Tableau Reviews

We use it in our parent company as well as in client companies. A few of our environments are on-premises, and a few are on Tableau Online. We have a mix of both.

The UI part is the best. The end-users can easily get started with Tableau Desktop or Tableau Online because of its user-friendliness.

I also work as an SME on the platform side. Tableau is very nice and jazzy for the end-users, but there are pain points for the admins. Performance is something about which we hear a lot of complaints, such as the dashboard doesn't open in time. It performs well on the desktop but not on the server. I know that there is always a limitation when it comes to a huge amount of data or the complexity of the calculations, but we often hear from end-users about the performance on the server side. It is easy to drag and drop all the columns and do what we want, but if it is not going to load better on the server, users are not going to like it.

Their standard support is not good. They should improve it. I don't know if it has anything to do with the acquisition, but lately, their support has not been great.

Their upgrades have always been an issue. They never work. 

Tableau is a little bit costlier than other tools such as Power BI.

They should make it easy to integrate with tools like SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, etc. Its integration with Office 365 should be improved because most of the users already have tools like Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint, and they want to integrate a reporting tool or a visualization tool with their existing tools. 

It is very easy to integrate scripting in Spotfire. We can do a lot of changes in the UI by writing some scripts. That could be something that Tableau can look into. They can also consider providing APIs, but most of the people who work with Tableau do not really work much on the scripting side. So, I am not sure if it is feasible or required technically.

I have been using this solution for almost eight years.

It is scalable for online and on-premises versions. With the online version, they take care of the load, and we don't have to worry about that. For on-premises, initially, we used to have core-based licensing in which we had a cap on the number of cores we could expand to. We then moved to user-based licensing, which makes it easy to scale.

In our parent company, we have close to 200 users. We also have two clients on this platform. One of the clients has about 400 users. For another client, overall, we support close to 20K customers on this platform. That's one of the biggest environments.

Their premium support is really good, but their standard support is failing. Their standard support is the worst. We recently had an experience where we waited for more than seven days for a ticket to be picked up. It was vacation time, and there were a lot of factors, but their standard support is not good. For a few of our clients, we do have premium support, and they respond to any issue because we include the technical account managers in the communication.

Comparing it with Power BI, the main differences are the cost and the integration with Office 365. It is very easy to integrate Power BI with Teams or SharePoint because they all belong to the same company, whereas with Tableau, I have to integrate it with a third-party vendor. It is a little tough to integrate Tableau with SharePoint or Teams. Nowadays, everyone wants everything in one place; it could either be in SharePoint or in Teams. 

I have been working with Spotfire lately, and it is very easy to integrate scripting in Spotfire.

The Tableau server-side used to be very good initially, but for the last year, we are having issues with the upgrades. Their upgrades never work. We always get stuck while doing the upgrades, and we end up taking a different approach. We take the data and keep it somewhere. After that, we wipe out the entire server and install it again. We then restore the data into that environment. 

In terms of maintaining this solution, I used to belong to level three (L3) support till last month. We were only handling the performance issues and any issues that need RCA. The L3 support used to have close to five people. L2 support, which usually included adding a user, removing a user, adding a new group, and providing usual production support, was taken care of by the Ops team. They used to have more than five people on the team.

Cost is where tools like MicroStrategy, Power BI, or Spotfire come into play. Cost-wise, Tableau is a little bit costlier than other tools such as Power BI.

I have been using Tableau all these years, but about four years ago, Power BI came out at a very low cost. Their desktop version was free from the beginning. Power BI Desktop has always been free, whereas Tableau Desktop is costly. When it comes to cost, people prefer Power BI because it integrates very well with Office 365. You don't have to worry about integration with Teams or SharePoint.

It is easy to use for most business users, but before using it, you should understand the basics of dimensions or measurements. If you directly come to this tool without understanding the concepts of warehousing, dimensions, and fact tables, you would not get what you want. This applies to any reporting tool. You should have a basic understanding of what data warehousing is all about and then get started with the tool.

I would rate it an eight out of 10. Tableau has always been at the top of my list. Because of the technical hold that I have on the tool, I always prefer Tableau. It would always be on top as compared to any other tool.

When we work with CXOs to create dashboards we use Tableau. C-level employees like a CXO, a CEO, a VP, prefer to work with Tableau. It's easier and better for them.

For Tableau, the most valuable feature is the user experience and the quality of the end product.

One thing I would want to change for Tableau is to have a lower-cost model. It's pretty high for enterprise deployment.

In the next release, I would like to have the capability to call machine learning models within Python while I'm building a dashboard. The value calculation should be a machine learning model, which is running somewhere else, on say, Amazon. These tools give good outputs, like calculated fields and all. But today the outputs are not straightforward. In simple terms, I need machine learning on the fly. That is not there.

I have been using the solution for four or five years.

I would say the solution is very stable. We have not had any issues in using the product at all.

The solution does have scalability issues. When the data size increases, the product slows down and doesn't work right. In addition, it's very expensive to scale.

The only other solution we use and have explored is Power BI from Microsoft.

The solution deployment was pretty simple and straightforward.

We deployed the solution with our in-house team.

It's an enterprise solution, and we have all licenses. Tableau has multiple licenses; there is a reader, a developer, and an administrator.

If there are 50 or 100 users wanting to use Tableau, it's pretty expensive. The license is very expensive. We have 20 to 30 users in our company.

Because the solution is a drag and drop tool and what unique features we need or what we want to build, we cannot build using the tool. So we use JavaScript for that. We write our own code and build our own solutions.

My advice would be that all solutions are good, but it depends on your use case. If you are building something for C-level employees, use Tableau or another solution.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily use Tableau for reporting and visualization. Visualizations are important to us.

My role is primarily concerned with financial planning and financial reporting. 

It is very easy to create dashboards, charts, and graphs.

The Hyper Extract functionality is not as strong as that provided by Microsoft SQL.

Tableau is not as strong as Oracle OBIEE in some regards.

We have been using Tableau for six years, since 2014.

Tableau is quite stable.

The scalability of Tableau is very good and I don't have an issue with it.

I have not dealt with technical support personally. We have a specific person that communicates with them.

We also use Microsoft BI and Oracle OBIEE for reporting. I think that Tableau's features are much better than those of OBIEE and although Microsoft BI has better performance, Tableau is still the one that I like the best.

Tableau is much more expensive than Microsoft BI.

The initial setup is not complex. This is one that I can set up on my own, unlike a solution such as EnterprsieOne, which I cannot.

The professional version of Tableau is quite expensive. This is in comparison to some other products, such as Microsoft BI, which is only $110 per year.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I'm collecting some information and some reports from SAP and sending them to users as a graphical report. That's basically how I use the product.

The new pre-built application of Tableau is amazing.

The initial setup is simple.

It's a very stable, reliable solution.

You can scale the solution.

The dashboard has a lot of great options. 

I'd like it to work without the workflow or pushing options from the build, every time you need to do a refresh. We need a workflow for pushing the data to the cloud or to the server when you are using the pre-built application, the new application.

In the cloud sometimes the performance is a little bit slow.

I've been using the solution for two and a half years.

The stability has been good. It's reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

I have found the solution to be scalable.

At my organization, we have about ten to 15 regular users. 

We use it pretty extensively - at least once a week.

I'm not sure if we actually have plans to increase usage at this time. 

So far, I haven't needed any help from them. It's a good application in and of itself. I haven't needed technical support.

I used a little bit of Power BI. I know Tableau better, so I moved to Tableau Arabic.

The initial implementation process was straightforward. We did it without any problems.

Since the solution is on the cloud, you don't need a lot of staff for maintenance tasks.

You do not need an integrator or consultant to assist you in the implementation process. We were able to do it ourselves. 

We have a standard license that we renew yearly.

I'm an end-user.

I'm using the latest version of the solution.

I'd recommend Tableau to others. It offers good performance and the dashboard options are solid. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

SAP BW , TABLEAU Server an TABLEAU desktop, the Info from SAP were downloaded using SAP Data services and ABAPin a very large Steel Makin company in Latin America

Better an accuracy info every morning for decision takers regarding sales production and Customers Financial situation 

They were considered the gold standard for dashboard development. However, many people also have SAP.

The initial setup is very easy.

It's very easy to use and users don't need any IT support to access it as the information is right there. 

There were a lot of dashboards everywhere in the organization, however, when the company wanted to get the operational databases they were not connected.

The solution needs to improve its integration capabilities.

The performance and security could be better.

Many people saw Tableau as a silver bullet and it isn't. It's good for small things, however, not for an institutional way of doing things.

I'd like to see better integration with SAP.

I'd like an integrated ETL or some sort of data preparation capabilities. 

We've used the solution since 2013.

The solution is stable.

In the past, you couldn't do a full query. You could do the right query or the left query but not the full query. They fixed that n 2016. 

Also, there was another problem in that their selling approach was very aggressive and they were selling to sales directors. However, the problem is that after that you need the Tableau server. You need the deployment of the Tableau server and you have your dashboard. You needed IT buy-in. In order that them to be able to be seen in all the organizations, or even outside your organization, you need to get the Tableau server. With that in mind, companies must have IT people or training in the Tableau server, and then the dashboard is just developed in the desktop so you can upload them to the server. With all of that comes a lot of issues around security, modelization, and performance theses issues were not approached or considered in any by the users 

Scalable in the sense of a very good performance in te Tableau Server , nevertheless the info must be prepared or downloaded in a very well defined DataWarehouse

We had a lot of trouble with Tableau at the beginning. There were issues that nobody had dealt with in the past.

There was an issue that was open for about two months. They couldn't reach a resolution. We started the Tableau server in an English version server, however, it was decided to install the Spanish version instead. We defined success criteria for our developments, our systems. In the analysis and the scope of work, we decided that every Tableau dashboard or whatever was going to have an acceptable loading time of six to a maximum of eight seconds. The problem was that it took 30 to 60 seconds. Technicians from Tableau, from Brazil, from the USA, came and looked at it. In the end, it was the Spanish version that was causing performance issues, and therefore we had to install the English version again.

They had the Portuguese, French, or Spanish versions behind in terms of updating all their software. That was the problem. There was a bug in the Spanish version that in the  English version didn't exist.

Positive

I'm also familiar with Power BI, SAP, and QlikView as well as Snowflake. 

The initial setup is easy. You can install it on your computer and you can start to do a lot of dashboards. They have a gateway for many databases and you can get to the information in a very easy way. 

The thing is if you don't provide it with a very good ETL design you have the problem that all the fields are going to be dashboards. That's pretty common. Many organizations have a kind of operational database. With specialized databases. It's updated daily. The information is validated and confirmed and authorized. Whatever you do with Tableau is your problem. They install Tableau in that new server and the users go to that information. 

They make a copy of the transactional databases. They put it there and the users start to work. It's very easy.

In terms of deployment, for the desktop, you can have a visualization of information and you can get copies of the data on your personal computer. That can happen in minutes. It takes minutes or maybe half an hour to get going.

The problem is that you have to have some training. The training is going to take one week or so. In another week or two weeks, although you are not an expert yet, you start to understand Tableau. You don't have to be technical. If you understand Excel well, you will find Tableau pretty straightforward. 

You only need one or maybe two people to deploy the solution. You need a technician mostly for security.

The vendor team were sales especialist, not consultants 

We evaluated in 2013 QLICKVIEW . 

We're consultants. 

We're using the most recent version of the product. What we do is download the on-premises for testing in order to see the new capabilities.

It's a very mature tool with a lot of enhancements in the last two or three years. Our advice is that, if you are going to use it as an end-user, it's a very beautiful tool. If you are going to use it in an institutional way, you have to take good care of your ETLs and you have to design a very good data warehouse. That's what they don't do. That's what many, many, many organizations don't do. I don't know if that's the case with Snowflake or Microsoft Power BI.

You must take care of your warehouse information if you are going to have a very good design, granularity, and time framing after three months to one year of information.

The dashboards and the ETLs must do more work than Tableau. If not, you're going to crash. One of the problems that we had was due to the fact that Tableau said that you could reach the SAP information and that was not true. You need a third-party developer. That's an additional cost and additional training. However, with a solution like QlikView, they have a very beautiful integration with SAP.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

Valuable features include the various “Show Me” graph options; the ability to do forecasting (which is an area that Tableau needs to continue growing its modeling capabilities); and the immediate responsiveness to adding dimensions/measures and their effect on the visualization.

We have used Tableau to develop institutional dashboards for the university. We’ve used it to illustrate trends in cash balances, research grant expenditure trends, and student metrics and performance.

I’d like to see the forecasting capabilities expanded from an algorithm standpoint to offer different options for multi-variate forecasting. I think they can improve the ability to integrate with web pages. I’d like to see a more secure option for data regarding HIPAA regulations.

We’ve been using the Tableau solution for over three years. We started out with about 30 users and have grown to over 350 interactors and 50 authors.

A strong guide to help determine the scaling up options does not exist; it is still new to third-party support consultants which performance options are the best. I do like the fact that AWS has a one-click solution, but it needs more of a config wizard to better outline what storage/memory impacts choices will produce.

We have experienced less-than-preferable service with the technical support. For a while, it felt like they were experimenting for answers, even with complete log and infrastructure details. Their response time to issues is not acceptable for customers who are paying for core licenses, and they acknowledge that.

Initial setup was straightforward; the upgrade path is also straightforward.

We implemented from within our team. We did engage with a consultant about two years later to see how we were doing and discuss the next steps with server admin training. The results were acceptable.

Pricing continues to be a sore spot. Desktop licensing discounts in bulk do not exist, which is challenging for a non-profit. Server core licensing is also prohibitive from an expansion standpoint.

We only went with Tableau based on the feature set and the user base reviews.

There is a lot of competition brewing with other visualization providers that may be at better cost points. Definitely go in and deep dive/experience the other solutions. Though Tableau has a great reputation for ease of use, there definitely is a learning curve to optimize it, and other solutions like Microsoft Power BI and Qlik are making progress.

It's similar to what we do with Power BI. It is used for dashboarding as well as a few analyses.

When compared to Power BI, Tableau has more readily available resources. In any kind of material, learning material, or if I find a new chart and decide I want to do it, Tableau is more easily available than Power BI.

It's a little more complicated than Power BI.

More visualization options, but not the same as in Power BI, where there are simply more options. I see very few options here. Many of these must be customized and custom-built, which is a lengthy process.

I would like to see more options in visualization customization.

People are migrating to Microsoft BI due to the speed, which is quite slow to load, and the lack of visualization options. There are a few default options in Power BI that Tableau does not have.

I would like to see the added visualizations and possibly an easier way to process data, which are useful now that we all have Power BI, there is a whole power query interface that directly links to Microsoft BI, whereas with Tableau, I would have to go through an entirely different process for it.

I have been using Tableau for one year.

We use the latest version.

It can be deployed both on the cloud and on-premises.

Tableau is very stable, but it takes too long to load.

Scalability has been fine. So far, I believe it has served our purpose.

We have more than a hundred users in our organization.

It is being extensively used, but it is getting to be lesser now.

We have also used Power BI.

We found Power BI to be more useful than Tableau.

Tableau was already set up when I arrived.

It is purely a visualization tool, as opposed to Power BI, which has connectivity to the entire Microsoft product suite, including your Excels and other tools, which Tableau does not.

I would rate Tableau, a five 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.