Recently I found one interesting Tableau server behavior about compatibility between Prep Conductor (Data Management Add-on model) and Tableau Prep Builder:

• V2020.4 Server is not full compatible with V2020.4 Prep Builder.
• V2020.3 Server is not full compatible with V2020.3 Prep Builder.

You did not read it wrong. This is actually in Tableau’s official documentation that is hard to understand. Here is my simple translation:

1. If you use Prep Builder v2020.3 or lower to publish flow to Tableau v2020.4 server, the flow always works.
2. If you use Prep Builder v2020.4 to publish flow to Tableau server v2020.4, the flow may not run due to possible incompatible feature
   • You should get a warning for incompatible feature before publish
   • You have option to exclude the incompatible feature before publish
   • If warning ignored and continue, publish can be done successfully but flow can’t run – after server upgraded, the flow is supposed to run
3. If you use Prep Builder v2020.4 to publish extracts to Tableau server v2020.4, it works as there is no compatibility issue. What is not working is server Prep Conductor.

Here is a few screenshots to help you understand the compatibility better:

If you connected to Tableau server when building the flow, you will get the following warning when use incompatible feature

You still have option to publish to server if you really want….The good thing is that it shows exactly what feature is not compatible

After publish the incompatible feature to server, the flow unfortunately can’t run…

Then you will need to find incompatible feature, remove it before publish…

Conclusions:

It is a surprise that Prep Builder v2020.4.x is not fully compatible with Prep Conductor v2020.4.x but is fully compatible with Prep Conductor v2021.1