
1:36you'll see typically these numbers and so
1:38the first part is just the year of the
1:40release,
1:41the second part is the quarter I used to
1:43call it, the specific release for that year
1:45, then the last
1:46one is a patch. Now patches are fixes, you
1:49can kind of see this quite common in the
1:51Tableau ecosystem,
1:52if I go to the Tableau desktop landing page
1:54, if you look under 23.2 you'll see that it
1:57's had
1:58three releases. So these are all patches 22
2:0223.2.1 and 23.2.2 are patches, they're
2:06essentially fixes
2:07and actually if you go back let's say to 21
2:10.3 you'll see that even as recent as the 17
2:13th of
2:13August, patch number 26 for 21.3 was just
2:16released. So Tableau is really good at
2:19maintaining a specific
2:20version for a long period of time doing
2:23fixes across the whole capability set and
2:26that you
2:26know that includes security fixes as well
2:28so it's not just new features it's also
2:30patches for old
2:31ones and they've always been pretty good
2:33about that and you can actually check this
2:35for pretty
2:35much every product. If you go to server
2:37though you'll notice that there used to be
2:40a point up
2:40until 2020.4 or 20.4 sorry where actually
2:44no that's wrong it's actually 21.4 was the
2:47last
2:48sort of four release year for a Tableau
2:50server and then it changed to being every
2:53other release.
2:54So we've actually had only I think it's
2:56only what it's going to be four releases so
2:59we'll get 23.3.
3:01So four releases since that changed we're
3:04going to get another change as well. So
3:06that's that's
3:07something to be familiar with and again
3:08these all get patches it's not that Tableau
3:10stopped updating
3:11the software the patches are always there.
3:13Now if we go back to this diagram what does
3:16this actually
3:16look like? So if you look here you can see
3:18this is the previous release cycle and I'll
3:20put a link to
3:21this image in the description so you can
3:23grab it or you can just take a screenshot
3:25probably that's
3:26going to be the easiest thing to do if I
3:28just move this over here you can take a
3:29screenshot there.
3:30You can see here the previous Tableau
3:33release cycle we work like this you'd get
3:36four releases
3:37and what it meant was that server would be
3:38kind of out of lockstep. What this actually
3:40means is
3:41if you're running Tableau server you need
3:43to make sure that your desktop and prep
3:44releases
3:45stay in tune with your server because of
3:46course server is going to be where you're
3:48publishing
3:48content so if someone runs ahead and
3:51upgrades desktop ahead of time then in
3:53essence that
3:54version won't be compatible with server.
3:57Now there's some quirks sometimes there's
3:59compatibility allowances in the product so
4:02for example if you upgrade your server
4:04ahead of
4:05desktop that's typically okay and in some
4:07cases you can also downgrade a workbook
4:10doing some nasty
4:10tricks but long story short you want to try
4:13and keep your releases in lockstep. So the
4:15new release
4:16cycle looks like this and actually
4:18highlights an interesting challenge for
4:20Tableau server
4:21customers but we'll come to that in a
4:22second the new release cycle basically goes
4:24down to three so
4:25we lose the orange releases it's changed to
4:28this dot one dot two dot three and then of
4:31course
4:31because server maintains its cadence of
4:34being released every other release it does
4:38mean that
4:38in some years you get one release and in
4:41other years you get two so in this year for
4:43example
4:44we're going to get two releases we'll have
4:4723.1 and 23.3 but next year if I just go
4:51over to the
4:52right here if I just delete this actually I
4:54've already sort of visualized this ahead of
4:56time
4:57you'll see that next year there'll just be
5:00one release 24.2 so that is a pretty
5:04interesting
5:04dynamic because I think it makes it makes
5:06sort of the proposition an interesting
5:09question.
5:09Now what is supposed to happen though and
5:12if you go back to the blog post if I just
5:14go back here
5:15and I just hover over this blog post the
5:18the sort of logic for it I think does make
5:22sense if you
5:23look at most technology platforms you tend
5:26to find they start by upgrading features
5:28very very
5:29quickly when they're young if you take the
5:31iPhone if you take software windows all
5:34these
5:34technologies we've been using for years
5:37when I sort of grew up with these things
5:38they had
5:39big releases every year even processors and
5:41chips everything came out in massive
5:44strides in the very
5:45very early years of those companies and
5:47then as they started to settle down
5:49innovation becomes
5:50a little bit harder maybe a little bit more
5:51tricky maybe companies become complacent I
5:53'm not saying
5:54that's what Tableau have done but I'm just
5:56saying things take a little bit more time
5:58because of
5:59scale because of the number of customers it
6:01's just hard to roll things out and actually
6:03it's fair to
6:04say that since this sort of you know
6:06increased volume of capability in Tableau
6:09these releases
6:10have been having more bugs you can kind of
6:12see that in the fixes and release notes
6:13that come out
6:14there are frequent patches and sometimes we
6:16've even had issues where we've had to roll
6:18back
6:18servers or roll back desktop deployments
6:22because of these issues the other thing is
6:25that the super
6:26interesting dynamic here is that it might
6:29also give features a little bit more time
6:32to cook
6:32part of the problem here is that you have
6:34to get your features into specific release
6:37cycle in order
6:37for them to land and I think what was maybe
6:39happening is that features were sort of
6:41falling
6:42out of lockstep now I actually made a video
6:44I just made a video about how features need
6:46to sort of
6:47bake more they need to come out more
6:49complete and actually kind of support this
6:51approach this is
6:52sort of a way of doing that reducing the
6:54cycles means there's probably two
6:56opportunities for each
6:57product team to get their release into any
6:59given year and it might actually mean you
7:01get better
7:02feedback cycles slightly longer feedback
7:04cycles and in various discussions have also
7:06talked about
7:07bringing back sort of the old style beaters
7:10we used to have because the release cycles
7:12are longer
7:13you can have more of a preview in the beta
7:15period to test things and get things more
7:17stable ahead
7:18of time so I think that is a good thing
7:20what is difficult is the value proposition
7:22because of
7:23course Tableau Cloud will still get three
7:25releases a year but in some years Tableau
7:27Server will only
7:28get one one release and the issue there is
7:31that in those years desktop will stay
7:34possibly like you
7:35know half a year to maybe more behind and
7:37the reason I say more is because it takes
7:39companies
7:40long time to update to the latest version
7:43and I think today most enterprise companies
7:46who have
7:46Tableau Server at least upgrade probably on
7:49a yearly cadence they have small patches
7:51and fixes
7:52throughout the year but then they choose a
7:54specific point in the year to upgrade and
7:56so if your timing
7:57is slightly off you might just miss the
7:59release that you actually want with the
8:01nice stuff and
8:02but I think it makes the one release a year
8:04really really important I think it might
8:06actually make
8:07for example next year the 24 dot I want to
8:11say two is I even right let me go back to
8:13my little
8:14diagram I can't remember yeah so 24.2 feels
8:17to me like a critical update because that
8:19is the only
8:20release where you can get features into
8:22server so what it kind of suggests is that
8:24look we're about
8:25to get 23.3 we know all the features in
8:27that we're about to get 24.1 early next
8:30year we'll probably
8:31see a nice group of features but 24.2
8:34should be an absolute blockbuster release
8:37because in essence
8:38all the features that have been cooking
8:40pretty much from you know Dreamforce and
8:43the conference
8:43that they said would come out by the end of
8:45the year which now won't because 23.4 won't
8:48be
8:48released this year 23.3 will be the last
8:51release won't make it until next year and
8:54so that is going
8:55to make server upgrades probably much more
8:57meaningful because of this huge jump you're
8:59going to get with this sort of eight month
9:01cycle and the other thing is that I think
9:04it might also
9:05allow for more feedback and more engagement
9:07that said it doesn't change the fact that
9:10more features
9:10are coming out for Tableau Cloud than ever
9:12and there are just whole bunches of
9:14features that
9:15will probably work better in Tableau Cloud
9:17and will only work better in Tableau Cloud
9:19and so that
9:20that dynamic doesn't change and it's
9:22actually interesting that the one feature
9:25that somehow
9:26kind of you know got got completely safe
9:29from this is Tableau Pulse and that is
9:32interesting because
9:33of course Tableau have been bigging up
9:35Tableau Pulse I've never I can't remember a
9:36time when
9:37Tableau marketing has been pitching a
9:39feature like it's released when it hasn't
9:41been released
9:42and it's targeted for December 2023. This
9:45is super interesting because it suggests
9:47that Tableau
9:47Pulse won't come as part of an update to
9:50Tableau Cloud it won't come as part of an
9:54experience that
9:54we're used to it can't come as part of an
9:56experience because we're just about to get
9:58those feature releases so if you do testing
10:01and release cycles Tableau Pulse can't be
10:04part of that
10:04because 23.3 is about to come out unless 23
10:08.3 is coming out in December 23. So there's
10:11a lot of
10:12sort of things in the air I'm sure I'll all
10:14come clear I'd love to know your thoughts
10:16in the
10:16comments below and questions I'd love to
10:18know what you're thinking it's super
10:20interesting I think
10:21this is pretty normal for a company of
10:23Tableau scale and size it will always bring
10:25up questions
10:26about you know people who are on the wrong
10:28side of the fence of this kind of decision
10:29but in all honesty I do think a lot of
10:32customers are using Tableau Cloud and for
10:35them I think I
10:37think honestly upgrades have just become
10:39such a normal thing that they don't really
10:41notice it
10:42until there's bugs and I think that's what
10:44people were noticing quite often and maybe
10:46it's a good
10:46thing by pacing things out more you get
10:48less of those instances where people notice
10:51these upgrades
10:52because of issues you get more
10:53opportunities to celebrate bigger chunks of
10:56features and at least
10:57for Tableau Cloud customers there's no
10:59issue with upgrading desktop and prep as
11:01and when and it
11:02really starts to kind of you know point the
11:05question does Tableau just want you to
11:07start
11:08using Tableau Cloud more and is this a way
11:11to get you there I doubt it is but then
11:13again the dynamics
11:14are kind of interesting I think it's a
11:16valid question to ask let me know what you
11:18think in
11:18the comments below thanks for watching and
11:20I'll see you in the next one.
11:21you
11:27you
11:28you
11:30[BLANK_AUDIO]
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