Tableau Desktop just notified me that there is a new version available. Can I download and install it?
There are two versions of Tableau Desktop upgrades:
Minor releases indicated by a change in the right-most digit(s) of the release number like 2019.1.2, 2019.1.3, 2019.1.4, etc. These you can upgrade to at any time as the only changes to minor releases are bug fixes.
Major releases indicated by a change in left-most two sets of numbers like 2018.3, 2019.1, etc. that introduce new features. You can upgrade, subject to the following conditions:
If you are working with other Tableau Desktop users and you edit a workbook and save it to. twb or .twbx then everyone else will also need to have upgraded to open that workbook. You can work around this by using the File->Export as Version command to save the workbook as a downgraded version.
You can use the latest version of Tableau Desktop to publish to either of PATH’s Tableau Servers http://viz.path.org (internal) and https://tableau.path.org (external). However please know that the servers are not immediately updated for each new release due to the need for testing, so if a workbook is built using the latest version and is using feature(s) introduced in that version then some of those feature(s) may not be available when you publish. Tableau will inform you if this is the case when you publish.