Have a backward compatibility when possible

how is this even a thing? we have been building reports in Power BI desktop for report server and it seems like Microsoft has deprecated the previous desktop version. I can only open my files in the November 2018 version, which does not have an option to publish to report server.

This needs to be fixed. It means I can't work on a file at home (most updated version) and then send it to work (older version). This is a huge issue. I work in the govt and we are typically way behind on updating software due to bureaucracy. This make Power BI implementation extremely difficult for a major portion of your target audience.

This is becoming a big issue for us. We often have users come to us with content they have created in the latest version of Power BI desktop, looking for it to be hosted on Power BI Report Server (Aug 2018). They are never happy to be told they will need to re-author the whole thing in an older version. Even if we could open the report in the Aug 18 version in a somewhat broken state, then fix what we need to, this would be a massive improvement on the current situation.

This topic is the same as this https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/15955765-save-a-powerbi-report-in-compatibility-mode . However, the description is not so accurate as the other topic. Could these be merged into a single topic?

I don't get this. I worked on a file 2 hours ago and it worked fine. Trying to open it now gives this message. Required property 'Connections' not found in JSON. Path '', line 1, position 136 What does it mean, that I have a newer version suddenly and my old file doesn't work? Help....

In my organisation updates are only rolled out once per 6 months or so. Now working at home due to the Covid pandemic I've been constantly working with the latest version. Coming back at work now we're still on an old version so all the reports that we've been working on from home are incompatible and not usable anymore until an update is rolled out. But as said this is quite a sluggish organisation so I'm not expecting any updates for the near future. Need backward compatibility hard!