GlobiFlow for Podio vs. Tableau Server

GlobiFlow should be considered advanced software for a limited number of employees. If users of GlobiFlow don't work together, they could easily create processes that cancel out other work. GlobiFlow works very well when one person understands the program well and uses it to help coworkers think through processes. The most helpful way we've used it is in automating our hiring process somewhat. Instead of receiving hundreds of emails with job applications, we set up an app in Podio and used Globiflow to notify supervisors when applications were received through our website. As a candidate moves through the hiring process, GlobiFlow processes provide triggers to help us remember what needs to happen at each step along the way by automatically generating tasks, emails, and items in other apps.

Incentivized

Tableau Server is well suited for a data warehouse build and handling big data. Tableau data aggregation, transformation, clustering capability is powerful and easy to implement. The choice of charts and visualisation tools is outstanding. Customisation and dynamic data visualisation capability is superb. The user interface takes some time getting used to.

Incentivized

• GlobiFlow allows one event to prompt a task or notification automatically, which greatly improves workflows and internal communications.
• GlobiFlow makes it possible to automate some interactions we have with people outside the agency, for example, responding immediately to an application when it is received, creating a Sharefile folder to collect submitted documents all in one secure location, etc.
• GlobiFlow suggests new ways of setting up workflows that makes us think through and improve our processes.
• GlobiFlow helps us keep track of events in new and improved ways. For example, when a leave request is approved GlobiFlow automates the process for putting that date on an agency-wide calendar.
• GlobiFlow helps us use Podio and Sharefile better so we communicate with employees in other offices and out in the field more effectively.

Incentivized

• It's good at doing what it is designed for: accessing visualizations without having to download and open a workbook in Tableau Desktop. The latter would be a very inefficient method for sharing our metrics, so I am glad that we have Tableau Server to serve this function.
• Publishing to Tableau Server is quick and easy. Just a few clicks from Tableau Desktop and a few seconds of publishing through an average speed network, and the new visualizations are live!
• Seeing details on who has viewed the visualization and when. This is something particularly useful to me for trying to drive adoption of some new pages, so I really appreciate the granularity provided in Tableau Server

Incentivized

• There is a steep learning curve for your typical PC user. I've used GlobiFlow for over a year but there are many things I still don't understand about it. The help pages are somewhat helpful, but there is a whole vocabulary associated with GlobiFlow that is a bit mysterious at the front end.
• Any limitations in Podio are repeated in GlobiFlow.
• Setting up processes in GlobiFlow is somewhat complicated, which makes it a little tedious when employees change and responsibilities shift, as they often do in a growing organization. Naming your processes well is important so you can go back and find places where changes need to be made.

Incentivized

• Tableau Server has had some issue handling some of our larger data sets. Our extract refreshes fail intermittently with no obvious error that we can fix
• Tableau Server has been hard to work with before they launched their new Rest API, which is also a little tricky to work with

Incentivized

It simply is used all the time by more and more people. Migrating to something else would involve lots of work and lots of training. The renewal fee being fair, it simply isn't worth migrating to a different tool for now.

Incentivized

I think the use case we described earlier about a non-technical user that was copying/pasting data into Word during emergencies is our best reason. This person had little technical ability, and the Tableau mobile solution powered by Tableau server completely resolved the issues. She has since become one of the most vocal proponents of Tableau.

Incentivized

Our instance of Tableau Server was hosted on premises (I believe all instances are) so if there were any outages it was normally due to scheduled maintenance on our end. If the Tableau server ever went down, a quick restart solved most issues

While there are definitely cases where a user can do things that will make a particular worksheet or dashboard run slowly, overall the performance is extremely fast. The user experience of exploratory analysis particularly shines, there's nothing out there with the polish of Tableau.

I think the folks that work in support are generally pretty good at what they do (when you get them on a WebEx). But the process of reporting issues to them and waiting for a response (via email only) is a hassle. I never understood why you can't just call them up and discuss the issues with them. It would take a handful of email exchanges before they would agree to a WebEx session. That was frustrating.

In our case, they hired a private third party consultant to train our dept. It was extremely boring and felt like it dragged on. Everything I learned was self taught so I was not really paying attention. But I do think that you can easily spend a week on the tool and go over every nook and cranny. We only had the consultant in for a day or two.

The Tableau website is full of videos that you can follow at your own pace. As a very small company with a Tableau install, access to these free resources was incredibly useful to allowing me to implement Tableau to its potential in a reasonable and proportionate manner.

Implementation was over the phone with the vendor, and did not go particularly well. Again, think this was our fault as our integration and IT oversight was poor, and we made errors. Would they have happened had a vendor been onsite? Not sure, probably not, but we probably wouldn't have paid for that either

We acquired GlobiFlow at the same time that we GlobiFlow Podio and ShareFile. GlobiFlow helped us use both Podio and ShareFile more efficiently. Podio has an internal automation function that performs some of the same tasks as GlobiFlow but is far more limited, which is why we decided to go ahead and learn how to implement GlobiFlow.

Incentivized

Today, if my shop is largely Microsoft-centric, I would be hard pressed to choose a product other than Power BI. Tableau was the visualization leader for years, but Microsoft has caught up with them in many areas, and surpassed them in some. Its ability to source, transform, and model data is superior to Tableau. Tableau still has the lead in some visualizations, but Power BI's rise is evidenced by its ever-increasing position in the leadership section of the Gartner Magic Quadrant.

Incentivized

• GlobiFlow saves time once you get it up and running.
• GlobiFlow improves internal communication and cross-agency collaboration.
• GlobiFlow helps us communicate with external clients and applicants in a more efficient and professional manner.

Incentivized

• Tableau does take dedicated FTE to create and analyze the data. It's too complex (and powerful) a product not to have someone dedicated to developing with it.
• There are some significant setup for the server product.
• Once sever setup is complete, it's largely "fire and forget" until an update is necessary. The server update process is cumbersome.

Incentivized