Tableau Reviews

Tableau excels at data visualization and exploration. Terminologies such as a "sheet" are similar to the concept of a worksheet in Excel. Connection to most databases are supported out of the box. These factors keeps the learning curve short for business users. Charts in Tableau are rendered using visualization grammar called VizQL. This enables creating unique and out-of-box charts such as lollipop, sankey, sunburst, etc. The charts you can build in Tableau is only limited by your creativity. In addition, it is relatively to easy build interactivity and pass parameters in your dashboards so you can drill in and progressively reveal more details as the user interacts with data.

Tableau has empowered the business users to get answers to their data questions without relying on IT teams. Rather than following build, wait, and iterate cycle, business teams are able to analyze the data much more quickly and identify opportunities for efficiency and revenue generation. Prior to the adoption of Tableau, data was present in multiple spreadsheet; thus, there was a lack of "single source of truth". This problem was resolved by using "Published Data Sources" residing on Tableau Server.

Many areas for improvement are in Enterprise features. Some of which are:

1. A private folder on the server for a user to store his/her files.

2. A built-in tool for deployment and migration between multiple Tableau Server environments.

3. Ability to share a "database connection" between multiple Tableau data sources so that one change to connection information will be reflected in multiple data sources which share that connection.

4. Email distribution: Delivering analytics via emails on enterprise scale is difficult.

Areas for improvement in Visual Analytics:

1. Blending improvements: Slow performance when two sources are blended together on a high cardinality dimension. Blending does not support full outer join and does not allow using non-additive measures ( e.g. count distinct, average) from secondary data sources.

Update for Tableau 10.1: Some of the above are getting addressed in version or in future version as per Tableau road-map declared at Tableau Conference 2016 in Austin, TX. Specifically, there may be features for private folder in future. Tableau migration pains are somewhat alleviated with TabMigrate, their open source tool ( no support) and email distribution is getting better with conditional subscriptions ( 10.1).

Four years. Eleven years in BI.

In my experiences, Tableau deployment has been straightforward when deploying self contained dashboards (called packaged workbooks). However, you need to follow multiple steps to deploy a dashboard to your production server from your development environments.

Tableau (both Desktop + Server) is one of most stable software I have worked with.

Scalability in Tableau depends on many factors such as server configuration, networking, and workbook design. In my experience, the single biggest factor that affects scalability is the dashboard design. Excessive use of quick filters, multiple data sources blended together, long conditional expressions impact scalability. Reading "Designing efficient workbooks" whitepaper is extremely helpful. If your dashboards follow the best practices, it is possible to accomplish near-linear scalability by scaling your Tableau Server horizontally or vertically for large number of concurrent users.

Customer Service:

Tableau customer service is very helpful and responsive. Both the customer service and technical support are integrated into their customer portal.

Technical Support:

Tableau technical support is very professional and responsive. Many questions are answered in 1-2 business days depending on the severity. However, specific questions such as improving performance fall outside their scope. Thankfully, the Tableau community is one of the most engaged, knowledgeable, and helpful community. If you have a question that is not already answered by the community (very rare), you are guaranteed to receive a response within a few hours.

Yes. I have prior experience with SAP Business Objects, Lumira, Sisense, as well as javascript charting tools such as Highcharts, D3JS, etc. The biggest reason for switching are: ease of use, agility to deliver insightful answers from your data, and large number of chart types.

Initial setup was very straightforward involving running the installer program. I did not run into any issues with multiple versions of Tableau Desktop or Tableau Server.

All of my implementation have been in-house working closely with IT team.

Tableau pricing is competitive with the other options available in the market.

Yes. We evaluated Microstrategy v10, Sisense, SAP Business Objects.

Before committing to Tableau, it is helpful to list the top problems you are trying to resolve. If most of your needs are in operational business intelligence, you might want to evaluate other tools in addition to Tableau. If you want to analyze data, discover insights, communicate your story with data, or impress your customers with great visualizations, Tableau is by far the best tool.

For a successful Tableau adoption it is very important to have strong business user support and understanding the importance of data-driven decisions. Without the business user engagement, Tableau is just another tool.

We use the product to build diverse dashboards for a revenue authority. It helps us analyze taxpayer behavior to understand payment patterns and identify areas for improvement in compliance.

The platform's most important feature is predictive analysis. We can map taxpayers' locations with data and connectivity to databases and sources. We can forecast future trends using the visualization feature. These are a few features that make it unique.

The product's features for cloud integration need improvement. They should revise licensing and pricing models to cater to smaller enterprises. Users must be able to customize and write their code similarly to one of its competitors. Many companies have in-house data science models for Twitter or Facebook based on predictive analysis. There is a possibility of integrating these models seamlessly into Tableau.

We have been using Tableau for a year and a half.

It is a very stable tool. I rate the stability a ten out of ten.

We have 10 Tableau users in our organization. We plan to increase software usage.

The technical support team is very supportive.

We also work with Power BI and an open-source solution. In comparison, Tableau has a sharp learning curve. It is intuitive and easy to use. It has less deployment time and impressive visualization features. We can connect different data sources, including SQL, Oracle, etc.

The initial setup process is easy. It takes less than an hour to complete. I rate the process a nine out of ten.

The product's price is relatively inexpensive and manageable for enterprise-level companies. However, they could reduce the cost or offer discounts for smaller companies.

I rate Tableau a nine out of ten. It is a stable and powerful tool compared to Microsoft BI.

We use Tableau for the dashboard features. It helps us with the global planning of our business.

The product has the best features for analytical views and filters. Its integration with Jira helps us prepare intuitive dashboards with filters to share different details of broad-scale planning for a quarter or a year of our business.

The product’s router could be better in terms of readability. When we put more information on a single screen, it gets compressed and superimposed in many places while scrolling. It could be improved.

We are using the beta version of Tableau.

I rate the product’s stability seven or eight out of ten. I have never seen it crash.

The product’s scalability is good; I rate it a seven or eight out of ten. I have seen many people concurrently using it.

The product is deployed on the cloud. I rate its initial setup process a five or six out of ten. It is difficult because it has complex documentation, and I am still learning it. A team is involved in the implementation. It takes three hours to complete the process.

I advise others to opt for a POC and proceed with the product. I rate it a seven out of ten.

You can create many different types of visualizations and charts, ranging from simple to highly advanced. And if you're doing advanced analytics, you can leverage Tableau by integrating it with other solutions. You can also do a lot of automation in Tableau, and collaboration is quite good too. 

They currently don't have a great Workday connector. Right now, Tableau can connect to more than 80 different types of databases or data sources, but it's challenging to connect with a few types, like Workday. So if they can come up with a better version or a connector for Workday, it will solve a lot of problems.

I've been using Tableau for around five years.

I can say Tableau is highly scalable. Now that they've introduced Hyper, you can create an extract of more than 5 million rows in minutes and then do your analysis. So that's a very optimized way to analyze a lot of data. That's why many other companies like Amazon use Tableau to create their visualization, reports, and charts, considering that their data volume is very high. 

Tableau technical support is quite good. The Tableau community is also helpful. 

Tableau's pricing structure is unusual. So let's consider all the other competitors in the market. For example, we have products like Tableau, Power BI, Cognos, and QlikView in the data visualization segment. Compared to those, Tableau is quite costly. Their desktop version is expensive, and if you're using their servers, it's even pricier. Of course, they give discounts to bigger organizations. For example, we are premium customers to them, so we are getting it at a different cost, but for an individual, it's costly.

I rate Tableau nine out of 10. I would recommend this to anyone who is coming into the data analytics space. 

Public Cloud

We use Tableau to make dashboards and valuable information and insights available for management. We are creating some solutions and a dashboard, and people are using it to see the information. We use it globally across 118 countries.

It is basically the manufacturing clients we have all across the globe. They want to measure the production level, how we are getting the product delivered to the customer, and where they are lacking. They want answers to questions like "why are we not getting it up? Where do we need to improve?" They are preparing and analyzing which steps are taking too much time to get that delivered.

Tableau has helped improve our organization by enabling layman people to use it.

I like the calculation feature. I would not say it's such a good feature in Tableau, but if you have the knowledge, you can make that feature visible to everyone. It's not a feature that we can drag and drop and get the information. But whatever the data, whatever the calculation, I'm able to do. It's basically the knowledge base. Whatever knowledge I have, I can make that information public and publish it for management.

Many things have to be improved in Tableau. Right now, we make the calculation, and then we get that information. It would be better if business users could do that. I would ask the people at Tableau to provide that option to business users to get that information in one click.

It would be better if they automated some calculations. There should be more automation in Tableau. However, there are many things in automation mode, but it is very limited at the moment. We need automation for people who do not know much about Tableau. It would also be better if there were good community support like in Alteryx.

I have been using Tableau for the last three years.

Tableau has been stable for us.

Scalability depends on your data and how you make calculations. That becomes your scalability. About 20% of all our organizational users are currently using Tableau.

The technical support for Tableau is just online, and they don't have an option where I can call support.

We used OBIEE Oracle before, but it was very limited. We were moved on to a different solution because we saw it as a better option. Tableau is a better option when compared to OBIEE, and we have been using it for six or seven years. 

The initial setup is straightforward for people who are using it at a basic level. The advanced level is highly complex. The implementation strategy depends on the requirements we are getting from the people and the stakeholder. I would say that management is talking to us, and they are asking us to build the solution they want to have in place. They do not know whether it is technically feasible or not, but they know that this is the requirement. 

We implemented this solution on our own.

In Indian Rupees, Tableau costs about 30,000 to 40,000 per year. 

I would tell potential users that many things are not available in Tableau. Even Power BI is better than Tableau because there are many things that are good for the business. Effective visualization is not there in a Tableau. If I know of a better solution than Tableau, I would surely go for that other solution.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Tableau a four.

Public Cloud

Other

The primary use case is for household survey and population, and housing census analysis. I have also been using it for monitoring and evaluation of projects.

I provided Data Visualization skills to selected staff of The Gambia Bureau of Statistics (GBoS) in 2018 using Tableau. Previously, SPSS was used to analyze the data but after I introduced them to Tableau, the team was so happy that together we decided to look at the Census 2013 dataset and analyze it using Tableau.

I have also used it to develop a key indicator list based on the Living Standards Measurement Survey.

GBoS, with the help of the European Union, bought Tableau and have since been using it to analyze household surveys instead of SPSS or Stata, as they were doing before.

Another project that I am about to complete using Tableau is the Data Lifecycle Assessment of the Planting for Food and Jobs project in Ghana. I am working on this project with the Ministry of Monitoring and Evaluation and it is being sponsored by the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa.

Already, the staff is so much in love with Tableau that they want me to provide Advanced Training for them so that they can adopt it as their Data Visualization Tool.

The most valuable features are the ability to classify variables into Dimensions and Measures, Ask Data, and Show Me.

The Dimensions and Measures feature solves one of the basic problems most would-be data analysts have, which is to determine which variables to analyze or focus on. Tableau makes this easy by splitting them into Dimensions and Measures and then use Dimensions to dissect or dice and slice the Measures.  

Ask Data enables non-technical personnel to quickly derive insights from data just by knowing which variables are available.

Show Me is a feature to help with knowing which chart is an appropriate one for the selected variables, and it makes helps in creating appropriate visuals.

I cannot end without mentioning the overall seamless flow of how to derive insights from data using Worksheets, Dashboards, and Stories.

I think predictive analytics is the main driver of business decisions and hence Tableau should strengthen the ability to make predictions.

The forecasting feature in Tableau in my view is too limited because it must have dates but I should be able to predict the outcome of an event without having a date as part of the input.

In situations where you are analyzing or using just one measure such as Sales, Tableau does not create the header for you. Furthermore, it is not straightforward as to how to create it.

I would like to have the ability to perform multiple pivots and creating different variables. For example, if I have the regional population for six regions and branch offices, together with the number of clients per branch, all as a record or observation, then I should be able to pivot them separately resulting in the Region, Population, Branch, and Clients.

I have been using Tableau for three years.

The scalability is simply awesome.

The technical support is awesome.

I have worked with Excel, SPSS, and Power BI.

Tableau is easy to use and the support from the community is awesome. Also, I see Tableau as a product for the future due to the commitment from the development team.

The Tableau Development Team listen to suggestions from the users and follow discussions on the community forum and factor that into product upgrades. 

End users want things to be done quickly and intuitively and the only way that any product will survive is by listening to end users 

The deployment was straightforward. I would say that it was a nice and easy, no-brainer setup.

The implementation was done in-house but there was an occasion that I had issues. I contacts support and it was super.

The ability to make insightful decisions quickly is a big benefit to all and therefore reduces cost in terms of manhours spent in cleaning and creating visuals.

It is a bit difficult for some people when they hear $70.00 per month, as some solutions are available for less than $10.00 or for free. What I always tell my trainees is that it is not so much about the cost, but rather, how you can quickly get the insights you have derived into the minds of your audience or stakeholders.

It is important to consider the ease of use. If a product is free but usability is a problem then it is not actually free because it cannot be even used.  

I had already used other tools and also wrote my own program in VBA to analyze data.

Customers need more insights and hence, they should look into Natural Language Processing (NLP). The ability to analyze text data or focus group discussions or radio phone-in programs would be helpful. 

When there is a major upgrade and you install it, it wipes off all of the recently used files and newbies get frustrated. If something can be done about it then that will be very helpful

On-premises

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.

On-premises

I have a lot of experience using Tableau for the Healthcare Market. I use Tableau for visualization and reporting mostly. Main observations:

• Tableau is nice and smooth. 
• Tableau is quite user-friendly and easy to use. 
• The digital agents were really great. 
• Clients and customers liked the visualizations. 

Overall, I got positive feedback from clients by using Tableau.

I work for clients. That is my business model. Business people really like to see Tableau. They love Tableau because it is very user-friendly. The platform provides an easy to use interface, which is what most people like about it. 

Being easy to use is more important to me than the look and feel Tableau gives to your data. Nevertheless, data analytics is what we value the most. 

Tableau definitely has a big user community. If you get stuck or anything, you can easily seek help through that. Whenever you do this, you get good results.

The diagram drop facilities help to double up hard drive reports. The map facilities and the ability to connect with different data sources are the most valuable features. 

Tableau has a lot of different connectors, many of which are very new. You can connect many different data sources with Tableau. 

Overall, it was a good experience with Tableau and the visualization looks quite attractive with the proper combination of colors.

I have a lot of experience on the desktop version of Tableau. My recommendations for improvement for Tableau would be:

1. From the developer perspective, the data connection handling the target data set is what most needs to be improved. 
2. Tableau keeps evolving with each version. With Tableau 192019.2, they're coming again with some more features. 
3. Data preparation is where Tableau needs to work a lot on. Every time with Tableau you have to invest a lot of time preparing the data before you start using the visualizations.
4. Tableau doesn't perform well on big data processes. Suppose I was working with a file of like 1 or 2 gigabytes, then in that case Tableau is really slow. 

Sometimes I feel that Tableau is too slow when you have a big data file.

One to three years.

It's quite stable, aside from the data file which is not. Otherwise, Tableau doesn't hang.

Good scalability. Not that bad, not that great, it's good.

I didn't need technical support with Tableau.

We don't have any preference for other solutions. We depend on Tableau for the solutions based on the client's requirement. If a client requires Tableau, we develop the application and customize it.

A lot of complexity happens initially. Tableau is a little bit too complex. I started using the clear tool and application. Then you will feel comfortable with the tool and with the data. 

There will definitely be some tough, complex things in your development, especially with the data. The data preparation (combining everything else) has to work. 

Initially, all the data preparation tools have that kind of experience. In the beginning, you have some tough times and little complexity. Once you resolve this, the future and further development will come relatively easy.

First, clients should be comfortable with the existing resources or existing platform which the organization is using - that is one of the very important aspects before you decide on any new tool or any kind of new technology. 

Second, you want to go ahead and invite a new application into your current system. Ask how compatible the application is before you decide on any new product in your organization.

Third, you should consider if your employees are comfortable with the new incoming technology in terms of whether it’s easy to learn or adapt. Ask how comfortable your employees are before you bring any new tool into your organization

These are the key important points. I will rate Tableau at eight out of ten because there will be some shortcomings in the application that are not up to the mark.