Tableau Reviews

• It's easy to connect to, and supports, a variety of datasources
• It supports multiple languages well, which is very convenient for me. When I develop a dashboard in English or Japanese, it can display time differently based on the language you choose. For example, EN: 2010/01/01, JP: 2010年01月01日.
• Stunning graphs, easy to drag & drop dimensions into your dashboard.
• Compresses data well.

We use it to develop dashboards for our customers; they will use these to analyze their business using BI knowledge.

• Multiple choice for filter selection. This is a very big shortcoming.
• Dynamic parameters.
• Currently, it cannot aggregate further on a measure that has been aggregated already
• A button function for dashboards. Sometimes, we need a button to link to another dashboard.
• Display/hide an object based on a parameter as a real function, not using tricks. You can do it using tricks, but it looks so ugly.

I have used it for about two years.

As I mentioned above, sometimes we need to use tricks to develop dashboards, and it has stability issues.

I rate the level of customer service and technical support 8/10.

Initial setup was very easy; just "agree", "next" and "finish".

Our IT support team did it.

No complaints. Reasonable price for professional version.

• QlikView: not worth trying. Not good for support (Qlik Japan); ugly charts; limited functions. It’s one strength is that it's free.
• IBM Cognos: very scalable. You can do anything with your dashboard/report using HTML; good at all functions. However, it's only suitable for big companies, hard to maintain, and very expensive.
• Oracle PBCS/Essbase: good for medium-sized or big enterprises with big/multi-dimensional data; supports Excel. Difficult to set up, and browser-based PBCS is so bad, you may lose your work at any time because of its corrupt JavaScript.
• Tableau is good for small-sized companies; reasonable price. But you get what you pay for: limited functions. It's a data visualization tool, not a BI tool.

• Drag and drop options
• Custom image/icon upload for visualizations
• User-friendly interface
• Easy connection to multiple data sources

With Tableau, use of an external ETL tool is a must if it’s connected to a data warehouse. It doesn’t really provide the room for complex computing or data transformation.

I have used it for about a year.

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

Simple. Tableau installation is pretty simple.

Analyze the business need and end users first, and then go for implementing Tableau. Simple reporting can be done in IBM Cognos or various other tools available in the market. What Tableau can bring to the table: better visualizations, ease of use (in case the end users are business guys and not technical folks) and advanced analysis capabilities.

• Highly interactive and intuitive data discovery: helps people see and explore their data.
• Ease and breadth of connectivity to so many different data sources.
• The interface to make joins between tables is greatly appreciated.

Management is simply getting more insights from visual representations of their data, and we’re becoming a more data-driven decision-making organization.

I’d like more data integration across data sources.

I have used it for almost 2.5 years.

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

I didn’t need much technical support, and I find the on-demand online video library for training new and experienced users is a great asset.

I used IBM Cognos 8 with a previous employer, and I found that tool to be slow and clunky.

The initial setup was done by our company’s Tableau Server team, which I am not a part of.

The Tableau Desktop install was easy.

Tableau has an extensive network of Alliance Partners with expertise in its implementations, so you shouldn’t have any problem in getting adequate support for such a popular product.

• Live connection to databases
• Parameters and calculation fields
• Actions on dashboards

With Tableau, our company was able to overcome some shortcomings with Google Analytics data interaction. As we have many GA profiles, Tableau gives us an opportunity to integrate everything we need into several dashboards. Tableau is a good way to visualize complex Google Analytics data in a user-friendly way.

• Not very well-made dashboard designing
• Lack of formatting options
• Sometimes, not enough operating speed while working with huge amount of data
• In the next version, I would like to see more formatting options and an improvement in overall performance.

Choose Tableau if your aim is to provide yourself or your end users with an opportunity for simple and effective data analysis, with minimal education and maximum results.

• Easy and intuitive chart creation
• Easy conversion between different chart types and crosstabs
• Easy map-based charting
• Built in geo coordinates for cities, states, countries- Easy-to-create fields with formulas
• Ability to connect so many kinds of data sources

• Now, the business decisions are "data driven" based on Tableau
• There are standard interactive reports/dashboards.
• And there is a dedicated data analyst role.

• Tableau can handle only one joined/denormalized table, e.g. students, classrooms, teachers.
• Sometimes I need to analyze the joined/denormalized table from multiple perspectives in one single workbook.
• Create analysis both for students, teachers and classrooms
• To use simple drag-and-drop is not enough to show
  
  • Average student age per classrooms or teachers because some students have classes multiple times in the same classroom
  • Average grades per teacher
• Sometimes I would like to analyse both student-classroom and teacher-student or classroom-student relations out of the original joined/denormalized table.
• I think the Qlik Sense approach is better for this very specific case.

I have been using it for nine months.

Tableau 8.3 did not scale properly.
I had four cores, but Tableu 8.3 was single-threaded. Tableau froze once in a fortnight, and without saving either *.tde or *.twb, they lost their sync.

I used and liked the documentation and user forum very much, and found there either a solution, a workaround or at least an explanation to my problems.

Initial setup was easy.

• We bought official basic and advanced Tableau trainings.
• My local Tableau instances (on my desktop and AWS instances) were installed by me.
• The central Tableau server was installed by the BI and administrator teams.

For a large company, the ROI is really fast.

Always buying the latest Tableau Desktop Professional is too expensive for an individual analyst/developer.

My team evaluated 50 visual analysis tools in 2014. I also was one of the key developers of Cygron Datascope.

Tableau was selected because it is the common platform for both data analysts and regular users. Both groups can use it. Of course, analysts can utilize more advanced techniques, but even an average user can understand charts and do basic things after 60 minutes of training.

Go for it. It is an excellent product for the majority of analyses. However, for complex reports and decision support cases, custom application development might be needed.

• Easy interaction with data
• Variety of visualizations possible
• Integration with R and Alteryx

We do a lot of work for our clients helping them understand the impact of marketing campaigns on their business results. Tableau helps us tell stories with data.

It helps us shorten the interval between raw data and actionable insight. We used it to standardize basic tracking and optimization functions for our digital media campaigns. We’re also developing a broader analytics practice, diving into the impact of on-line and off-line media combined.

There is a pretty steep learning curve, the product would be better if it were somehow more intuitive to use.

I’ve been using Tableau for about three years.

We have a small number of licenses with one Tableau server; we haven’t had any deployment, stability or scalability issues yet.

Generally, technical support is very good; responsive with generally effective solutions.

We primarily used Excel prior to Tableau. We are aware of some of the others, but for us, it is not worth investing the time re-inventing our process.

Initial setup went well; straightforward to install and get started. Takes a while to master the basics.

Implemented in-house. It would be helpful to have someone with a year of Tableau experience on staff to speed ramp up.

ROI is difficult to estimate as a lot of our use case revolves around streamlining internal processes / analysis. We are now providing analytic solutions to clients where we price on our hours, plus pass through costs for seats on the Tableau Server and a monthly maintenance fee. As we scale this up, we expect to drive profitable revenue through our analytics products.

It makes sense to implement it in tandem with Alteryx. Use Alteryx to clean / prep data, and then visualize in Tableau. Tableau is not the place to try to clean / join data.

The ability to analyze data patterns in more visual dimensions (size, shape, color) than are realistically possible in Excel is the functionality most valuable to me.

Calculated fields are relatively simple and may leave a user wanting. Joining between multiple datasets also needs to be improved. (I heard this is an improvement that will be made with the version 10 release this summer.) Source data formatting requirements are a little particular, and reloading for new users can get repetitive.

I am a management consultant, and I have used this solution for multiple clients over the last two years.

I never had to use customer service.

Initial setup was extremely easy; when downloading the trial version or purchasing, just accept the defaults. There aren’t many ways you can screw this up.

I’d suggest taking the following steps:

1. Define what you want to get out of the tool. (People don’t always need these types of solutions, and this becomes evident once they actually get in there with the data they have.)
2. Make sure you have the existing data needed.
3. Download a trial version and play with the software and develop prototype dashboards and analysis
4. If you actually have a recurring need, then I’d look at purchasing Tableau desktop. If the need for use and analysis extends to many across the organization, Tableau Server could be your best option.

I also evaluated Qlik and Spotfire, but found Tableau to be more intuitive and visually appealing.

This product is the best visualization solution on the market. My rating is based on ease of use, visual appeal and additional functionality over Excel.

• 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.