The most valuable features are:
- Ease of setup
- Ability to create visualizations
- Level of interaction.
The users required no training after visualizations have been presented to them.
The most valuable features are:
The users required no training after visualizations have been presented to them.
There are some areas where finding answers required asking specific individuals and searching through many emails. Tableau has allowed us to combine and visualize data from many entry points and provide users with a single source of consistent and reliable information.
While noted that the product is specifically designed for visualization, it would be the perfect tool if it had more ETL features.
My company has been researching a BI tool for the past year. We came across Tableau and have been using the public version for approximately six months.
There have not been any areas of instability, thus far. The identified areas were a result of a lack of knowledge.
Based on the analysis currently being done, the public version is sufficiently meeting our needs.
Technical support has been awesome. We met a partner based in Trinidad and they have been providing us with assistance as we need it.
This is our first visualization solution being used. Attempts were made on another platform, but setup and use of tool were a huge challenge for the team.
The initial setup was very straightforward. The team was able to follow the videos posted on the Tableau website and required no technical assistance from the Tableau team.
I am quite pleased that Tableau has now revised their pricing and licensing. The initial model was quite expensive but the current model allows you to scale up as you need to and it is far more attractive. The ability to license on a per user per month basis is now very affordable.
The team looked at Pentaho, Microsoft Power BI, and IBM Cognos. The members of the team who were exposed to aspects of the evaluation were far more receptive to Tableau than the others.
It is very important to do an evaluation of your users who will be interacting with the tool. Their technical abilities will determine if a cumbersome tool is suitable for them. Secondly, if you do not have the technical expertise to administer a product, then it may not be the solution for you. Some of the other tools require a high dependence on the vendor for administrative purposes.
The drag-and-drop interface and its flexibility are the product's most valuable features.
It requires only a one-time effort to design worksheets and dashboards. New data can be appended or a whole new set in the same data structure can be loaded to existing working files without much effort to obtain the same results.
I would like to see more Excel-like functionalities, perhaps, e.g. the countifs function. It is quite a hassle to code this using query language.
I have used Tableau for around one year.
Hassle-free deployment for desktop version.
Initial versions crashed when large data sets were loaded. Subsequent releases were more stable.
Technical support is excellent. Tableau consultants were eager to help.
We chose Tableau for its simplicity and ease of use.
For the desktop version, initial setup was straightforward.
The straightforward installation can be performed in-house.
A non-complicated licensing scheme exists for the desktop version. Buy, activate and use. Licensing was easily manageable with a license key that could be activated or deactivated on a system as required.
Try it out to see if it suits your organisational needs. To make the product work as desired, know how it works and implement workaround solutions if that is not readily available.
Data visualization: Simpler and cleaner charts, easier for users to perform self-service, not so steep learning curve for non-technical users; good integration to big data Hadoop and predictive analysis, well integrated with other ETL tools. Less-technical maintenance cost compared to QlikView, which requires the developer to do more scripting.
It is easier for users to do self-servicing; simpler, cleaner and story-telling charts; and requires less lead-time to develop charts/dashboard integration with predictive analytics and big data platform Hadoop.
Enhance standard reporting like QlikView (scheduled reports, notifications etc.); for MNCs, the server version license is not cheap; and row-level security: every user needs a DB account, which can give a hacker more opportunity to attack via more DB accounts.
I have used Tableau for two years.
I had a deployment issue: No version control means you can't roll back to earlier versions once overwritten/published.
I rate technical support 8/10.
Initial setup was straightforward.
An in-house team implemented Tableau.
Tableau seems to have easier user acceptance than QlikView because of the simpler charts and big data integration, increasing the possibility of helping an organization transform from reactive analysis to predictive analysis.
Server versions are not cheap and pretty similar for both Tableau and QlikView in terms of price. I don't see a big difference; it really depends on your organization's need.
I also evaluated MS BI and QlikView. Compared with MS BI, I find Tableau and QlikView have stronger visualization; intuitive data insights; less development lead time - MS BI requires creating OLAP cubes, which takes more time; clearer and simpler charts; and intuitive data mapping/insights.
If you have more developers/technical people and want to do more standard reporting without Hadoop, go for QlikView; if you have more business users with some SQL knowledge and would like to do predictive analytics, and integration with big data platform Hadoop, go for Tableau.
Anything and everything becomes fact-driven; we don't do a lot by gut feeling.
ETL functionality is limited, which is both a strength & weakness. It would be nice to have Alteryx & Tableau as a package, but I believe Tableau have deliberately stayed out of the "deep" ETL capabilities to "stick to the knitting", which they have done very well.
I have been using it for eight years.
Any issues we have encountered have been related to data preparation rather than the tool itself.
Technical support is excellent.
I have historically developed using SAP BusinessObjects and IBM Cognos for visualization and various tools for ETL. I have trialed Qlik and Power BI, but this has a much higher level of maturity at this stage.
Initial setup was significantly easier than other products I have used.
An in-house team implemented it. Your investment needs to be in data preparation, then the implementation of any of these analytics tools is much easier. Typically, I spend between 70 & 90% of project effort on data not the tool. If data is well prepared, the Tableau development is very quick and best handled by the business analysts, rather than any tech personnel.
To get the best from Tableau you need:
The most valuable feature is the ease of generating management reports on demand, and ease of generating incremental extracts live or work very quickly.
The integration with R for more complex algorithms in analytical data is also nice.
We use it to generate intelligence reports core business of insurance we develop. It is also part of the business intelligence tools we recommend.
Part graphical gauges compliance does not include the Balance Score Card style, however you can develop these graphics, another shortcoming in not having mondrian engines.
2 years
We've had no issues with deployment.
We've had no issues with stability.
We've had no issues with scalability.
Most users love Excel, non-users hate it. When it comes to data visualization, Excel is generally dispised, except by those that have to make dozens of charts every single day. I call this the Excel Stockolm Syndrome. These are the forsaken data visualization users that keep making 3D pies when they should know better by now. Tired and overwhelmed. Not in the mood the learn yet another tool just to make those elusive “effective charts”. If you link good visualization to a tool they have no access to, you can be sure that the whole message is lost.
I think things can be changed from the inside, improving the way people use Excel. I write for Excel users because I’m one of them. That’s not going to change soon. But I love data visualization, not the tools that make it happen. I specially like interaction, multiple charts and making them available on the web. And I need to manage more data (not big data, just more data). Some things can’t be done in Excel or require too much effort.
The Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa has a funny short story called The Anarchist Banker. The idea is that only a banker can be a true anarchist, because only a banker can be free from “social fictions”, specially money… In data visualization, this means getting the tools out of the way, by learning them or avoiding them.
I chose the learning path and I’m learning R now. I always wanted to make those scatterplot matrices. And I want to play with the ggplot2 package. A programming language is covered but R is not going to pay the bills.
I will not complicate matters by discussing how I chose Tableau and Qlikview and not Spotfire, for example. I just want to choose one. Qlikview vs Tableau. Comparison articles like this and this are very helpful, but a man is a man with his circumstances. Each starting point is different from everyone else. Let me tell you what I think I know about these tools in this early stage.
I like Tableau, I have to admit it. I like the fact that you don’t have to fight stupid defaults in design and formatting, because I share the same data visualization principles.
I like its enthusiastic and knowledgeable community. Let me give you two simple examples. I spent a lot of time making this horizon chart in Excel, and Joe Mako quickly came up with a better version in Tableau.
Then I tried to be creative with the bamboo charts and Joe Mako strikes again, with a better implementation. I’m starting to get nervous… (kidding)
I know and respect many Tableau users, not because of Tableau but because I share the same views regarding data visualization.
Apparently, maps in Tableau are good enough, so that’s a good point.
And as a blogger, I want to make my work available to the web, and Tableau Public is a nice option (my population pyramid).
The Guardian often publishes Tableau visualizations. I’d like to try that with the local newspapers here.
On the other hand, we know how stubborn some datavis experts are. Is Tableau that stubborn? Can clear vision and the right principles become a straitjacket? I really hate straitjackets (“the idea of”, never actually tried one…)
In my country, Tableau is virtually unknown and I am not sure if I want to sell shoes in Africa.
I know even less about Qlikview. The first chart I see in its video is the pie chart above. Not exactly a shiny example of good data visualization principles.
Apparently there is a very active Qlikview community on Linkedin but not so much on Twitter. Probably this is meaningful.
I keep reading that Qlikview is better than Tableau when it comes to making dashboards, while you should explore the data with Tableau. It’s a good point in favor of Qlikview (that’s what I need now). Extensions and the market seem to be interesting too.
Qlikview has several business partners here. Actually, I was invited to work in some Qlikview projects in 2013 (obviously I have to learn the basics until then). They can pay a lot of bills.
Not everything is black and white, not everything can be decided based on feature-by-feature comparison. Not everything is heart, not everything is reason. If I choose Tableau, my data visualization skills will improve a lot. Qlikview is harder to predict. I’m sure there are many users that dislike the pie above. If not, Qlikview can be more, hummm, challenging.
I mentioned those Qlikview projects, but I’ll try to remove them from the equation, at least for now.
I have a simple dashboard in Excel and I’d like to create Tableau and Qlikview versions. That’s probably one best ways to evaluate a tool, using my own work.
I’d love to learn from you. Can you answer questions like:
And please don’t tell me I have to learn both…
Thanks Jorge!
I'm a computer science professor and I teach analytics. We use Tableau to teach students how to develop visualizations of data sets.
I like Tableau's heat maps and the storyboard. You can create data stories and tons of visuals with it, and it goes together really well. Tableau lets you manipulate the data in various ways. But since we are teaching, we have to accommodate the needs of the students. Often, we have to go back to basic stuff like Excel because that is what the students will be working with at whatever jobs they get. So we try to use the type of tools that their workplace will offer. We know Excel is widely used and Tableau is not.
I've been working with Tableau for about half a year or so.
It's an individual solution so it works on as many desktops as you can download it to.
We were using Azure, but we're trying to get away from that because Microsoft is very expensive. We're trying to keep our expenses down while trying to find some decent products.
Setting up Tableau is straightforward. You just can download it and set it up on your system in five minutes.
The price of Tableau is too high.
I rate Tableau eight out of 10.
We offered R via Tableau to our Data Scientists. They had tried it and rejected it since they couldn't use the R's built-in Plot because it is more flexible than anything you'd find in TB for layering unless you want to spend time designing an R3 visual and importing it. TB is a great tool and we do use it here.