Tableau Prep vs. Tableau Public

If your data sets are coming in without much stewardship then Tableau Prep can help to clean the data before you start trying to create visualizations for your end users. You will save a lot of time this way - rather than seeing problems once you are creating dashboards. If you don't have large data sets or your data is relatively simple, then Tableau Prep may not be needed.

Incentivized

Tableau public is the best platform to build dashboards for your personal profile and share with recruiters. It's always good to keep ourselves updated on the latest features, create sample dashboards and save them to a personal profile. Tableau public is free and doesn't need any subscription. anyone can create an account and start building reports.

• Display the raw data coming in from the data warehouse
• Point out situations that might be erroneous
• Show the distribution of raw data figures

Incentivized

• Data visualization: lots of different options, including bar, scatter, pie, waterfall charts to explore relationships between variables, and to present findings/trends to different teams
• Integrates readily with limited, though different data sources: TXT, CSV, TDE, Access
• Exports reports for review of different dashboards: client-ready/team-ready, with a clean and tidy presentation in PDF format (or hardcopy)

Incentivized

• Use of Macros within Workflow (and more types of automation)
• Join Editor also giving a SQL Update Query
• More types of visuals

Incentivized

• Tableau Public (both Desktop and Server) like their "for a fee" counterparts offer very easy to learn and use tools to transform data into pictures and gain insights into your data. Most organizations report a reduction in development time of 10x vs. other similar tools, due to the intuitive user interface. That said, with Tableau Public, published workbooks are "disconnected" from the underlying data sources and require periodic updates when the data changes. Users are limited to 1 Gb of storage space per user ID and password as well.
• I would like to see better options for public sharing of visualizations and data from within the "for a fee" products as more and more organizations are moving in the direction of data sharing with partners and their communities.

Incentivized

It is a valuable tool for generating and cleaning files for multiple purposes.

Incentivized

It's free, right? I'll keep using the free version. So the real question to ask is this? Will I pay $999 for the Personal version or $1,999 for the Professional? Yikes! That is a big stretch. I'm not sure about that. The product comparison chart is at: http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/comparison

It works well and is user friendly for the basics but needs more options for bring in data (using SQL queries for example) and export format options.

Incentivized

Tableau public is a great training tool to understand the basics of Tableau before buying it. A great tool to extend Excel's visualization and to publish data for others. Not useful for anything you need secure. No ability to access databases. Static information only.

I have not really had to reach out for any kind of customer support for Tableau Prep, so I can't really say. However, the support that Tableau has given for their other products has been great, so I would assume it would be the same here. They are also constantly adding new features and providing software updates, and that is always a plus.

Incentivized

I have not yet required to contact support as the documentation and help i found online has always worked so far

Incentivized

I found it sufficient, and fast. I could easily "kick the tires" with Tableau on my data so I got up and running fast.

Live connections to cloud services (Google Sheets for example) and cloud hosted databases (cloud hosted SIS for example) for scheduled flows are not supported

Incentivized

Start at the end and work backward. Identify the business case / issue and questions the end users have, then identify the data needed, and where to get it.

Incentivized

Before Prep, we had to do all the data joining and connecting in a Tableau Workbook. Not only did this cause workbooks connected with live data to run frustratingly slowly, a new connection and set-up had to be established every time a new workbook as created, even if you were working with the same data. The extracts produced by Prep allow several workbooks to be working from the same data set-up without any additional work, saving time and stress.

Incentivized

Google Charts/Drive is sufficient for simpler data sets, but it does not integrate with other web platforms and the visualization does not look as professional. I'm not aware of any other competitors that offer the same package as Microsoft.

Incentivized

• Quicker data sets for online reports
• More efficient data cleaning Ad Hoc reports
• Costly if using data management to schedule data pull and cleaning (priced per viewer accounts not creator accounts)

Incentivized

• Tableau Public visualizations have helped drive traffic to our content and sites
• The lack of cost means it's easy to demonstrate our experience to attract paying clients

Incentivized