Tableau Reviews

The primary use case is more visualization for user interactivity.

• Interactivity
• Fast data access
• The graphs
• Understanding our data better based on the sublevel of data provided. 

We would like a report model, because currently there is no schema that we can create in the tool.

It is a very stable product. It doesn't break.

I am not using the technical support. There is a great Tableau community.

I was not involved in the setup.

Tableau is an expensive solution, though it comes with its advantages.

We are researching for a new solution.

Most important criteria when selecting a product:

• Price and licensing
• Future landscape
• Support.

Extraordinary ease of use, easier to use than any competitor product I’ve used in 15 years or so I’ve worked on MI/BI.

Since I originally wrote this, I have found the mapping on Tableau has been extremely useful and easy to use, particularly that it includes very good geocoding for the UK. In terms of the UK, the support and community here is also exceptional and I know that I don't have to trawl through sites endlessly to find solutions, the community is one of the strongest I've seen thus far in BI

Speed of data discovery and accelerated our ability to remodel our data and improve our existing ETL processes.

Expansion of number of visualisations, as well as potential for straight to dashboard function, rather than design individual visualisation – these are, however, genuinely not priority to amend.

Having used another software for a reasonable period of time, I wonder about the chances of incorporating other languages, such as d3.js in future releases (NB I'm still using 8.3)

~3 years

This was a Proof of Concept rather than full roll-out.

No, but important to note it was PoC.

No, but important to note it was PoC.

Excellent.

Exceptional, probably the best user community I’ve ever seen in nearly 15 years of working in MI/BI/Analytical roles.

Currently use an alternative provider, looking to switch to a newer more empowering piece of software, an alternative to Tableau was selected at a Global CIO level.

Extremely simple. Download a package, enter a key post purchase and that’s it. Very easy.

Vendor team – they had (and indeed have) significant knowledge of the product and continue to share best practice tips and knowledge through their e-publications.

Standard software license cost to setup initially and an optional maintenance fee which include version upgrades. On balance, the costs of software balance nicely against the user experience because you probably wouldn’t need to spend a great deal on training as the product is straightforward to use. I continue to use Tableau in my free/personal time but have been using Tibco Spotfire much more frequently in my professional capacity, so will look to update my review of that software as well

Evaluated numerous different BI tools, including but not restricted to Cognos, Jaspersoft, Pentaho, Tibco Spotfire.

Assess the scalability using the Server set up, engage users of the tool independently through the Tableau Community for their ideas and advice on the pro’s and con’s of the tool. Even the biggest evangelists will be honest enough to tell you where it doesn’t meet their expectations.

Ease of use, polished visualizations, all data elements are treated as discrete, the story-telling feature, self-service, excellent for visually exploring data with unknown questions.

Tableau is used in our Platform-as-a-Service offering for data visualization/exploration, seeking to retire a larger BI platform using it, good customer adoption/feedback.

Metadata/reuse, performance/scalability at high data volumes + high user concurrency, disparity between desktop vs. web versions – need to address enterprise requirements in general.

I have used Tableau for two years.

No issues with deployments/stability.

It does not perform well when you cross into TBs+ of data and thousands of users.

Technical support is very good.

For our PaaS data discovery needs at the time, we reviewed MicroStrategy 9.4 Visual Insight, which was not up to the capabilities/ease of use that Tableau had at the time.

Initial setup was straightforward, it is not a complex system to install.

We implemented it in-house, limited to no need for external assistance.

The ROI is unknown.

Licensing costs continue to increase in Tableau and in QlikView, which we also use, forcing us at some point to consider consolidating to one and/or turning some existing/owned MicroStrategy licensing inward to replace, if the upward pricing trend continues.

Pick the right tool for the job/consumers of the products. There is not a single product that can cover all personas/use cases well or there would be only one product out there commanding the world – and there’s simply not just one. Tableau is great if the targeted users want highly polished visualizations of the data and from an exploration use case, the question(s) for the data are unknown.

The ability to make interactive graphs, tables, and maps that can be shared on social media, linked to, or embedded on a website are the most valuable features. The ability to allow readers to view and download the underlying data is another valuable feature.

I just did an analysis of real estate sales in my county (Bay County, FL) and it allowed me to share the results with the public in a way they can make their own discoveries beyond what I have presented. 

Tableau Public is free, which is incredible. However, the paid version is too expensive per user. They need to reduce the cost of the user that is not making the analysis, but only reading / drilling down on the results. It is hard to get a client to pay that kind of money to view reports.

From my conversations with Tableau, their product Tableau Online is what allows others to view and interact with data online privately. The cost per online user is $500 per year. There is a free Tableau Reader, but it is limited. So, if I wanted to make data visualizations for a client or within my own company, I would have to pay for the desktop software to make the visuals plus pay an additional fee for everyone who wants to use the full functions online. Tableau Public is free and an awesome tool, but it is all publicly available.

I've had no issues with deployment.

I've had no issues with stability.

I've had no issues with scalability.

Without a doubt the best aspect of Tableau is the data flexibility. I work with Tableau within the confines of a healthcare organization- which is constantly expanding the metrics, datasets and sources we have to draw from in order to meet the needs of the US government, our physicians and most importantly our patients. With Tableau we have the ability to create a dashboard that displays all of the aforementioned data sources in a way that appears uniform.

Before we built a data platform using Tableau we were unable to align our employees around their data. We had a few dozen data sources representing important areas of focus for our operations teams. It was unreasonable to expect our operational leaders to consistently monitor the results of these different reports. Our hope was to build a platform everyone could access, that would be a one stop shop for reliable answers to important business questions; Tableau gave us that ability and made it affordable.

While Tableau is flexible it doesn't deal well with data that comes in a predetermined organization- i.e. data cubes. Our team has repeatedly had trouble trying to import raw data if it had any predetermined structure.

Two years.

No, it was pretty seamless.

The issues we have encountered have been largely due to our own server structure, not Tableau itself.

On the contrary, Tableau gave us the ability to manage larger volumes of data.

7/10.

7/10.

No, not for this purpose.

Very straightforward- we were live with access in a few days, though it took a few months to build our more polished dashboards.

Our decision support team handed deployment, in house.

You will need a team comprised of programmers, developers, user experience specialists and customer service representatives.

I have used Tableau to generate visualizations to calculate system trend analysis for business. 

Tableau has been very helpful to give a high level of insight into our business.

Tableau's most valuable features are user-friendliness and have a connection between multiple source systems. You can publish a report by using Tableau Public and there you can make your data online, not only batches of data, you can use it as an online analytical tool.

There are more than a powerful tool in the market, such as Microsoft BI.

I have used Tableau within the last 12 months.

Tableau is a stable solution.

I have found Tableau to be scalable.

I would recommend this solution for large enterprises.

I have not contacted technical support. However, after reading many reviews others have found the support to be good.

The setup and deployment of Tableau are very easy. I did not have a problem.

The price of Tableau could improve. The license is too expensive. 

There is a 14-day trial version available to those who want to try it.

I would recommend Tableau, but if any organization wants to use it, they can see if the solution fits their business requirement. There is a very competitors market and with a low price. Those wanting to use this solution need to study the requirements to know which repository to use.

I rate Tableau a nine out of ten.

The dashboards give us metrics around the sales of our company. Most are sales reports to let us know how we're doing across different account managers, as well as how we're doing according to our forecast and plan.

The most valuable part of the solution is the general dashboard features. We schedule the dashboards to be refreshed and re-calculated, so they're not live connections but cached dashboards.

With Tableau, when you're dealing with very large datasets, it can be slow so the performance is an area that can be improved.

The security can be improved.

We have been using Tableau across the enterprise for approximately seven years.

We don't have any complaints about stability.

Scalability-wise, Tableau has met all of our needs. Across the organization as a whole, we probably have more than 1,000 users. There are probably 50 power users, who create their own dashboards and reports.

The consumers are sales executives, senior management, C-level, and HR. There are a lot of job categories that use the reports.

The technical support has been pretty good and we haven't had any major complaints about it.

We are currently using MicroStrategy along with Tableau. We began with MicroStrategy, and all of our reports were on it. We had been using it for about 15 years. Tableau is much easier to develop in, so with MicroStrategy, you needed more of an architect to manage the metadata. Because Tableau is a lot simpler to implement, we've been able to train people to do their own reports, so it's much better from a self-service perspective.

Security-wise, Tableau is not as robust as MicroStrategy.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

We initially had a third-party vendor come in and help us with the setup. They led that effort, but since then, we've managed the environments ourselves.

We have an in-house team that takes care of maintenance.

Tableau is not as cost-effective as Microsoft BI.

We are thinking about switching to Microsoft Power BI from MicroStrategy and Tableau. Cost is a factor that is driving us toward the Microsoft solution.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Whereas we used to present statistics in a traditional way, we now have interactive web-based presentations. 

The most valuable features are data discovery and fine visualizations.

The SQL programming functionality needs to be improved.

It is a very stable solution.

Ths scalability of this solution is good. It depends on your DW design, as opposed to limitations in Tableau. If your DW model is poor then Tableau is not miraculous.

Tableau does not have good technical support.

We previously worked with Qlik, but we switched to Tableau because of its visualization and simpler way of programming. Tableau is also good for data discovery.

The setup and support are not very expensive. In that way, it is not a complex technology.

We are a software consulting company and we have implemented tableau for more than ten clients. 

We are a consulting company and do not track the ROI information for our customers.

Be careful with the Tableau Viewer's licenses, and stay with the right number of users.

Before choosing this solution we evaluated Qlik, BusinessObjects, and Oracle BI.

Be careful with tableau support. Stay in touch with the professional partners because Tableau itself does not have the right number of developers or people for support.