Tableau Reviews

I work in the hospitality industry and I use Tableau Online and Tableau Bridge with our food ordering company. In our specific uses, I have found that Tableau is very good for extracting data, rather than for working live on the data.

Although the process of transferring data to Tableau isn't the best, once the data is already on Tableau, it works completely fine. I will typically make use of layer aggregation and other operations such as slicing and analyzing it by getting right inside the data in various ways.

Due to the demands of our industry, we always have things that we would like to see more in-depth over different dimensions, such as restaurants, branches, cities, and so on. With Tableau's help, our company can aggregate all the raw data and then analyze by rows, to see, for instance, which restaurant is doing the best by comparing them with one another. It also enables us to easily split areas into zones and use the data to test for not only which restaurants are doing the best, but also where (i.e. in which cities and branches). 

Although Tableau isn't the best for us when it comes to processing and working on live data, it is very good at extracting data for analysis. Once you have extracted the data, the aggregate layers you can create, along with slicing and other operations, are very handy. It allows us to really get inside the data, and it is, in my opinion, better than any other tool I have used with the same pricing model.

Of the best analysis features, multi-aggregation layers come out on top for me, because they let you extract raw details while making multiple aggregations on different time levels and different dimensions, and you still manage to get your work done quickly without having to load a lot of data grouped over different dimensions.

Tableau Bridge is also a very good tool, however I can tell that it does need a few fixes and some maintenance. That said, it's still good for its first few years since release.

Most of the problems in Tableau Online that I have noticed have to do with performance or weird, inexplicable bugs that I can't pin down. For example, you might try unloading some data, and you'll be waiting for a long time without anything happening.

These bugs always seem to happen when we perform big upgrades or do maintenance work, and we have had to send a lot of tickets for unexplained issues during these times. It doesn't seem to be a problem only for us, but also for customers all over the world, such as in Ireland, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the US, too.

As for future features, I would like to see major upgrades in Bridge and the Flow Tool, allowing us to do more data engineering work. I think it would give Tableau a big edge in the market to look into how to incorporate more data engineering tools into their product. 

Besides that, I would also like the charts to be more realistic and easier on the eyes.

I have been using Tableau Online for three years now.

The stability is okay. It's not 24/7, but you can say it's stable enough. In the start, it's more stable, especially compared to our OBIEE problems, which have taken two or three days to solve in the past.

It's easy to contact Tableau and ask to increase users or resources. They'll do it in the blink of an eye.

At present, we have 20 users, 12 of which are shift users. The majority of our users in total are board members or high-level managers. 

I wouldn't give their support more than a seven out of ten rating.

I have previously used Power BI, Qlik Sense, and Qlikview. I switched because Tableau was better in working with different sources compared to Power BI which was the only one that was truly on par. Qlik Sense and QlikView were easy to use but didn't have most of the features that Tableau and Power BI offered. Then there's OBIEE which I have used for the past two years, but it is quite difficult for non-technical users.

I also didn't like that Power BI is typically coupled with Microsoft Azure, whereas Tableau works well with AWS and Google which are a lot easier. 

The setup is straightforward. I mean, there's not much setup at all. It's easy for any mid-level user to do it. For example, I just used the documentation they provided and did everything myself. The documentation was sufficient
and the implementation strategy doesn't take more than 20 days.

I implemented Tableau by myself using the documentation they have made available. And for maintenance on one single node, you might need only two to three people involved.

For data extraction and analysis, Tableau is better than any other tool I have used with the same pricing model.

My ultimate advice is that you should know what the tool is capable of first and what your needs are. I think it's better to use the Server edition, and not Cloud, because there are a lot of problems in the Cloud version that don't seem to be present in the Server version. As for myself, I will likely switch to Tableau Server next year after doing a bit more research on how to do the changeover.

I would rate Tableau an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for HR and energy dashboards. We have made and a few other dashboards for opportunities and accounts. 

Tableau has really good and interactive visualization and interactivity. 

The action feature which Tableau has is very useful for us. If we click on one visualization, it will pass the value to another visualization. That interactivity within different visualizations is the most valuable feature of Tableau.

Tableau would be really good if we could have predefined templates. I was doing a POC another newer tool, Einstein Analytics. They have predefined templates already set up. These predefined templates do the heavy lifting for the initial dashboards. We don't have to build them from scratch. Our dashboards look really good and 20 to 30% of the look and feel of the dashboard completes with the predefined templates. If Tableau works on the predefined templates, that would be so helpful to a lot of companies. It would save time for the developers.

The pricing is a bit higher than the competition. They'll need to lower it to stay competitive.

They need to move more into machine learning AI. Right now, in a POC that I'm doing with Einstein Analytics, they are more into machine learning and AI. Tableau is lagging as of now. If they want to have a long run in the market, they need to integrate machine learning and AI. It has to be very robust.

I've been using the solution for two years now.

I can say that this solution is quite scalable. I'd rate it eight out of ten. It integrates with many solutions. I haven't used our code in everything, however, I have used it for our HR integration and I find the code is quite scalable. 

In the last project I managed, there were 110 regular users of the solution with about 20 suer-users that were able to edit reports and dashboards and tasks of that nature.

I'd give technical support a nine out of ten. There were time zone differences. However, I got a timely reply and call from them, so it was very good. The support is very good. It's both responsive and helpful. I'm quite satisfied with them.

I've used BusinessObjects and MicroStrategy as well. I used to use Power BI for a few months.

The main competitor to this product is Power BI, which I also use. This license is a bit costly compared to Power BI. Not more, but a bit costly from what I've seen.

There's not much of a difference between Power BI and Tableau. They have the same kind of interface and the features. The main difference between the BusinessObjects and the others is that its an enterprise tool. The licensing cost of the BusinessObjects is very, very expensive. The visualizations and objects etc., all have separate licensing for dashboarding. On top of that, the chart's not that interactive. If you click on one chart, it will automatically change the data of the several other charts related to that. That is not very interactive compared to Tableau or Power BI.

The initial setup was not exactly straightforward. It was complex, or, to be fair, had a medium amount of complexity to it. The use cases were complex also and few of them had medium complexity to begin with.

Deployment was basically in the development environment and then we deployed it in the UAT for the users. They had a look at our reports in UAT first and then we deployed it into production. I was also working as a Tableau administrator also and then I learned Tableau administration in order to handle that aspect. I handled Tableau administration with the user and deployed the reports, etc.

The company has different verticals basically. I worked on HR and energy verticals. They also had finance and accounts. I have to maintain that administration part for all of them; not just my dashboards. From a deployment perspective, it was tough for me to maintain all the users and all the rules for the accounts department and for finance, and to be in the group for them, and to assign permissions for them. I did have issues in the servers in terms of gateways. I resolved them myself in the end with the help of Tableau support. 

I handled the implementation myself. I didn't need the assistance of a reseller or consultant.

The company chose to purchase a creator license for me, which was $70. With that license, you can also be an administrator. We also have 20-25 extra licenses and they cost around $20-$35 each. Those are for normal users who will be viewing the dashboards. Those are monthly charges.

There aren't any other costs over and above that.

Apart from that we had database licensing. So because we used Snowflake as a cloud database.

Our company has a partnership with Tableau.

I've used both on-premises and cloud, depending on the requirements.

This particular solution is quite an easy to use product. It's very robust. Even a layman who has previously was not worked with any other BI tools would love to work on this. They will find many things easier to implement. There are a few other tools that are in the market. However, from an implementation point of view, it's very robust. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten overall.

Tableau is pretty intuitive. It has a great interface, and you can get multiple visualizations. The best thing I like about Tableau is that you don't have to go for creating; it is calculated free. Unlike Power BI, Tableau has create a calculated column with dimension.

Tableau is quite fast and provides connectivity to 75 plus data connections, which is great.

Also, installation and configuration are pretty fast and seamless in Tableau.

In Tableau, it's just the concept of creating one calculated column and one create calculated free. So, it's pretty simple, and it's pretty easy to locate and work on it.

I have noticed that Tableau is not very compatible with ClickHouse. There's no direct connection to ClickHouse; you have to set up an ODBC connection.

Tableau's performance takes a hit if you have huge data. The stability and scalability could be improved.

I've been working for almost five plus years on Tableau.

Tableau's performance takes a hit if you have huge data. So in terms of stability, I feel that Cognos would be more stable because you can import all the metadata and store it in the Framework Manager. Tableau has scope for improvement regarding stability.

Tableau needs to be more scalable. The performance takes a hit if you have huge data. Even if you take an extract and you publish the extract and schedule it to refresh, if the report has multiple tabs, it can take quite a while to go from one tab to another.

We are going to scale the Tableau server so that it can accommodate more processes and can be more process inclusive.

We have a Center of Excellence team, and anytime we have an issue, we reach out to them. They then raise an incident or a ticket with Tableau technical support. In the case where we had 1 million rows and the Tableau data was failing to refresh, we shared the log with Tableau Center of Excellence. They came up with the findings that it's more of a database issue and not a Tableau server issue.

Installation and configuration are pretty fast and seamless in Tableau.

In general, if someone is new and wants to learn Tableau, it's around $70 per month.

I have experience working with Cognos and Power BI. Compared to Cognos, Tableau and Power BI are pretty fast. Cognos has the concept of Framework Manager where you can build a framework model. Once you build the model, then you have to release the package, and only then is the subset or the package of data available for reporting. Tableau and Power BI eradicate the dependency on a framework model.

With Cognos, installation and configuration wise the setup takes a bit of time. You have to install and configure and then make the data available. After that, you can do reporting. Unlike that, Tableau is very quick; you can just directly connect to Excel or a file on your desktop.

The connectivity, installation, and configuration are pretty fast and seamless in Tableau and Power BI, unlike those in Cognos.

From a license perspective, I think Cognos is the most expensive, then Tableau, and then Power BI.

If I were to rate these solutions on a scale from one to ten, I would rate Power BI at 7 and Cognos at 8.

You can do a lot in Tableau, and on a scale from one to ten, I would rate it at eight.

We are consultants and implement this solution for many of our clients. We had a project for a telecommunications company, where we extracted the transaction data and helped them to find some trends and improve analytics. They were able to gain knowledge from the data and to see some KPI indicators and build some dashboards for commercial, risk and financial purposes. We help clients connect their raw data, prepare and clean, and generally carry out the cycle. We then help them to extract insights, trends and work on forecasting so they can visualize their indicators in dashboards or in some ad hoc analysis. I'm the general manager and we are partners with Tableau.

The solution has several platforms or tools to visualize data and to build dashboards. The Tableau Prep tool is great for data preparation and this is the most valuable tool for preparing data, cleaning and building data models or data warehouses. The main issue, and most companies have the same problem, is updating data, which they can do with Tableau Server, where you can synchronize data to automatically refresh daily, weekly or monthly. It means your dashboards and KPIs will be updated. Most people know Tableau because you can build beautiful dashboards, but the main beneficial features are behind the scenes.

The product could be improved with more features in data analytics. Tableau is not currently a good database for handling built-in models for data science in order to test, train and run the models. It's not currently an AI tool or a tool for machine learning. Right now it's more for non-expert users. If they could improve their analytical capabilities for data science tasks, it would be a better product. In order to carry out data science tasks now, we have to use Vertica for big data projects to discover and run machine learning models. It would be very good if they had their own machine learning capabilities built in. I'd like to see more features in data analytics, AI and machine learning capabilities.

I've been using this solution for the past 12 years.

The stability is good, we haven't had many bugs. They provide many updates every week and we don't have problems with Tableau in general.

The solution is scalable, we have around 15% of our clients that are large scale businesses with the majority being small companies. We provide support for our customers.

Two or three years ago, technical support was very good. I think that now there are many more users of Tableau, the technical support is not as good as it used to be, particularly in terms of the depth of analysis. It's more general these days. You can buy their professional services in order to get better support.

Most companies find it very easy to implement Tableau and to make an impact with their data because it's very easy to install, to learn and to start using. For larger companies we combine Tableau with other solutions, such as Vertica or Alteryx or Hadoop or Python. That's a big project but most companies first need to solve their self-service BI. They need to find insights into their business and with Tableau it's very easy to do that. In minutes, you can gain many insights and discover knowledge without being an expert of business intelligence, let's say. Deployment takes an average of two months, it depends on the size of the company.

We are always evaluating this solution in relation to Microsoft Power BI and QlikView. Power BI requires knowledge of numerous other Microsoft products in order to get results from your implementation. You need an expert DBA that can handle it in cloud and many specialists to implement the Microsoft solution. People think that buying or using Power BI is all that they need to do, but that's not the case, Power BI is just the last step of the implementation. A lot needs to be done before implementation. It's the same when it comes to automatizing the data refresh. Tableau has just three products and you don't need much time to learn and to finish a project and be up and running. QlikView has less tools and less features for data preparation. Vertica is another database that handles built-in models for data science and for the data scientist, this is a good choice in order to run, test and train the models.

It's important to understand your needs because if you only need to build dashboards, Tableau is not essential. But if you need a deeper business intelligence project, and you have higher expectations, Tableau would be the solution. If you only need to build some dashboards, you can use Power BI, it's a very good tool and it's cheaper. If your project is more ambitious then go for Tableau. Tableau has a lot of experience and can solve all the typical problems. I rate this solution a nine out of 10.

The best feature of Tableau is the usability. It allows a business user to prototype something without going through IT and spending a lot of time and money trying to translate requirements. Going back and forth, it allows you to rapidly develop things that you need to analyze the data.

I also think, as I used SAP Business Objects before that and built out the reports, that you can build almost anything you need to, but it's a little more complicated. I would say Tableau is more like Apple, it just looks nice. It formats things. It just gives it to you in one way, as it assumes that is the way that everybody wants it. So it might be frustrating if Tableau doesn't give it to you the way you want. But usually, it does give it in a good enough way. So, it saves you a lot of time.

The thing I don't like is the refresh feature . The users can have the web page open and there's a browser refresh every 10 minutes, or every 30 minutes, whatever IT sets as the refresh rate. You lose everything when you have to refresh the page and it may take 30 seconds. So, that's a bit frustrating too. You expect that when you leave a browser page open, you want it to keep that view there.

I don't know if they've introduced it yet, but there is a connector with Smartsheet. We use Smartsheets a lot for project management and capturing data. We are basically exporting from Smartsheet to Excel, and then creating in Tableau and publishing it. I believe there is a connector now but I haven't actually used it. So that would be one useful feature; more connections to data sources.

I would sometimes get an error message stating “out of system resources”, but when I checked the RAM/CPU utilization in my laptop, it would appear that I had lots of resources.

Cisco has been using it for about seven years. Teams that I work with use it. I've contributed to the requirements of building dashboards with IT. I have been using Tableau for about three years.

There can be a memory hang, or the memory crashes sometimes. I'm not sure, but generally it's stable. I think it's when I build complicated data sets, like too many worksheets or too many reports in my workbook, this can happen, which is annoying.

I don't think it is scalable because of the stability issue. I think it's good for desktop; it's quick and dirty, making things you need, and you can actually build some really nice dashboards. It's scalable when you publish it to the server. Also, you can have as many users as you want accessing it. I have some impressions on how much data you can actually use at a time when you're building your reports.

I think technical support is OK. We have in-house support at Cisco, which is a team that supports Tableau as well, but we can go outside to Tableau support itself if we need help.

I found it easy to get started. I'm more of a technical user with an IT background, so I had no problems setting it up.

Get started using Tableau as it serves the purpose for most people.

There are many use cases and many projects. I have done level cost-based analysis and forecasting. I have also created one dashboard for their risk measurement.

The most valuable feature is the analytics part. You can use simple reporting by using the analytics by businesses and stakeholders, giving insight into that particular information. It also has data cleaning. It saved a lot of time for the application.

Every time, they create a new version of Tableau. We need to update that version and create a new EXE file. Any visualization tool should have one particular application that only needs to be updated rather than creating version one, like 2024.1.2. You can see many versions in Tableau. We are using this number of versions only because of the latest update. Having the latest update in the same application rather than creating multiple versions would be good.

Some features are not enabled in Tableau. We can use the measure or Python to use that. Every company or every person has its own requirement in Tableau. Suppose I am using an in-date format. I'm extracting data from my data source in some other format. At the same time, businesses want to view this information in different formats. I have to customize the data format. If possible, you and your team can work on the date format in the world. There are multiple data formats or data get views available in the report. You can also accommodate in the gate feature.

I have been using Tableau for almost five to six years.

Tableau is scalable software. Almost 500 people within my department are using this solution.

During COVID-19, I had a few issues. Our support team didn't support it. We requested to the Tableau team, and that person helped us. Sometimes, they have a good way. They have excellent knowledge, but sometimes, when you provide your source to a third party, they don't support us technically. 

Neutral

The initial setup of desktop application is straightforward. We can also creat,e athe  project and tha e end user can also create their own project, and later on, if needed, the support team can help us with that.

It takes ten working days minimum to complete creating dashboard and setup server. We are using dev and production environment. Some are also using a testing environment based on their requirement and discussion with the business.

Multiple team is responsible for their activities. At least five to six people are required  for deployment because someone is creating a dashboard and some person has their knowledge at server level. Also, some person needs to have their permission management.

I was not able to connect Tableau with SharePoint online. Microsoft Power BI can be connected with SharePoint easily online. It has many more facilities than the Tableau application.

The daily reporting or data analysis has seen many improvements with Tableau. We can manage the users accordingly while doing the drag-and-drop interface for that application. I can do Python and use Python Tableau language, which creates a lot of differences.

I have never faced any issues with data integration. Before COVID era, I was using SAP HANA. I could use it very frequently and use the data set accordingly.

I have never faced any such issues. It is a very good application. There are many more application which are also very good and very user friendly, but Tableau is also one of them. We have a direct live collection. Even business users share experience while connecting the live. They feel some hindrance while using this application when they refer us or when they filter the data. You can see the delay response in the page.

Tableau is a good application. I created any dashboard for the business, and business want to view their information. They like that application, and they are able to on this side, what purpose they wanted to develop this dashboard.

I recommend Tableau. There are many BI application. Tableau is one of them, as I I use it.

If the user want to view information, it would be go with their line. It is simple to understand, and take decision based on their information. It would be very good to have on comparison heat map or the pie chart.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I primarily use Tableau for fair-market reporting.

I've been using it a lot for our dashboarding needs, circulating data to the business, generating PDFs, and publishing on the portal.

Over the time that I have used this solution, I've found the interface to be extremely user-friendly.

I especially like the flexibility that Tableau provides. You can quickly make web edits from version 9.0 onwards. My understanding is that Tableau 2020 has many more features for this, as well.

I customize the reports to my needs and preferences.

There is a lot of APIs available, which means that Tableau can be customized to a large extent.

Tableau had some issues with parameters. In particular, prior to version 2020, they did not have dynamic parameters.

Tableau cannot work with cubes or MDX (multidimensional expressions).

For enterprise-level users that are computing millions of records, they need to improve the features.

I have been using Tableau for close to five years.

In all aspects, Tableau has been very stable.

When there are millions of records, scaling up is quite difficult. There are, however, workarounds.

For example, you have to create summary tables or aggregate tables so that Tableau can be faster. There are third-party solutions like Kyvos available but if Tableau can integrate that and address the scalability, then it'll be an undisputed champion in the space.

Technical support is extremely good. Since we have been a customer of Tableau, they have always responded really well to our queries. This is true regarding price, as well as in the technical aspect.

They have a good knowledge forum.

I have worked with SAP BusinessObjects, Domo, SAP, and Birst.

One of the reasons that I prefer Tableau is that it's very user-friendly. Anyone who is familiar with Excel can easily adapt to Tableau.

We have been using Tableau for a long time, and we have seen a return on investment. The reason is that we have been able to scale it up to an enterprise level.

In the long run, there is definitely a return on investment.

Licensing is slightly on the higher side compared to other products, such as Birst. There are different licensing options so you really have to be careful when choosing them. I recommend that you discuss your needs with the salesperson and try to negotiate the price.

In general, the price is slightly higher than products such as Power BI and Birst.

Tableau is a solution that is near-perfect.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

It was used for a project in the capital finance domain. We used it to develop the dashboards. My role was to plan the development activity and prepare the dashboards.

All features are valuable. It is very user-friendly, and it is mostly drag-and-drop. If we have the dataset available, then we can develop any dashboard very quickly.

SAP BusinessObjects has some semantic layer designs that give the flexibility to do ad hoc reporting or dashboard designing. If that can be brought into Tableau, it would be great. We have the data in the database, but we should also be able to bring something between the database and the dashboard and do some semantic layer modeling for ad hoc reporting requirements.

I have been working with this solution for almost three years.

It is very stable and user-friendly. It is overall good.

I have used it only for building dashboards. I have not used it much for other areas, so I don't have any inputs about its scalability.

Its users are from the finance department. There are more than 20 people for that project, and they are using different dashboards. Its usage would expand in the future. They have a plan to also use it for machine learning. I am not sure if that would be a different team or if we will be involved, but machine learning is coming into the picture in the future.

We have experienced people in the company. Whenever we are stuck with something, or we want to achieve something new in Tableau, we consult each other. We help each other, and we get the solution. There is also a Tableau community where we can get help.

For any technical support, Tableau administrators raise the ticket and get the answers from Tableau's support team.

Initially, they were working on SAP BusinessObjects, and then they moved to Spotfire. After that, they moved to Tableau. SAP BusinessObjects was more for reporting purposes, whereas Tableau is for dashboarding purposes.

We also liked Tableau, and that's why we moved to Tableau. It is more user-friendly, and it is also better than SAP BusinessObjects in terms of look and feel. 

Its initial setup was easy. The time taken to develop dashboards depends on the dataset that we want and the data source with which we have to connect. We have to create the data source and the dataset, and then we have to develop the dashboards. If we have the datasets available and we have an understanding of the requirement, then in one or two days, we can develop a dashboard.

For its maintenance, there are three people in a project, and we are able to manage their requirements. There is one administrator and two developers.

If you have more ad hoc requirements, then I would recommend evaluating other BI tools as well. If you have fixed requirements and you know what type of dashboard or reporting is needed in advance, and it is not going to change very frequently, you can go for Tableau. It is very user-friendly. If product owners or users want to go for a self-serving tool, Tableau is the best option.

I am satisfied with it, but there is always a scope for improvement. This is a competitive market, so there will always be some scope for improvement. I would rate it a nine out of 10.