Tableau Reviews

The product’s performance is better than other tools. The working speed is good. Creating visualization on Tableau is somewhat easier than other tools.

The product has some limitations. Creating empty extracts is not easy. We faced some issues in the initial phase. Creating extracts side by side with multiple lines is not possible in Tableau. This feature is available in Power BI.

If we want to make any changes to the server, we must have the Administrator role. The product should also allow users with Explorer roles to make these changes.

I have been using the solution for the past three and a half years.

The tool is stable.

The tool is scalable. Around 50 people are using the product in our organization. Everyone knows about the product. We have around seven administrators. The number of administrators varies based on the project and tasks.

The technical support is good. I raise a ticket in Tableau Community if I get stuck at any point. I can get the solution easily from the community.

Positive

I am also using QuickSight. When we create multiple visualizations and multiple sections using Tableau’s dashboard, the way of executing the visualization is quicker in Tableau compared to other tools. We can pull millions of data and create millions of tables. Apart from the performance issue, compared to other tools, the product provides the best and most advanced features.

The initial setup is easy. The time taken for deployment depends upon the data, the visualization, the types of reports, and the number of cards.

We are also learning to use other tools. It is beneficial to learn Tableau. It will help us in the future. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

It was for dashboards. The key use case was for creating visibility to performance metrics for the leadership team. It was the most recent version, and it was deployed on-prem. 

The key use case that we were going after very specifically created visibility to performance metrics for the leadership team. So, it allowed us to give that common view of performance metrics and drive business conversations based on the common shared set of facts. We were able to expose data and relationships that we otherwise couldn't do in our enterprise system silos. From that perspective, we were incredibly successful in really driving performance. When you combine that with some real championing in the business and with some leadership to push it down, the fact that it was Tableau wasn't as relevant as the fact that we had the championing pushing the process and pushing it down.

The number one thing was just the ease of getting something up quickly. The other thing that was good about it was that it was fairly fast for decent-sized data sets in terms of performance and run time.

From a downside perspective, some of the more advanced modeling techniques are actually fairly difficult to do. In addition, I just fundamentally disagree with the way you have to implement them because you can get incorrect answers in some cases.

One of the key challenges is that you never know whether it is how your developers developed it or whether it was the tool. We did find that once we got into more complex models, the ability to keep objects that should tally the same way but didn't became more and more difficult. That was probably the big thing for me. I don't know enough about how the tool was developed to know whether that was because they didn't follow a recommended practice. That was probably the number one thing that I found frustrating with it.

When we started to try and get into some very granular data sets that had some complex relationships in them, the performance on it degraded pretty quickly. It did degrade to such an extent that we couldn't use it. We had to change what we were trying to do and manage its scope so that we could get what we wanted out of it or reduce the scope of what we needed out of it. It doesn't have a database behind it, per se. So, while doing some of the more complicated things that you might otherwise do on a database, we started hitting some pretty significant challenges.

I used it for about three years.

Tableau worked fairly well for straightforward data sets, but it struggled when we got into the more complicated data sets and larger data sets. 

We were able to deploy it fairly broadly without a whole bunch of work. From that perspective, it worked fine. I was deploying my stuff to about 200 users across Canada, and I don't think we saw a blip on the server when people logged in. It was fine. If we were to roll out some of the bigger applications broadly, like the ones that we were having performance challenges with, we probably would have crushed the box. We would have had to get more CPU. Most likely, it would have been a memory issue, but we never hit that inflection point.

There were about 200 users of the solution. It went all the way from the equivalent of a senior vice president and all the way down to the equivalent of a line manager. So, we had business unit leaders, vice presidents, and operational managers.

It was being used extensively for a specific use case. There were lots of other use cases that it could be used for, but there needs to be an appetite from leadership to go, drive, and commit resources to go do that.

I didn't have to deal with technical support. Mr. Google is pretty good on the topic.

We had previously used Cognos to do the exact same thing. The only reason why we replaced it was that the business decided to go towards Tableau. Otherwise, there really wasn't any real reason to replace it. It was probably a little bit easier and more interesting for people to learn and to develop applications in the program than in Cognos. The ramp-up time to get to reasonably proficient in Tableau plus the support through Mr. Google made it a lot easier for me to get resources and do development on Tableau as compared to Cognos.

The organization decided to move away from the old platform. So, basically, I was lost when they asked me to shift off so that they could shut it down. I personally prefer the previous platform. I understood it very well. I had used it for years, and it worked just fine. For the most part, the challenges that we had on the old platform were not resolved by Tableau, which just reinforced to me that it wasn't a tool problem. It was a people problem.

It was pretty straightforward. The big thing that confuses people in a project that involves Tableau is that Tableau is a very visible but small component of the overall solution. That's because 80% of the work is data. It is not Tableau. So, Tableau is actually a fairly small component over that overall solution. It took a few days to get it up and going. Almost 80% of the work is actually on the data side, which takes forever, but the actual Tableau component of it was pretty straightforward. It was not that difficult.

You can get a Tableau dashboard up on a weekend. It is not hard to get something up and running. It is pretty trivial. It isn't any more or less difficult than any other tool to get up and going. I've used a number of them, and they're all pretty easy to get up and going. Tableau was the first one out of the gate with this democratized data perspective, where they were going to do departmental BI and up to enterprise BI years ago. Now, they now charge a fairly hefty premium to leverage that product. It is not a cheap product.

In terms of maintenance, it can take as much or as little as you want because it just runs. So, technically, you don't have to have anybody to do very much. You just need a very skeleton crew to operate as is. The challenge that you run into with solutions like this is that you need to continue to refresh the information with new and different views because people want to know more, and they want to go deeper into it. It is not a function of the technology. It is a function of the use case. So, you tend to have lots of new requests for new reports and analysis, and that's where you tend to have more challenges.

We didn't get into analysis users who are able to sort of do a little bit more themselves. There were viewer licenses where you are just using preset reports, but there are obviously additional training and things like that, and you have to deal with it if you start getting into more advanced power users.

I was at another company, and we were the integrator.

It is fairly expensive. I have no idea what they paid. We were on an enterprise license, so whatever it is they licensed at the enterprise level is what we paid.

A good chunk of it has got nothing to do with the tool. It has everything to do with your leadership and your governance requiring it. We had our IT team roll up Tableau multiple times and not a single person used it because there just wasn't enough leadership support to use it. There is nothing wrong with the tool, and it worked fine for what it did, but every time I logged into it, I go, "Okay, but what did you want me to actually do with this? I see all this information. I understand it clearly. I'm not sure what I do with it though." So, without that additional guidance from leadership, rolling it out is irrelevant. You need to have that strategic leadership associated with it.

The key piece of advice would be that you got to look beyond your tool. You need to look at how you're going to get this information used in your organization. What kind of leadership support, governance support, and ongoing support are you going to have? It is all based on trusted data. The value of the tool is based on the quality of your data and the leadership's support to use it. So, if you don't have high-quality data and you don't have leadership support to use the data, you don't need any tool because nobody is going to use it.

I would rate Tableau a seven out of 10. It suits the purpose, but in and of itself, I don't think it is significantly better or worse than its key competitors.

We use it for dashboard designing.

It has improved our organizational departments, like sales, HR, etc.

The most valuable feature is the 3D charting.

They need to improve the bar chart position and width.

The most valuable feature in Tableau Desktop developer version is the drag and drop feature of dimensions & measures in the view. Parameters and action filters are also great.

Me and my team work extensively on geo-spatial data, wherein we are supposed to deal with shape files and state/city/pincode boundaries. Tableau also provides a feature to make custom geographic shapes, which helped us in delivering a wide range of solutions. 

I would love to see dynamic parameter values & radial distance recognition on other WMS maps.

I have been using Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server for four years now.

I have not encountered any deployment issues. Deployment is really easy and simple until and unless you get your hands on the Server-Worker Configuration setup. That is a bit tricky.

It is super stable. No issues whatsoever.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

I used QlikView but switched; the UI was not that great.

Initial setup was straightforward.

I implemented Tableau Desktop & Server all by myself in my organisation.

ROI shows when you hear 'Wow' from your clients every time you deliver a dashboard or a report. They always come back with new projects and greater expectations.

The price is perfect, as the ROI is superb.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

• Easy to connect to random sources of info. In my case, to MySQL + Google Analytics + an Excel file with Facebook Insights in one case, and another MySQL + PostgreSQL in another case.
• Easy to build with drag & drop even for a rookie like me.
• Fancy graphics in the end result. This is important when I use it during a demo in front of potential customers.
• Interactive filters. A selected option in one widget can filter automatically the other widgets that are used in a dashboard. This is awesome!
• A wide range of customisations.

In less than 3-4 hours, I started from a pure installation on my Mac and succeeded in investigating a trip of a vehicle recorded in our records and had created a visualisation of that trip on a map.

That was used to prove a hypothesis that we can find answers to various questions about our vehicles without needing to wait for developers to handle the custom specific case.

I need to be able to combine in a worksheet from different sources because the insights could be much more powerful. It is possible that the product can do this now, but it was not easily found.

An option to interrupt the process of loading of external data (like from Google Analytics) would be helpful. A few times, I had issues with interruption of the initial data loading process, when it took longer than the expected.

I have been using it for a month.

I did not previously use a different solution. This is my first time with this. I did a lot of research into the final result of my BI work.

Initial setup was pretty straightforward!

It was an in-house implementation. Pretty easy.

If the price was cheaper, then my rating could have been a perfect 10 ;)

If you are looking regularly for answers that are hidden inside your data - like 3-4 times in a week - then it is undoubtedly more valuable to take a shot with a BI solution (even if you don’t use Tableau). The speed; the deadlock dependency on your R&D resources leads to a loss of time. Tableau gave me the freedom to experiment with the hypothesis that I had.

• Flexibility: It's able to connect to any data source.
• Reliability: So far, no major issue seen with the tool. It never crashes, even with huge amounts of data to handle.
• Easy to use: I can create and modify dashboards, workbook or stories easily
• Easy to share: Even without the online version, workbooks are easy to export and share without any additional cost.
• Easy to maintain: Once the workbooks are set up, updating them is quick and easy.

• More data-driven decisions. Thanks to its way of presenting data and its ability to handle a huge amount of data, it helps the organization see data in a different, and more visual, way.
• Reduction of non-value-added tasks due to maintenance.
• Possibility of sending out new customized reports in a quick and reliable way, so specific issues can be addressed.

• Improved predictive analytics. This part is still a bit missing and it'd be useful for the companies.
• More advanced built-in statistical tools. Still a bit rough on defining trends.
• More flexible "storyboard" worksheet implementation. For instance, having a summary where you can define the filters and worksheets in the storyboard, without having to define it sheet by sheet.
• More easily customizable fonts and formatting. Today, it still requires some time. It would be great to implement a "copy format" function.

I have used it for two-and-a-half years.

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

Some consultants are keeping track of us and I would say they are doing a good job. Technical support through Tableau’s online forum might not be sufficient sometimes but somehow, I've always managed to overcome issues without calling support.

Initial setup was straightforward; no issues.

In-house implementation; the process is smooth and easy.

ROI is difficult to calculate.

We evaluated Lumira and QlikView. Tableau is more flexible and reliable, and it has no additional cost for sharing reports.

It's a great visualization tool, but not only that: It simplifies implementing new reports and maintaining them, combining a great way of looking at data with flexibility never seen in other tools.

It can build in-memory data with an easy-to-use interface, connecting numerous data sources and linking referenced tables/origins. It also has an awesome Sense-Me tool that indicates the most appropriable graphic to use with selected information (dimensions and measures) and, in my opinion, works like a charm!

It shows us our client’s profile, our best services and what areas are not satisfying the target. Also, it gives us a better sense of market needs, using non-structured data (like social media, government data).

It needs a more robust way to connect and share the "big-data" origin. It also needs an easy-to-develop interface for creating new charts and tools in business dashboards.

Version 8: 10 months, Version 9: 1 month.

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

Tableau has incredible consulting people and comprehensive support professionals, solving and clarifying any questions.

We used (and continue to use) SAP Business Objects 4.1 Edge (and all the embedded tools...). We acquired the SAP BO licenses to initialize our business intelligence project. But, our bigger problem is using lot-and-not-linked tools to generate insights. Some of our needs are only answered by Explorer, another only by Dashboard Design (Xcelsius – and it’s so old...), another only by Lumira (and can’t be viewed on LaunchPad – The Web-Portal of BO - forcing users to install the app on their machines without mobile support).

Tableau is an easy-to-install tool, like Next-Next-Finish!

We installed it by ourselves, only viewing the vendor’s documentation to make sure we’re using the correct parameters. It is a good way to start; always see what the vendor’s site has in their documentation area.

Our employees no longer have to search for information in many systems and/or use a web search; they can just go to the BI platform and do a lot of analysis by just clicking. So, with this time savings, our ROI is more than 100% - a lucrative investment.

Before looking at the pricing/licensing, research all of the employees’ needs. Make a matrix with their needs and the available BI platforms on the market, checking which platform addresses the way your business way-to-do. Then, determine which users will use the platform to see information, to create information and to build information.

Just test before you buy. All BI platforms have a lot of functionalities and, also, a lot of needs.

• Valuable to use smaller data sets
• Automatic Extract Creation
• Replace on publish data sources
• Online sync client
• Progressive-loading dashboards.
• Parameter to pass an initial SQL dynamically
• Combine multiple sets with union
• Subscribe and schedule the reports to receive email on data snapshot
• Ad-hoc reports and ease of use for the end user
• Reduces development effort
• Easy maintenance
• Security with role-based access and in line with Active Directory and SSO
• Alerts and scheduling
• Heat maps, geographical charts, 3D charts, drill down/drill up, drill through, cascading effects, and multi-dimensional and canned reports all in one tool
• Embedding into Microsoft SharePoint

• The end users need not depend on the regular BI developers for certain quick and ad-hoc reports.
• Generic avoidance of sharing the emails with an embedded Excel etc
• Can be accessed from multiple smart devices
• Snapshot facility to the end user for analysis
• Effective visuals

• Facility to add custom code to the dashboard will be helpful.
• Custom SQL feature is not working as expected from the performance perspective. Irrelevant of the SQL, the engine executes for everything available.
• Archive historical data using extracts
• MeasureName filter can’t be shared across multiple sheets in a dashboard.
• Cascading with relative has restrictions over the worksheets in a dashboard.
• Multiple selection in parameters
• Formatting option for individual filter is not available.
• Using HiveServer2 connector is a big challenge to pull, even with smaller data sets. Not sure if that has been improved with Spark Thrift server connector.
• Not much support for Hadoop / Hive as the backend in the market, connectivity issues not limited to the drivers.
• Few complex report requirements (for dashboards) could not be achieved with better performance (e.g. Dynamic Parameters).
• Reverse engineering from the front end report is not that impressive.
• For massive volumes of data, the performance acutely degrades.
• Permitting external users with no SSO is still a concern.
• Server support on Linux is lacking.
• Caps on report scheduling

I have been using this solution for more than three years.

TDS deployment will not encourage editing after the deployment.
With the TDS deployment, a few of the formats are lost. So far, this is not a serious issue.

Approached from the client side, waiting time is reasonable high.

I previously used MicroStrategy, QlikView, SQL Server Reporting Services, SQL Server Analysis Services, Panorama, SAP BusinessObjects, and in-house Java-based reports.

The reasons I chose this product were: ease of doing things, faster performance, and it is an all-in-one tool.

Comparatively, basic setup is not a hard task.

Our use case is met, but the pricing is still a matter of concern.

It is a nice visual and high performance all-in-one BI tool which is becoming more popular with its ease of use and user-friendly features, effective visuals and apt major functionalities of BI.

However, it depends on one’s requirements and budget to balance the need.

We would recommend using it for mid-size datasets to visualize near real-time data, as there is no control over the execution model.