Tableau Reviews

The most valuable features are:

• Ease of setup
• Ability to create visualizations
• Level of interaction.

The users required no training after visualizations have been presented to them.

There are some areas where finding answers required asking specific individuals and searching through many emails. Tableau has allowed us to combine and visualize data from many entry points and provide users with a single source of consistent and reliable information.

While noted that the product is specifically designed for visualization, it would be the perfect tool if it had more ETL features.

My company has been researching a BI tool for the past year. We came across Tableau and have been using the public version for approximately six months.

There have not been any areas of instability, thus far. The identified areas were a result of a lack of knowledge.

Based on the analysis currently being done, the public version is sufficiently meeting our needs.

Technical support has been awesome. We met a partner based in Trinidad and they have been providing us with assistance as we need it.

This is our first visualization solution being used. Attempts were made on another platform, but setup and use of tool were a huge challenge for the team.

The initial setup was very straightforward. The team was able to follow the videos posted on the Tableau website and required no technical assistance from the Tableau team.

I am quite pleased that Tableau has now revised their pricing and licensing. The initial model was quite expensive but the current model allows you to scale up as you need to and it is far more attractive. The ability to license on a per user per month basis is now very affordable.

The team looked at Pentaho, Microsoft Power BI, and IBM Cognos. The members of the team who were exposed to aspects of the evaluation were far more receptive to Tableau than the others.

It is very important to do an evaluation of your users who will be interacting with the tool. Their technical abilities will determine if a cumbersome tool is suitable for them. Secondly, if you do not have the technical expertise to administer a product, then it may not be the solution for you. Some of the other tools require a high dependence on the vendor for administrative purposes.

The most attractive feature for our users is the ease of visualizing data in a meaningful manner. The ease of experimenting with different visualizations is also very useful.

The ability to load and work with large volumes of data without requiring very high level of system resources is also valuable for us.

Key users of Tableau are from the Internal Audit team. Introduction of the tool has allowed the team to move away from data sampling to working with the entire data population in most cases. More importantly, the ability to present the analysis results in a visual manner to stakeholders, which has enhanced the ease of communicating the impact of the audit findings.

Improvement is required in the way filters operate when applied on large data sets. Having the ability to select and deselect filters without having to retrace the original path would make it easier to demonstrate the results.

More than two years.

The maximum volume of data we have connected is approximately six million records each having about 130 data fields. We did not encounter stability issues when connecting to a pre-downloaded copy of the data. However, on trying to access the live data (a flat file system), the operation was very slow.

No.

With reference to the issue stated above, we noted that Tableau did not attempt to provide any resolution for the issue. We felt that they just left it with the local vendor to sort out the issue (which was never resolved).

We have used (and continue to use) ACL for data analytics. However for simple analytics, and in particular, data visualization, we prefer to use Tableau. We have also seen that users are able to understand Tableau faster than ACL.

The initial setup was for the desktop version of the tool connecting to Excel files and stand-alone databases at the back end. We did not have any issues with this.

However, on attempting to move to the server version, we faced issues with data connectivity for our core ERP which were not resolved. Attempting to connect to the Oracle HRMS module went without a hitch, and within a few seconds, we were able to perform live data analysis without any degradation in performance. Connecting to our core ERP (Kerridge Autoline, now known as CDK Autoline) failed due to ODBC driver version issues (we presume).

The Desktop and Professional version pricing is straightforward. Cannot comment on the Server licensing aspect.

Qlik Sense and ACL.

Thoroughly test your data connectivity requirements to make sure everything works well.

From an end user perspective, it is a very easy tool to use.

Data connectivity, data transformation, and web editing, because being able to connect to a variety of data sources and bring them together, and store that dataset in an environment where others can also access it, consistently, drives a lot of self-service within the organization without a lot of fear of dispersion of truth. The Web Editing capabilities allow us to grant end users enough capabilities for them to do self-serve discovery without the added cost of needing to get everyone desktop licenses.

Still working to get properly implemented at my current organization. However, it has helped my previous locations be able to get a pre-built visualization that anchors them on the truth, with access to datasets for them to explore and continuously push the envelope on new inquiries. The more questions we ask, and get answers to, the more informed we are to make better decisions, which leads to revenue growth and cost reductions.

At the organizational level, increasing the servers' capabilities to support us as an enterprise tool: data management, semantic layer, and integration with other collaboration tools. At the analyst level: Better connection with Python data frames.

I have used it since 2011.

No.

Yes. In earlier versions, it was tough to scale without a lot of expense. With the addition of Web Editing, you can control your costs better and keep your usage to the things they do the most frequently. Still experiencing challenges in the VM world, but sounds like they are exploring options to address this.

If you are fortunate enough to have a dedicated technical guy, it is great. If you have to work through the common help desk, it is tough. In most cases, analysts have problems they need to solve right away; having them spend hours pouring through KB files to only find something similar, but not exact, and then waiting 5-10 days to get resolution from a help desk agent generates a lot of frustration on the team.

Several companies ago, we were using Cognos and switched to Tableau due to ease of deployment, total cost of ownership. At my last three places, Tableau was already in-house.

Not applicable.

Really work across the organization to understand the user personas of your audience. Who is a builder, who is an audience member? Being able to set up the server licensing right (core vs user seats) is the fastest way to manage your costs. Paying for users you never setup or buying expensive desktop licenses for users who can solve their users with web editing on the server are the two biggest expenses.

Not applicable.

First and foremost, outline the value proposition of BI. Getting a plan on whether you are going to go with a centralized, decentralized, or blended approach will help aid you in how you can maximize the tool. On its own merits, it is a great tool. Most failures come from a mismatch in the organizational needs and the implementation approach.

Tableau Desktop - The product is easy to use, and does not require IT skills. I can create dashboards and connect to databases very easy and quickly.

We experienced an 80% reduction in the amount of time it takes to prepare reports and dashboards using Tableau. Before that, we had to use Excel spreadsheets and that consumed a lot of time to prepare data monthly. In addition, there was a problem related to the amount of lines in Excel that are not enough for our database.

I’d like to see a better ETL preparation engine.

I have been using Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server for four years.

The product is very stable and ease to deploy. We can deploy an enterprise solution in two days.

Technical support is very helpful and provide quick answers. In addition, their technical support is in many languages, which is very helpful when you face some issues.

I previously used QlikView and MicroStrategy, and they are not as friendly as Tableau for the end user. If you do not have IT skills, you probably will be stuck with a basic level of visualization.

For simple and more complex setups, it is easy to set up the product without too many issues.

If you want to start with Tableau Desktop, you can choose an in-house implementation, but if you are going to set up an enterprise solution, my advice is to use a vendor team to support your implementation. It will be faster.

The pricing and licensing model is very simple. There is one price for Tableau Desktop and two types of enterprise prices. You always know which price you are going to pay.

If you have a lot of databases to bring together, you might experience some ETL issues. But in the next release, version 10, the product will have a cross-join database, and that will help a lot to bring in many datasources.

There are many features which I can speak about, but its overall ease with which you can analyze your data within a couple of clicks is an outstanding feature. Also, the stunning visualization with lots of statistical options, makes it a valuable product.

When we started with Tableau, it was basically used for converting existing Excel reports. But later on, after exploring the features and with latest releases, it had a greater impact on the way we interact with the data. We were able to connect the data from different source of data together. We were able to relate the defects, quality and cost aspects of the products of our company from different regions in a much more efficient way. The visualizations gave a better picture of the current state of affairs and we got an idea of what needs to be improved in the line of business. Now, Tableau has become an integral part of our organization for any analytical solution.

Tableau comes out with one major release every year and minor releases frequently, which is very good. Also, most of the changes are done based on the ideas posted on the community, which means it listens to the user base to come up with the changes, which is phenomenal.

As far as the changes I would like to see, they could improve performance with respect to big data connections and cube data sources. Many users in my organization feel that Tableau is great with RDBMS, but with Hadoop or cube data sources, the performance is not so great.

I have been using Tableau for nearly four years for the majority of my reporting and analytical solutions.

We did not face any issues with deployment, stability or scalability. The deployment was simple and we have not faced any issues until now.

I would rate customer service and technical support as 9/10, excellent. The turnaround time for any issue is very good.

The initial setup was straightforward. The only thing you have to check is for hardware compatibility. The rest is very simple, with just a click of a button.

As implementation is simple, we preferred an in-house team. But you will get assistance from a vendor team if required.

ROI depends on how effectively you utilize the tool and explore the data.

Pricing of the tool would be expensive for any small organization. I would suggest sitting with the vendor's relationship manager to discuss your strategy and the pricing model you’re looking for.

We explored other tools such as QlikView and Pentaho, but Tableau stood out in terms of its ease of use, great visualizations and simplicity. We already had an ETL solution in place, so Tableau complemented it well for our use cases.

Tableau is more than a reporting tool; it has the analytical capabilities which need to be explored efficiently to get the best out of the tool. If you just want to replicate an Excel report, it would not help much in terms of ROI.

Tableau is a very good analytical reporting solution. It is improving its features with every release.

The drag-and-drop interface and its flexibility are the product's most valuable features.

It requires only a one-time effort to design worksheets and dashboards. New data can be appended or a whole new set in the same data structure can be loaded to existing working files without much effort to obtain the same results.

I would like to see more Excel-like functionalities, perhaps, e.g. the countifs function. It is quite a hassle to code this using query language.

I have used Tableau for around one year.

Hassle-free deployment for desktop version.

Initial versions crashed when large data sets were loaded. Subsequent releases were more stable.

Technical support is excellent. Tableau consultants were eager to help.

We chose Tableau for its simplicity and ease of use.

For the desktop version, initial setup was straightforward.

The straightforward installation can be performed in-house.

A non-complicated licensing scheme exists for the desktop version. Buy, activate and use. Licensing was easily manageable with a license key that could be activated or deactivated on a system as required.

Try it out to see if it suits your organisational needs. To make the product work as desired, know how it works and implement workaround solutions if that is not readily available.

Self-service: Its ease of use means Tableau can be operated by business users. It is aligned with the mission “Help people see and understand the data”.

Tableau has extended the native capabilities of various type of data sources (database, big data). There are also significant features at the map and features level of detailed expressions.

With the Device Manager in Tableau 10, you can design, customize, and publish a single dashboard with optimized views for tablets and phones.

Other features include clustering segmentation data and a custom territories map.

I have been using it since 2012 (four years).

We encountered issues with Tableau 8. However, since Tableau 9, there has been significant improvement.

I rate technical support 8/10.

We evaluated others, but Tableau is the business intelligence platform which allows everyone to use the product in a way that supports how they work with data.

Tableau is easy to be deployed from the beginning, from the desktop up to Tableau Server, which you can implement at the organization level.

We have implemented Tableau in organizations of up to thousands of users.

We are a Tableau partner. We provide system integration services to our clients. We begin implementation by focusing on a specific subject area where it is the most important and it will have a significant impact for executive management.

Research the variety of licensing schemes and choose the best one for your organization.

Try it first by downloading the trial license. You will love it and experience how easy it is to use the product.

Self-service.

Talking about self-service, now we can provide information enterprise-wide. Before Tableau, about 15% of the organization had access to information; now with Tableau, about 80% of the organization have access to our data warehouse, and other information sources such as Excel and SQL Server databases.

Well at this point, we are in the process of implementing the in-memory feature for our costing process. We need to have online costing information. We think if we have more parameters or tools to customize this feature, we can improve the performance in the processes that generate and load the information.

I have used it for two years.

We can tell you that Tableau 8 had issues mainly with SQL Server databases, but with Tableau 9 and above, the issues with SQL Server have been solved and now we have a very stable solution.

Our local vendor support (in México) was so bad!!! However, we have encountered in the online support a very good source of information that helps to solve our issues. In fact, we have submitted a lot of cases to the Tableau support team, with very fast responses.

We evaluated other solutions, and selected Tableau mainly because of the licensing costs.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward; we only had one issue with the Active Directory configuration.

Our in-house training program consisted of two teams for one week: one team for Tableau administration, and one team for Tableau super users.

I think that it is good advice to consider a well-organised implementation program.

I don’t have authorization to provide numbers for our organization, but I can say that Tableau is a product with great price performance.

Tableau is a user-friendly product, but I think that is very important to consider a well-organised training program based on the user roles (administrators, super users, information consumers, etc.).