Tableau Reviews

It is mainly for reporting purposes. We have our users who are using the desktop, and I, as an admin, provide help and support the backend activities. I don't really develop the reports.

It is definitely easy to use. It is intuitive, and more or less, everything can be done from the front end. As such, there is no concept of metadata. You can just take data from a database and start building your own stuff, such as OLAP data warehouse. You don't need extensive metadata modeling like Oracle BI.

It should have more integration with different tools and technologies. Its licensing cost should also be improved.

I have been using this solution for one year.

It is stable.

It does manage a good amount of enterprise data, but it is not like Oracle BI or MicroStrategy. They can handle huge volumes of enterprise data. Tableau doesn't have the same efficiency in terms of handling a large amount of enterprise data.

In terms of the number of users, I work for a client, and they have a user base of 14,000.

When I get questions or doubts, I just Google them and find the answers. In my one year of experience in working with Tableau, I've not really found out any kind of difficulties. I have also not heard much about any difficulties.

Its installation is straightforward. I have never done it, but I have seen my colleagues do it. I have worked extensively on Oracle BI or OBIEE, and I know how difficult it is. The installation of Tableau is comparatively pretty straightforward.

In terms of the technical team for its deployment and maintenance, we don't need many people. Most of the things, users can do themselves. We only provide the required support and do the admin tasks. 

Its licensing cost should be improved.

I would recommend this solution. It is quite good. It is an upcoming technology, and people are using it quite widely.

I would rate Tableau a nine out of ten.

We use this solution for enterprise reporting, dashboarding, and insight.

We have an eight-core server. There are up to seven hundred unique consumers weekly, and twelve hundred monthly. There are twenty-five power users that publish to the server on a regular basis.

This solution has transformed us from an Excel reporting environment to one of visual exploration. We don't just look at the numbers, we can easily explore why a number is what it is.

The most valuable feature is the "drag and drop" environment. We also appreciate the ease of use for adoption with "row-level" internal customers.

I would like Tableau to handle geospatial data better in terms of multiple layers and shapefiles.

• Rapid visualization of data
• Interactive views connecting multiple data sources
• Reduces need for IT cycles (hours vs. weeks to create report)
• Ability to analyze problems quickly
• Ability to share reports and analyses quickly

• Ability to focus staff on more analysis versus reporting
• More/Better/Faster analysis by staff

Pace of improvement to product has slowed. Most additions are now just nice to have.

More than eight years.

No.

No.

No.

I haven't really needed customer service. Help from the sales staff is okay at first. The community is amazing. You can google any question and usually find an answer.

I haven't really needed tech support.

Very straightforward. A lot of free training available online.

In-house. Easy!

• Spotfire
• MicroStrategy VI
• Qlik

The ability to create visualizations of data is the product’s most valuable feature to me because it provides a meaningful view of the data and the metrics used by our clients.

The ease with which users can visualize and share data has improved how we look at our metrics.

It’s a very basic thing, but being able to copy and paste data elements from the screen would be nice.

I have used it for nine months.

I have not really encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues. Our issues are not related to the function of the tool, but more to do with attitudes concerning looking at data and metrics.

It is well received when people see what it can do in transforming their data and metrics into meaningful displays that allow for greater insights.

Tableau Desktop is equipped with so many valuable features that it is difficult to know where to begin. The functionality that allows users to join multiple source files and create visualizations using the fields from each of the joined source files is certainly nice to have. While the list of graphs and charts on the “Show Me” menu is impressive, one can do so much more with Tableau. With a little imagination and ingenuity, customized visualizations can be created easily and quickly.

It is far easier for my audience to grasp the key takeaways of an analysis by viewing a data visualization than by reviewing a spreadsheet. Tableau Desktop simplifies communication between analytics and senior executives.

I have not yet transitioned to Tableau Desktop 10.0, but I understand version 10.0 has functionality that allow users to perform cluster analysis. I am sure that I will be using this functionality frequently going forward.

I was introduced to Tableau as part of an online course on data visualization offered by the University of California, Irvine. Although I have been using Tableau for less than a year, I use the product frequently.

I have not encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues.

Tableau provides an enormous number of online resources that are clear, concise, and very thorough. You are almost guaranteed to find the answers you are seeking within this online documentation.

We did evaluate a number of other BI solutions before selecting Tableau Desktop. In the end, we chose Tableau Desktop because of its flexibility and superior graphics. We are a fairly small organization. While we do not currently have a data warehouse, we are planning to build a BIDW within the next three years. Once the data warehouse has been rolled out, we will transition from Tableau Desktop to Tableau Server. In the era of big data, Tableau Server offers a number of attractive features including the built-in interface with both the R Project and various open source big data applications.

The initial setup for Tableau Desktop is about as straightforward as possible. Once you download the software to your computer, you are ready to use the application.

The most valuable features are the ability to use various data sets from different platforms, the intuitive graphs, and the ability to play around with the data and graph selections for different views of the data. As the course work is focused on ‘Big Data’ - both structured and unstructured - the ability to mix some of these sets and have Tableau suggest the best graph was very helpful. Because the product is so flexible, other graphs can be selected and a new ‘view’ of the same data presents a different insight.

All product use was through the school.

Version-specific work did not automatically version up with the upgrade. Since the version change occurred during the course and the majority of us had never used Tableau before, this static versioning for the projects caused some anxiety and some rework. There might have been an easier way to move these projects to the new version, but it was not transparent how to do that and online resources referenced an older version solution that did not work in the newer version.

I was introduced to the product through a few courses in my master’s program in Business Analytics, and was able to use Tableau Desktop for one of the course projects.

I did not encounter any deployment, stability or scalability issues. All product was through the school.

I did not interact with Tableau staff; all support was derived from the school’s IT staff.

The initial desktop setup was phenomenally easy and straightforward. Access to test projects and videos are available to ensure that the product works as expected.

Desktop implementation is user-based and although the setup is easy, it is necessary to be cognizant of where the base files reside and how projects and data sets are stored.

I am unable to provide pricing/licensing advice; the licensing is provided through the school with keys for each student to obtain a desktop version.

Tableau is a very robust engine. As attractive as the speed to combine data sets is and the great visuals it can produce, it is well known that it is not an affordable product if you maintain small datasets. To use a phrase, you don’t need an army tank where a red wagon will do. Because of this, Tableau would need to have a Tableau-lite for smaller businesses, so that it wasn’t so hard to start using the tool, then as the business grows, so does the product if need be.

Visualization and ease of use are the product’s most valuable features. Dependency on the IT team has been reduced. Users feel comfortable creating their own dashboards.

Tableau Provides a set of different visualizations that were not available in OBIEE. The dashboards help narrate a story. As an organization, we were able to bring in more people to use our platform because it was easy to use and helped business teams make quick decisions. In OBIEE, the business was dependent on IT vendors to generate reports. With Tableau, non-technical business users have become familiar with creating dashboards, thus reducing dependency on IT vendors.

We were not able to implement organization-wide security the way it exists in BO or OBIEE. We had to do a workaround to restrict access by transferring roles on the portal using Java and PHP to restrict content.

The second area for improvement is the processing large amount of data using R.

Finally, I’d like to see Tableau have more statistical capability.

I have used it for three years now and am pretty happy. We're going to upgrade on 9.3 in Q3/Q4.

I have not encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues to date.

We are planning to increase our infrastructure to support more complex queries in Tableau. We are still in process of integrating R with Tableau. This is one area where I can see problems as R and Tableau both have issues processing large amount of data.

I rate technical support 8/10.

We were using OBIEE for generating dashboards and wanted to upgrade our system with better visualization tools.

Initial setup was pretty straightforward, except for security. Also, we had to change the entire data model so that we could get in Tableau dashboards similar to those we had in OBIEE.

Technical expertise: in-house. Support: vendor team. I recommend that in-house implementation to bring expertise onto the team.

We were able to see 200% increase in usage of the platform vs usage of OBIEE.

We evaluated Spotfire, QlikView & Sisense. It came down to a tough choice between Spotfire and Tableau. We finally selected Tableau because it is good in providing visualizations, its integration with R, and it has a lot of connectors with various databases that Spotfire does not have. It also looked promising that it would provide more features in future releases.

Do not think twice about it; just go for it to find new insights in your data. There is a great future for this tool. It will help you perform basic statistical analysis. It will give you a different way to look at data structures.

• Table joins
• Formulas
• Visualization
• Dashboard

I used this product to provide reporting and analysis solutions to my clients. It enabled a small organization to employ a state-of-art reporting tool without massive IT implementation cost (such as servers, ETLs, data admin, etc.). Utilize only basic Excel tables as the data input (5-6 Excel tables), my clients can visualize their quarterly reporting in one reporting package and share with their colleagues.

I would say they could improve the data blending within the desktop version. Ideally, it is better to be done on the server, but for small businesses (or company divisions), the server is not an option due to cost.

For the China market, I would encourage them to offer a license below $1,000 per year.

I used it for six months.

I developed the dashboard / storyboard for just one user, so I had no issues at all, except the limitation on the table join side.

I did not utilize the tech support on my desktop deployment.

I previously used MicroStrategy. I chose Tableau for three reasons:

• Powerful functionality
• User-friendly interface
• Great community

The desktop version is easy to setup.

I implemented it by myself.

On the desktop version, use the community forum wisely; you will be able to find enough support for 99% of your challenges.