Tableau Reviews

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.

• Flexibility producing visualizations
• Scalability

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:

• Data preparation suitable for analytics applications. (This is not Tableau specific, the same is required for pretty much all analytics apps.)
• People bouncing off each other to get the creative process going. Consider internal show & tells and take advantage of local user groups
• Subscribe to "Viz of the Day” to get exposure to as many viz's as possible
• Tableau is (I believe) the best tool for data visualization. Equally consider investing n the best tools for data preparation, such as Alteryx. The combination of best data prep with best analytics capabilities is MUCH more powerful than either without the other.

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.

Easy setup and intuitive drag and drop functionality. Easy connection to a range of different data sources. Range of visualisation models, constantly extending with new releases. Dashboards and story-telling.

It has allowed a shift from IT-centric enterprise reporting to business-centered development of ad-hoc and enterprise reporting, in partnership with IT. This brings significant extra agility to the organisation and a model of greater co-operation between business units and IT department.

As with all products there are many areas that can be improved. Tableau actively encourages suggestions from its user community, allowing for voting on what features to include it future releases. http://community.tableausoftware.com/community/idea

3 years, starting with Tableau 6.0.

No significant deployment issues. With a sufficiently resourced infrastructure (CPU/RAM/Storage) the product is easily deployed. Tableau helps with the necessary specifications.

It is a mature and very stable product.

Scalability is very good, especially with release of Tableau 8 which brought 64-bit and multi-threading. Extends to hundreds of users on a single server in my organisation without any issues and has capability to include clusters of servers for larger organisations.

Customer Service: Very good. Very little need to deal with them on an ongoing basis due to the robustness of the product but on the occasional time we need some help they are very responsive.Technical Support: Initially very good with strong technical support easily reached. As the Tableau user-base has grown quickly there are more formalities to reaching support now but still top-quartile. Again little need to lean on them due to the stability of the product and strong online documentation and forum support.

Oracle Discoverer. Switched because we needed to move to a partnership model between IT and Business units. While Discoverer allowed for power users in the business to author reports its metadata layer and underlying database technology required more intensive IT support. Tableau enables the business user while giving more agility to work together to deliver ranges of enterprise solutions.

Straightforward. Get a good server and provision it according to Tableau’s technical advice, install, and you’re away.

Mainly in-house, some support from Tableau themselves and also a local Tableau partner. Expertise of partners not great at the time in Europe but has matured considerably over the last few years.

Commercially sensitive.

Commercially sensitive.

Sas Microsoft SSRS Qliktech Oracle OBIEE Microstrategy

Assess your own strengths and create a preferred architecture. Then see if Tableau fits some of your needs. For anything significant in scale you will need a robust underlying data architecture, it won’t do all of your ETL. While it is possible to create and deploy artifacts very quickly without formal training, it is worth sourcing some to help you leverage the best features of the product.

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.

On-premises

I am a developer and I provide solutions to end-users using Tableau.

It's intuitive and highly mature.

I use OBIEE, which is in Tableau. It is much easier than in other tools and it is easier to bring up the data insights.

The customization in the front end is a bit difficult. If they provide any utility or UI feature, where a user can do their own customization it would be great.

I would like to see an option to customize your own reports. Not being able to customize is a pain point for the developers.

I have been using Tableau for six years.

Technical support is good, but they could use some improvement. I would rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

There can be some delays in resolving issues because of the difference in time zones. The need to come with a way to match the time zones.

I would recommend this solution to others but it would depend on their use cases.

I would rate Tableau a nine out of ten.