Tableau Reviews

The ability to create visualizations of data is the product’s most valuable feature to me because it provides a meaningful view of the data and the metrics used by our clients.

The ease with which users can visualize and share data has improved how we look at our metrics.

It’s a very basic thing, but being able to copy and paste data elements from the screen would be nice.

I have used it for nine months.

I have not really encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues. Our issues are not related to the function of the tool, but more to do with attitudes concerning looking at data and metrics.

It is well received when people see what it can do in transforming their data and metrics into meaningful displays that allow for greater insights.

• Geo charts
• Dashboards
• Data connections

Our decision-making process has been streamlined.

Real-time interactions need more attention. Predictive analytics capability should be increased.

I have been using it for 1.5 years.

I have not encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues.

I rate the level of customer service and technical support on the high side.

Initial setup was straightforward.

We implemented it. I prefer in house, as it is the best.

It’s about each and every individual and organization.

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.

Three years ago, Viber didn't have any visualization tool to present its massive data inside the company. One month after implementing Tableau, inside Viber we were able to understand much better the business, opportunities and technical problems.

• Drag and drop: It's easy for beginners to use Tableau as it's very intuitive and simple to create insights.
• Quick table calculations: There are some best-practice shortcuts for tables, which means Tableau can be implemented very quickly.
• Data Connectors: Tableau has many different connectors for different databases. It's very easy to connect to MySQL, SQL Server, Amazon EMR, Presto, Redshift, BigQuery, and so on. Just name it and they have the connector; the work they do is very impressive.

Data science: Tableau lacks machine learning algorithms that you can implement using R, SPSS Modeler, and Python. It has clustering and time-series forecasting abilities which are helpful, but adding machine learning capabilities like decision trees, CHAID analysis and K-means would make this product perfect! Tableau has a connector to R; you can use the ML algorithms there and visualize it back in the Tableau.

Previous versions suffered from instability but that has been fixed in later versions. The current version has no issues with stability as far as I can see.

Tableau is not scalable on the desktop version. On the server version, you can scale it by adding more machines and configuring Tableau to use all of them.

One of Tableau’s secrets is that they have one of the best tech support in the world of BI. The community of developers is great, with a lot of contributors; very nice and helpful – for beginners and professionals.

In the past, I used QlikView as the BI solution. It's also a great tool with many features and great support. The problem with QlikView is that it's expensive and it takes longer to implement inside organizations.

It's very simple and quick to implement Tableau in an organization; you can have helpful dashboards in a matter of hours.

Tableau pricing is low compared to other solutions that are in the market; for small-medium businesses, that would provide good cost-effectiveness. For big business, Tableau could be expensive as having a lot of Tableau server users (entering with a browser to reports) could be a bit expensive.

We compared Tableau to QlikView, Panorama Necto and TIBCO Spotfire. We evaluated them by:

• Price
• Ease of use
• Speed of implementation
• Use-case visualizations

Don't visualize more than 2M data points in a report. Use extracted data and not a direct connection to the database; it will run faster. Don't use too many sections in a report; 3-4 at most. Make most calculations during the ETL process and not in Tableau; every calculation that Tableau does will make the report go slower.

Various features are valuable. It is intuitive; Tableau have been investing and releasing regularly. A tech-savvy business person can run with Tableau if they have a decent DWH and engineer supporting it. Access rights can quickly get out of hand, but with Tableau's UI and a tech-savvy business person committed to using the product, they can take charge and not have to rely on the tech team.

It is helping to make Makerbot a data-driven company.

A simple mode for new/occasional users might be helpful. Occasional users will always have trouble coping with such a feature-rich product. Unless you are using it every day, and it is crucial for at least part of your job, the learning curve never flattens out. A simpler "mode" which removes many of the more complex features or just hides them in tool "ribbons" might present a less-daunting interface to aid adoption by the vast majority of users.

I have used it for four years (released ~5-10 years ago).

I have not encountered any deployment issues.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Customer service is good.

Technical support is good.

Domo: inflexible due to lack of expertise and confusing with blurred demarcation between DWH, ETL and BI layers.

Initial setup was straightforward.

I implemented it myself.

We achieved ROI in <1 year.

Don't buy licenses until there is actual demand - buy a couple of full desktops and a couple of cloud licenses and grow from there ONLY when you have tables/reports/dashboards for users.

We also evaluated Domo and QlikView.

Start ASAP with a tiny cohort of hungry users; let them drive it.

• Ease of use
• Efficiency
• Integration with sources
• Amazing way to view your data

Data visualization and analysis used to take much longer; we were able to shorten the delivery of the projects by 60%.

I would like to see improvement in licensing. It is expensive to provide licenses beyond the 10 we already have.

I have been using it for four years.

Our deployment issues are related to cost.

No, very stable product

Yes. licensing costs are an issue

Technical support is 9/10.

We didn’t have a data vis solution beyond Excel and MSRS before. I used Spotfire in my business school work.

Initial setup was straightforward. I created a data mart, plugged in Tableau and started creating dashboards.

A vendor team implemented it. Implementation was pretty straightforward – but our data was cleaned and well thought through. I would say, 80% of time should be spent on designing your data mart (if that’s the route you are taking) with clean data and valid data sources.

We haven’t calculated ROI, but we know that we shortened the delivery timeline by 60%.

Make sure you plan it into the 5 year plan - how many licenses you will need, etc.

When time came to select a tool for my work, I did thorough research. I downloaded trial versions of both products and selected Tableau based on my user experience and the ratings (Gartner quadrant).

Beware of licensing costs, but it shouldn’t deter anyone from using this product. Even if you just use Tableau desktop to provide static data vis’s, it’s worth it.

You can publish dashboards with Tableau Desktop and share them throughout the organization.

Mapping really is a very beautiful feature.

Now all managers can interact with the dashboards in real time. This will help them become aware of each KPI in the dashboards.

I would like to see them add new charts, especially gauges, which are unfortunately not currently available in Tableau.

I have been using it for more than two years.

I have not really encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues. It’s a great product.

Customer service and technical support are very good.

I also evaluated MS Power BI, but Tableau is more user-friendly, not as complicated and not buggy like MS Power BI.

Initial setup is straightforward. Just two or three clicks, and the product will be available. :)

Implementation was done in-house.

Really, it’s a great product, and very interesting. You will love the data you see when you use the product.

• Ease of creating visually appealing charts and dashboards
• Large user community

It is easier to communicate ideas to people in marketing who are more visual in their thinking.

It over-uses custom calculations to do simple format and other changes. This is time consuming, compared to the actual chart making and holds up the enjoyable process of data discovery.

I have been using it for 18 months.

Obviously, it is not very scalable with large data sets. Hence, it becomes slow and clunky when large data sets are introduced.

7 out of 10. They are helpful but SLAs can be better.

I rate the level of customer service and technical support 7/10.

Qliktech. We switched because the licensing strategy they used was not useful. It was a per dashboard license which means that if we develop several different dasbhoards the solution was becoming too expensive.

Set up is intuitive and instructions on using it are adequate.

An in-house team implemented it. I have no special advice.

At the moment, we have not worked out ROI; it is definitely more productive than using Excel.

Tableau is more GUI based and intuitive. I don't like to code and this does away with a lot of what its competitors force you to do.