Tableau Reviews

I have been using Tableau to visualize data sets. The three features that are most valuable to me are:

• Ease of use. Most of the configurations are accessed by drag and drop, so very little actual programming is required.
• Interactivity, especially the ability to use tool tips to identify exactly which points are plotting in an unusual or unexpected position. This is the first step in distinguishing outliers from important data features, which is an important part of data exploration.
• The ability to easily annotate and export finished plots for presentation purposes.

I have previously used Excel or R to perform exploratory data analysis. Tableau is easier and quicker, which means results can be obtained more quickly.

Some of the command choices have to be memorized and are not intuitive. It could be even easier to learn.

I have used it for about three months.

No issues with deployment, except I wish a version was available for Linux (Ubuntu).

I haven't needed technical support yet.

I previously used R for data exploratory analysis. I'm choosing Tableau because it is quicker, and exploratory data analysis by its nature requires a large variety and volume of output.

Initial setup was very simple; standard Windows installation.

Just me... No problems. Just note that Tableau workbooks are stored in their own file structure by default, not in the file where the data originated or where the exported charts are stored.

Tableau has a free trial, free versions for academic scholars/faculty, and a free public version. The paid versions are a little pricey, but likely worth it.

There is a public version you can implement for free. Its main restriction is the variety of data source connections that it supports. You can still work with the typical text or Excel files, but live database connections are not supported.

I think it's great at what it tries to do.

We use the solution to allow management the ability to create dashboards for our data center.

The solution is easy to use, flexible, our clients enjoy seeing the data on maps, and you do not need to be an expert in SQL to use it.

There could be improvements on the mobile application, it is lacking features. 

I have been using the solution for approximately one year.

I have found the solution to be stable.

The scalability is good, we have 100 users using the solution in my organization.

I am not satisfied at all with the support response, it takes a lot of time. Some tickets will take more than 10 days to have an answer, this is not helpful. There is some documentation that is very useful on their site. This is the worst support I have experienced, the support could definitely be faster.

We were using Qlik Sense before this solution.

The installation is straightforward. The time it took for the installation was approximately four hours. However, the configuration takes a lot longer but it is not a problem with this solution it is common for configurations to take a while.

We did the deployment ourselves. We have a team of two administrators doing the maintenance for the solution and a team of four for the development of the dashboard. 

There is a license required, we pay an annual license which is priced fair.

I recommend this solution to others. We are satisfied with the solution and are going to keep using it in the future.

I rate Tableau an eight out of ten.

Tableau is very good in the front-end visualization compared to Power BI.

The look and feel of Tableau are the best when compared with Power BI.

Power BI meets with my expectations but the wow factor is in Tableau.

An issue that is common to both Tableau and Power BI is with large data sets. When it comes to large datasets, the data should be extracted faster.

Tableau should offer the end-user a desktop version that is free where they can go in and practice. There are other solutions that offer it for free such as Huawei, and the desktop version of Power BI is also free.

People tend to know if they want to learn visualization. They don't have a proper tool in place, they don't know how to or where to go to learn. If you give them the tool to learn and let them explore when they want to go into production, people are able to purchase the license. A 14-day trial version would not be enough time.

If they want to be competitive in the market, the price must be improved.

They should allow more than a 14-day trial version. It should be a longer duration otherwise no one will want to learn it.

Tableau is $35, whereas Power BI is only $9.90. Tableau is not competitive and should reduce its price.

SQL is the most important. Writing SQL queries is very important and that's the first foundation I would recommend for any juniors to start.

If they're not very strong in SQL then they will not be able to write the functions for both Power BI and Tableau. SQL is the foundation for anything.

I would rate Tableau a seven out of ten.

There are many and various use cases. Some use it internally for inter-department analytics, sales analytics, campaign management, and sentiment analysis.

The most valuable feature is the richness of its visualization and from a self-service standpoint, the ease of use.

The interface is fine. The functionality in the UI front is good as well.

It integrates easily.

From a UI visualization standpoint, I think it's pretty robust.

The data processing in Tableau is pathetic compared to Qlik.

In Qlik, I can replace my ELD layer for an application. This can't be done in Tableau.

The initial processing of data in Tableau takes a lot of effort.

If there could be a feature that a particular visual can be exported or just the data behind the particular visual can be exported in one single click, just one button on a visual and it exports the relevant data out to Excel or a CSV output, that would be good.

I have been using Tableau since 2014, maybe even before that.

It's pretty stable.

It's decently scalable. I have been able to scale it pretty easily.

Technical support is good. On a scale of five, I would say four.

The initial setup is neither straightforward nor complex.

Pricing is not bad. It's competitive.

I'm a BI Architect.

My recommendation for this solution would depend on the use cases.

I would rate Tableau and eight out of ten.

We use Tableau for BI reporting.

The most valuable feature is the interface, which is user-friendly and intuitive. Even for somebody new, who has no idea of how a BI tool is supposed to function from a technical standpoint, it is very intuitive. You simply import the data and then use the drag-and-drop capabilities.

Data cleansing and data transformation functionality need to be improved. Tableau is not a full-stack BI tool, like Sisense. Including this type of functionality would add flavor to the tool.

The main point is that Tableau requires the data to be in a certain format for the end-user, in order for them to create charts. If it's not in a certain format, or in a certain structure, then the user will have to manipulate it.

The charts in Tableau are quite limited.

I have been using Tableau for a few years.

Tableau caters to a lot of databases and flat files, which means that you can connect to multiple data sources. In this regard, I would say that it is quite scalable.

We have between 40 and 50 users in the company.

We are quite satisfied with community support. It is always there if you need any help and I am pretty happy with it.

I have worked with other BI tools including Spotfire and Power BI. There are not as visually appealing as Tableau and I would stay that purely from the UI perspective, Tableau definitely has the upper hand.

Conversely, Power BI has some capabilities that are missing in Tableau. Examples of this are charts and graphs. If you want to create something that's customizable, it's a very difficult and tedious task in Tableau. This is unlike Power BI or Sisense. 

The initial setup is very easy. Once you download it, it is a typical setup with a series of screens where you just press the Next button. Anybody can install it in a few minutes.

I am currently researching Sisense to get an idea of what the pros and cons of the different BI tools are. Sisense is a more complete tool that includes data cleaning, data transformation, and ETL capabilities right in the tool.

Tableau, on the other hand, is used for visualizations, dashboards, and storytelling. Their data has been cleaned or preprocessed in an SQL database beforehand.

Tableau is a product that I recommend.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use this business intelligence tool to build dashboards to display some of the statistical and analytical information that our company gathers. We develop a precision medicine software platform that enables academic and community healthcare providers to implement and scale precision medicine programming. We capture clinical data, genomic and other molecular data, biomedical knowledge, and the relationships among them. We also provide integrated complex genomic and clinical data to clinicians with actionable insights. 

Previously, we built the dashboards manually but this practice proved to be inefficient and ineffective since it meant we spent a lot of time debugging. It's was hard to find developers capable of doing that kind of work at scale. Since the Tableau community user base is so big and a lot of people can use it; the widespread support is one of the biggest benefits. Besides that, it's a fantastic framework to build dashboards and innovative visualizations.

One of the most valuable features is that the solution allows users to build interactive dashboards. This allows the end user to modify the criteria or the filtering if need be.

As far as for my personal use as a QA Engineer, I really value how extensive their API document support has been.

Improvements can be made in template support. The workbook file structure is really hard to version control. If there was some sort of version control support offered particularly for workbooks, that would help big time.

Another note is that the interactions within the UI are not fast enough and in certain instances, there have been issues with the intuitiveness of the tool. Such as delays in configuring and achieving some specific effects. 

I have to say Tableau does have excellent and extensive online support.

The solution is stable. I've never had any problems.

My impressions of the scalability of this solution are that there are ways to make it as scalable as you want. There have been some issues with the amount of the data that we had to use on the platform. We ended up using the extracts. It works fine now. I would say it is scalable.

I haven't contacted their live support or emailed them. Their documentation is fairly extensive and we also had a training session conducted by one of their partner companies. It was the Tableau Accelerated Course and that helped a lot.

The initial setup was straightforward with respect to the deployment. 

Tableau provides a UI which can be used to build a clear graphical visualization that allows quick and easy data comprehension. This functionality really helps turn data into scalable insights. This makes things a lot easier for people who don't have coding experience and with dedicated people focused on managing the visualizations, not requiring them all to be developers or to have any coding experience is a real plus.

If I was to give this solution a rating from one-to-ten, ten is the best, I'd rate it a 9 because it does all that we require of it and more. I would recommend this solution to my colleagues from another company. It's a nice tool to work with.  

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.

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.