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Tableau Desktop

Tableau Desktop

Overview

What is Tableau Desktop?

Tableau Desktop is a data visualization product from Tableau. It connects to a variety of data sources for combining disparate data sources without coding. It provides tools for discovering patterns and insights, data calculations, forecasts, and statistical summaries and visual…

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Recent Reviews

Analytics with Tableau

7 out of 10
February 27, 2024
We use Tableau to generate daily and weekly reports for our business module to generate our key performance indicators. These insights we …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 30 features
  • Report sharing and collaboration (156)
    9.3
    93%
  • Drill-down analysis (158)
    9.2
    92%
  • Customizable dashboards (165)
    9.0
    90%
  • Formatting capabilities (161)
    8.9
    89%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Tableau Creator

$70.00

On Premise
Per User / Per Month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttp://www.tableau.com/products/desktop

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $70 per month
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Product Demos

Tableau Desktop Tutorial | Tableau Desktop Training | Online Tableau Desktop Training - Youtube

YouTube

- Tableau Demo: Quick Tutorial to Getting Started with Tableau Desktop

YouTube

Tableau Desktop Naming Conventions Part 1

YouTube

Tableau Desktop Introduction Part 1

YouTube
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

8.5
Avg 8.2

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

8.9
Avg 8.1

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

8.8
Avg 8.4

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

8.6
Avg 8.1

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

8.7
Avg 8.6

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

8.4
Avg 7.9

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another

8.6
Avg 7.9
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Product Details

What is Tableau Desktop?

Tableau Desktop supports data-driven decisions by helping users to answer questions more quickly, solve harder problems more easily, and uncover new insights.

Tableau Desktop connects directly to hundreds of data sources, both on-premises or in the cloud, with the goal of making it easier to start analyses. Interactive dashboards, drag and drop functionality, and natural language queries help users of all skill levels quickly discover actionable insights, all from its visual interface. Users can ask deeper questions by quickly building calculations, adding trend lines and seeing statistical summaries, or clustering data to see relationships.


Tableau Desktop Video

In this video, the TrustRadius team will be discussing the top business intelligence tools available: Qlik Sense, Tableau, ThoughtSpot, and IBM Cognos Analytics.

Tableau Desktop Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Tableau Desktop is a data visualization product from Tableau. It connects to a variety of data sources for combining disparate data sources without coding. It provides tools for discovering patterns and insights, data calculations, forecasts, and statistical summaries and visual storytelling.

Tableau Desktop starts at $70.

IBM Cognos Analytics, SAP Lumira Discovery, and Qlik Sense are common alternatives for Tableau Desktop.

Reviewers rate Report sharing and collaboration highest, with a score of 9.3.

The most common users of Tableau Desktop are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(2271)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(151-175 of 193)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I used Tableau Desktop when I was searching for our business intelligence and dashboarding tool. I heard a lot about the product, and then I tried it. I'm still using it, and we use it in our database administrator team, for business intelligence attached to our data warehouse (internal use, sysadmin, log in, reporting status of machines, server, database usage, and so on...). We use it for its great dashboarding and for the power of the data load editor.
  • Data loading is really powerful.
  • A lot of data sources are available. For us the connection to SQL Server Analysis Services is really cool.
  • Powerful customization of graphics and dashboards.
  • Analysis functions, like forecast and so on.
  • It's not so easy to understand.
  • They should have a more intuitive data load editor.
Tableau Desktop is well suited for business intelligence, dashboarding and reporting, geographical analysis on business data, and forecasting and analysis of big data. It is also well suited for connecting to a lot of data sources. We created some worksheets for database monitoring; to log the status of servers; to monitor replica sets and so on, but we would like to use it to create dashboards for business users.
Matthew McLaughlin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Tableau Desktop is used across our entire organization for measuring supplier shipment and quality performance, and manufacturing performance. Being able to schedule extracts and automate dashboard refreshes is a huge timesaver!
  • Very easy to set up, install, configure and use.
  • User community is extremely active - posting questions on their forums usually results in an answer in under an hour!
  • Tableau has hours of free training videos on demand and many more free live training sessions.
  • Cost is a little high for some businesses.
  • ODBC is not really supported. I understand why since there could be thousands of drivers 'in the wild'.
It is most suited for automating data extracts and refreshes of dashboards from disparate data sources. Tableau Desktop makes it easy to take my ERP system, data from SQL server and local MS Excel files and use them seamlessly. It is not well suited for traditional 'tabular' reports. Instead of looking at what has happened, look to see what will happen. Tableau can do that.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have a new implementation of a data warehouse and Tableau will be the reporting mechanism.
  • The graphs are very easy to create!
  • Easy to design workbooks and graphs.
  • You can quickly see trends and anomalies in your data!
  • Add functionality to put a dashboard in a dashboard. Currently not available.
  • Add settings to help in the joining of tables. (IDs only, etc).
  • More work on extracts! They can still be slow and cumbersome.
If you have a large database or subject area it is best to pare it down. Large volumes of data do not lend to fast performance in Tableau.
mahesh ray | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau Desktop is being used across the organization by sales, marketing, customer care, finance and product management teams. We have built dashboards in Tableau for the end users having source systems like Salesforce, Oracle, SQL Server DBs, Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics etc.
  • We have used several data visualization tools, but like Tableau for its unique features like.
  • Ease of building, i.e the effort spent is minimal in comparisons to other tools as there is no bulky middle/symantec layer in between the front end and the source systems.
  • You can use all types of databases, text files, CRM applications, advance analytics tools and Hadoop like big data technologies.
  • The inbuilt map features available and the ease of building make it again unique.
  • Tableau works more like a dashboard tool and lags the reporting Tool's features.
  • Creating Financial Reports with complex formulae with horizontal or vertical table structure is not so comfortable like with SAP, Oracle and MicroStrategy tools.
  • Tableau's conditional formatting and limited 16 column table, disappoints the users who are comfortable with Excel.
  • Tableau has weak semantic modeling and Data modeling.
Tableau Desktop is well suited in case you are:

  • Fetching data from multiple different types of sources
  • The built time is less
  • Your end users are techno-functional and they are comfortable with building their ad-hoc reports rather than requesting the developers to do so
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Tableau Desktop as data viewer and modeler for some of our reports: the ones that need interactive data visualization and are critical to address our products' performance on the market on a daily basis, including multiple sources of information and different types of variables. The users are top brand managers and we manage the software in the projects department so no deep level of development languages are required, only basic data and reports skills.
  • Is simple to manage, and the learning curve is easy.
  • Deployment made easy and included.
  • Interaction with the data is the most powerful feature you can give to an user, and Tableu exceeds on this.
  • Multiple devices ready.
  • No need of advanced reporting skills.
  • Printed reports is not as good as other tools, but who needs this nowadays?
Well suited for mid to high management profiles on companies, not so good for mass level deployment as license is per user and is only worth if the person have skills to understand and manipulate multiple variables and data.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Tableau Desktop as a part of our regular data visualization and exploration. Our dataset ranged from gene expression data, clinical trials, to a proteomic dataset. With the flexibility and robust process from Tableau, we use Tableau mainly as the preliminary task for having a quick glance of the data. While most computation is usually done in R, Tableau also used to make a "pretty graph" for paper and publication.
  • Data visualization
  • Publishing data visualization
  • Interactive data visualization
  • Robust/Fact calculation
  • Although Tableu supports R, this support is still limited. It would be great if there was some interface where Tableau could connect to R directly.
  • Exporting/printing multiple view as file/output.
Tableau is well suited for 'corporate kind' of data, and less well suited for 'science kind' of data.
Ojoswi Basu | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
PointClickCare is an IT software product company and leading provider of cloud-based EHR platforms for the long-term health care industry. We use Tableau Desktop as part of the business intelligence and analytics suite of the EHR product. Tableau is used to massage the data and produce dynamic, user-interactive reports for PointClickCare.
  • Powerful visualization skills
  • Easy to implement Tableau Calculations to achieve complex BI level analysis and reporting
  • Integration with R
  • Fast report render speeds across multiple data sources, agnostic of the data source technology
  • Copy DS with Calculated Fields
  • Easier Edit of Custom Colors
  • Ability to Format Parameters and Filters individually
Tableau Desktop gets most of the data analytics and reporting tasks done 100 fold times better than Excel and many fold times better than their closest competition in business intelligence and analytics.
Sandeep Reddy Tippana | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau Desktop is being used for end user reporting mainly as a self service reporting model. It's used currently for general and category reporting including all aspects of business:
1. Reducing IT overhead
2. Increase flexibility in data analysis
3. Promote self service
  • Biggest strength of Tableau desktop is its abundant availability of visualization charts. This makes it easy for users/analysts for decision making rather than going through Raw data.
  • Ease of Use: This helps in a homogenous user interface.
  • Support: This tool supports all kinds of users from basic to advanced. No coding required thus reducing the IT overhead.
  • Data Integration: Tableau works well in merging third party data sources with the existing. This gives users flexibility in analyzing multi sources of data in a single place.
  • Column limit: There is a limit in displaying the number of columns to no more than 16 in the layout.
  • Initial Data Preparation: Users need to have some technical knowledge in order to prepare/massage the data for the analysis.
  • HANA Connectivity: Though Tableau connects to HANA well, the integration provided is not flexible at an enterprise level.
  • OLAP Connectivity: Integration with SAP BW is poor.
Well Suited for the department or business for the below reasons:
- Self Service - Reducing the dependency on IT thus increasing the flexibility to slice and dice the reports
- Ease of Use - No technical knowledge needed to start with. But, also supports SQL for advanced users
- Contemporary Visualizations - Rich and modern visualizations make users feel comfortable in data analysis
- Integration with third party data sources - epecially where the planning data is maintained in one system and actuals are maintained at another source
March 16, 2016

Tableau Geek & Proud!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau Desktop and Server are being used through my entire organization to create long-term, sustainable reporting to answer business questions and support analysis. Additionally, Tableau helps to support operations because data from multiple sources can be combined and presented in one place. Our dashboards provide the business with institutional knowledge which in turn allows stakeholders to make data-driven business decisions. Bridgepoint Education has team members all across the United States. With the use of Tableau Server every member of the organization has the ability to access these data assets and visualizations.
  • Tableau Desktop helps end users create data visualizations quickly and with little knowledge of the product. The simple user interface and the ability to “drag and drop” measures and dimensions isn’t found in any other analytics tool.
  • Multiple data types and sources can be connected to Tableau. From organizations using Excel to house data or large institutions using Vertica and Hadoop, anyone can use Tableau for analysis.
  • The ability to create dashboards and create a smooth end user experience is exceptional. Tableau allows an individual with no prior knowledge of the tool to navigate the dashboard and gain data insights.
  • Tableau should add navigational buttons. There should be an easier way to jump to multiple tabs within a dashboard.
  • Dynamic parameters. There should be a way to tie a parameter to a column and if new variables are placed in the column, the parameter should update as well.
  • The background shading (or coloring) of quick filters and parameters should be individualized. Currently if one parameter’s color is changed, all of the parameters on the dashboard change as well.
Many organizations prefer information in crosstabs or spreadsheets. This is not something that Tableau does particularly well nor should it. If an organization is looking to view raw data, in columns and rows, I would purchase a different product. Resources to be successful should include: the Tableau forums and the online tutorials. I do not recommend organizations paying for Tableau classes or paying consultants. The only way to successfully learn the software is to work on projects and scenarios that are relevant to your business. Have contests to see who can create the best visualizations and dashboard. Then have the winner walk the team through the process.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Tableau is being used to retrieve data from multidimensional relational databases, spreadsheets and from cloud databases and then to present the data in visual format to the users in Sales, Marketing, Operations and Finance.
  • Tableau is being used for analyzing sales metrics, capturing web data from customers and used for marketing analytics, reporting financial analysis data to senior management to visualize the performance of the company within a few minutes, instead of tedious report generating processes from other third party applications.
  • We started using the latest version 8.0 and many of the features that we would be using were included in the latest release 8.0. Did not come across any areas that the product does less well, but we are somewhat new to Tableau and still trying out many features.
Tableau is one of the best analytics tools on the market; it's easy to implement, and work with and has many capabilities that analytics professionals like to use. The licensing costs are much lower than for a few other vendors out there, and affordable even for small businesses.
Jody Gitchel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau is utilized both as a proof-of-concept for business intelligence, and as a requirement for interfacing with one of our third party vendors.
  • Time-to-value. Allows you to quickly and easily gain insight into your data visually.
  • Ease of use. For novice users and experts alike to utilize. The interface is fairly straight forward and non-complicated.
  • Many data sources are available, and the ability to bring together disparate data sources is a plus.
  • Value. The price does not constitute the value.
  • Although it is marketed as a business intelligence tool, its function is niche as in it is a visual data discovery / self-serve dashboard tool.
  • Accessing data details. Users want to see and export the data behind the visualizations which is not a strong function of this product.
The market for Tableau is aimed at the self-serve visual data analysis professional. This is best suited for companies without well established data practices (data warehousing, etc.) in which the business intelligence analysts need to quickly bring together data from multiple sources in a visual manner.
Jake Lanier | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use Tableau within our finance and marketing departments. Tableau helps organize and simplify the analysis of a great deal of restaurant data. We're also able to visualize data that can be difficult to compile within Excel. It also allows us to setup automation of data pulling, so it's as simple as going in and refreshing the data which will refresh an entire dashboard.
  • Tableau creates visuals based on the data provided. It automatically chooses which visual works best and its often right.
  • Tableau allows for an easy pivot-like approach to analyzing data.
  • Tableau provides unique analysis, such as geo-mapping based on address data, which allows for a different perspective when looking at restaurant data.
  • Tableau can be difficult in the way it automatically designates certain fields. It may not recognize a certain field as a date field even though it is.
  • Tableau is still missing some of the Excel functions that are helpful or it just may not be intuitive in how to incorporate them if you're familiar with Excel.
  • While the Tableau map is a great visual option, it can be buggy and still needs some work.
Tableau is great when you have a lot of data and you aren't sure where to start. However, if your data is not well organized, it will be hard to incorporate it into Tableau.
David Barrymore | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau Desktop is being used in support of our SMB clients to enable us to analyze their data for our support services.
  • Tableau Desktop has pretty colors but is not very well constructed for beginning users of the product.
  • Support is nowhere near where it should be for allowing a first time user to learn how to use the product.
  • Pricing was presented to me by Tableau sales with the understanding that Tableau provided excellent training. Not true.
  • Tableau Desktop needs to provide a comprehensive training program for first time users
  • Training that is currently provided does not allow for any user interaction so it becomes just a lecture without allowing the user to develop muscle memory with the product.
  • Tableau Desktop does not provide any phone support which means that once a user buys the product, he is on his own.
Tableau Desktop is not appropriate for someone who is just getting started...waste of money.
AJ Sanchez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau is being used to support data-driven decision making across the whole organization. Our use of Tableau is associated with providing support to various departments in answering specific questions they pose, examples include: demand forecasting, assessment of marketing campaigns, sales performance across various points of sale, demographic characterization of clients, and other performance indicators.
  • Ease to connect to various types of data sources, hosted locally and in the cloud: almost "plug-and-play"
  • Support to quickly create compelling dashboards that can be used by various analysts across the organization: I meet with the stakeholders who pose the questions and we brainstorm together so they lead me through the construction of the right set of assets. At any step, I am able to show them the current stage of the visualizations being built, until we reach a point at which what is left to be done is the finessing of the final assets.
  • Ease to blend heterogeneous data sources: this "point-and- click" feature has been useful when we need to combine heterogeneous data sources in the creation of dashboards
  • Easy sharing of visualization assets among peers: we create versions of the visualization assets under construction using extracts, which makes the sharing of the resources particularly easy since stakeholders focus on analyzing the data and not on issues related to the underlying data infrastructure
  • Since I am a senior software engineer, I wish Tableau had a more robust underlying programming language with clearly defined semantics. To be fair, the ability to connect Tableau with R helps in this direction.
  • I believe the quality and quantity of the official documentation maintained by the company could improve. Fortunately, there is a thriving community on which I have relied heavily. However, given the current level of maturity of Tableau, this should naturally prompt the company to document well-known solution patterns for recurrent visualization questions/problems.
  • I would appreciate the ability to easily access data inherent to some "out-of-the-box" analyses available in Tableau. For instance, it would be nice to programmatically have access to parameters that are calculated in connection with linear trends such as the slope, the independent term, etc.
Tableau is best suited for scenarios where the data has been already prepared for visualization--in other words, where Tableau is used for actually building the visualization assets, and not for pre-processing the data. On the other hand, Tableau does not seem to shine in situations where complex data pre-processing is needed--think, for instance, of complex joins of large tables.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I was charged to test a variety of Bi solution during my work to see if I could make easy and intuitive reports based on log data.

The UX in Tableau's software is made to facilitate the usage. In less than 20 minutes I was able to make my first dashboard with log data. When using other BI solutions this wasn't the case.

I could use different databases from many extensions in this solution. And the best part was the mapping widget included in the software. It enabled me to use single point and linear symbols which is great for geomarketing reporting (maybe it could be improved by adding some basic geo processesing tools such as geocoding and routing).

The dashboard could be shared via a full web interface which was appropriate for my usage.
  • Mapping widget
  • Charts and pies are well designed
  • Mutual dependence between components
  • Ease of use
  • Variety of data that can be integrated (xls, dbf, Oracle, SQL, cube .... and many other DB sources )
  • Clear and intuitive dashboard
  • In mapping extension - could add some basic geoprocessing tools
  • Adding charts and pies directely of the map
  • Using shapefile could be useful too
The cost of Tableau Desktop is not very high, so for medium or small business it could respond to needs.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it to generate the visual report from our data warehouse analysis, and create the dashboard for tracking KPI at various departmental levels, like Mortgage underwriting, servicing, arrears, etc.
  • Connecting to multiple data sources seamlessly
  • Easy to create visualization report / portal
  • Fast generation of reports
  • Easy to learn
  • The dashboard is more desktop based, and needs more enhancement on web-based
  • Sometime changing the format is very challenging
  • Need more geographical / map-based templates
Very strong for end users desktop based data visualization, fast and simple to use. Less appropriate for enterprise wide reporting
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau Desktop is a versatile analytic industry wide tool used for various visualization and analytic project across clients' servers by my organization.
  • Good analytic Platform
  • Versatile tool for visualization
  • Very easy to create diverse visualization
  • Flexible in terms of data source option from Excel to Microsoft cube
  • No predictive analytical capabilities
  • Statistically challenged and provides limited statistics functionality as compared to Microsoft Excel
  • No version control, governance and other commonly desired enterprise features
Tableau Desktop is well suited for simple to medium analytics. It does good job with almost no IT resources and support. It is best when you need to sort, filter and choose data.
February 11, 2016

Tableau - Tab-yes!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau Desktop is specifically used by our data analytics team and any other analysts in the company. It is used specifically for business intelligence and to provide visual and easy to understand and see dashboards for our e-team. Before Tableau Desktop came along, everything was created and generated in Excel, so this has been a big step up in data visualization.
  • Tableau Desktop is a very intuitive platform. Its smart tools help you clean and organize your data before you go and start dragging and dropping your data to build your visual dashboard.
  • Tableau Desktop is very user friendly, it has a nice user interface and is easier to learn/pick-up than most business intelligence tools out there.
  • Tableau Desktop has an open API so it's easy to connect to other systems, such as an HRIS system, so you can do real time reporting and information gets updated immediately.
  • Great analytic tool.
  • Pricing.
  • Predictive analytic tools.
  • Specific tools or suggestions for different business units. For example, I do people analytics, maybe a list of recommended analytics for my area (HR)?
Tableau Desktop is useful for all companies. Make sure you have clean data and the right people using the tool or it'll be wasteful. If you don't have good data or a team spearheading business intelligence, I would say hold off until your company is ready.
December 23, 2015

Tableau overview analysis

Reginald Joseph | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Currently I am using Tableau Desktop to address our dashboard and visualization needs.
  • Sorting.
  • Filtering.
  • Choose the data.
  • Integration with third party tools.
  • With Web Services Layer.
Larry Keller | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Tableau 9.0 Desktop - Comments by Larry Keller VIA Insights, LLC.

VIA is a Tableau Training and Consulting firm with eight (8) years of experience with Tableau Desktop. Having published the first Tableau Training Manual in the world which is now current with version 9.0. This version has greater appeal for the user who is more of an analytical person. With the addition of Level of Detail Expressions and In-line calculations, Tableau continues to add more user classifications than in the early days. At one time the by line was " Tableau - a product for the under-served business user". While that tag line is still true, the fact is that Tableau's addition of connectors to R and other sources along with 9.0 additions, more sophisticated users are signing on as customers

One slightly nagging question is what will become of Tableau Desktop users who find versions 8.2 or 8.0 sufficient for the the data and the analysis required? Having authored and published manuals in both hard copy and digital formats, these manuals are now in use in 55 countries. There will be a version 10 one day - but will we see the product line bifurcated so there are two tiers and both have access to support?
  • Tableau is as popular today as it was 5 years ago for use by the average and under-served business user. Richer analytic capabilities now open doors for the audience that requires "R". Smartly, Tableau is not wondering into the space that a SAS dominates.
  • TCO - total cost of ownership - Our firm created a 150 question survey for a client that wanted to contract with one of the top three data visualization and analysis vendors for an OEM contract. Written with total objectivity the three vendors were: Spotfire, Qlik-View and Tableau. All the questions were weighted - The outcome and contract went to Tableau - among a number of reasons for the award was the lowest cost of ownership which is often not considered.
  • Future Direction of the product - This is a challenge for this writer and contributor. Tableau does need a process that enables it to deal with data blending in a more complete and simple manner with emphasis on simplicity. I would eliminate the waste of space and thus clutter with repetitive instruction sets - example - there are five ways to create a new sheet. We also hear from clients and they ask for easier ways to connect to SAP
  • Support - Tableau support has now gone the extra mile. We now get telephone calls directly from support on the same day that a case is submitted. Further, case escalation is rapid if the first person cannot provide the fix.
  • There is no need to to have small features like "create new page" enabled in five ways. It results in clutter for the new user who seeks to grasp fundamental features in one or two places max.
  • Time series data - The options for rendering time series date are confusing for the new user. Once the time dimension is placed on the columns, the options for how time is rendered are confusing for the new user. Time options are shown in classic time options (Year - Qtr - Mth) but the user can see time in a more continuous for (green) with the options below a poorly marked line. Tableau should render the continuous options in green to provide a visual clue and some text to tell the user
  • Story Points is a nice feature - In this world of PowerPoint addiction, it is not a knock-off and I am sure it was not intended to be such. It does help the user who is faced with presenting content in a process to the inevitable Friday, 9AM senior staff meeting.
  • Presentation of the calculations backing up quick table calculations
  • An abbreviation list for states in the US and countries when using geo coded data
When first released Tableau stated that the software was purpose-built for the under-served business user. From a worldwide perspective that remains true today. Yes forecasting has been added but one must have a formal education in statistics to use this feature....not your average business user but helpful to a select audience.

Tableau Server has emerged as a true enterprise enabler - that brings with excellent collaboration functionality and a question. What role does governance play when sensitive information is published? How are workbooks vetted? How are data sources systemically reviewed? How are charge backs managed when thousands of Interactors are in play? Much more to hear on this.
Tim McClelland | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau is used by my organization to uncover data trends from a variety of scientific literature databases. The powerful abilities to map data, chart trends, and the recent addition of word clouds, is invaluable to quickly determining what is being done in the world. Being able to quickly and easily filter data allows users to delve deeper into specific areas of interest, yet not lose the bigger picture. The trends and analysis Tableau produces has been instrumental in determining how multi-million dollar budgets are being directed and allocated. Another great feature is the ability to produce Tableau workbooks in Desktop, and then send that file to users with users with the free version, Tableau Reader. Users can utilize Reader to view the file, and apply the filters that the creator included. This has been extremely useful for allowing clients to manipulate and explore the data on their own, without the cost and learning time of using the full version of the software.
  • Ease of use. It is extremely easy to drag and drop fields and create a quick dashboard in minutes. After loading data, you can quickly adjust fields to figure out which formats offer the best insights into your data.
  • Powerful mapping and charting abilities. There are a wide variety of options available for displaying data, from geographic maps, heat maps, word bubbles, line graphs, bar charts, histogram, bubble chart, scatter plots, area chart, pie charts, etc.
  • Customization. With the simple click of a button, you can adjust the colors, sizes, text, and formats of your worksheets. This is especially useful when comparing information on multiple levels of detail, from geographic region, to company type, etc. Its also a great way to customize your reports for you customer, and utilize their specific color scheme.
  • There are a few things Tableau could do better, I would like to see even more mapping options, including web or spider maps. I have clients who would be very interested in that view of data, however tableau does not currently offer an easy way to represent the data accordingly.
  • It is very easy to add data into Tableau, and for the most part easy to manipulate data within the program, however some fields must be in the proper format to be read correctly. For example, date fields must be in the excel data format (ex:36892 is the value for 1/1/2001), and it will not just read a 4 digit year as a year. Its not the hardest thing to deal with, but can be frustrating needing to return to the original data source to modify date values.
Tableau is very easy to use, and the sales reps are extremely helpful. Tableau is great for dealing with numeric data, and really anything that can be charted. It can be harder to use for qualitative data, but can still be done depending on your perspective and what you are looking for from the data.
Rob Austin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Easy for a business user with little or no data knowledge to access and understand their data. Hence you can connect straight to your accounts or operational data and start gaining insights to aid good decision making.
  • A great combination of entry level BI all the way to expert. The user interface is so friendly and intuitive that you can see results almost immediately. I was able to pick it up and make new discoveries about my business within a couple of hours from first opening the software.
  • The software is very affordable and also scalable so you don't have to make a huge investment up front you simply add licenses as you need them. The setup is instant too.
  • The main downside for me is that it is currently not available for Mac so I have to run it on a VM.
I would recommend everyone to try it for free from Tableau's website.
James Martin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Tableau within the Integrated Analytics portions of our organization, to provide a variety of reporting solutions to external clients and internal users. It has helped to address the need for more efficient and automated reporting, from consistent data sources. Tableau's various filtering and data connectivity capabilities allow us to create standardized reports that can cover a wide portfolio of products, without requiring the time and resources to manually enter data, and build each report separately. This allows us to spend more of our time and resources on the deep analysis and insights that our clients need to optimize their marketing.
  • Data Connectivity. Tableau Desktop supports an incredibly vast array of data sources, and does so very efficiently. Everything from Excel Data Sheets, to advanced databases to your online Google Analytics account.
  • Data Visualization. Tableau's built in data visualizations follow and even suggest best practices for all kinds of data types and cuts. It also has a superb dashboard capability which becomes more versatile with each release.
  • Data Filtering. With the simple use of consistent data points and parameters, Tableau allows for a report to be filtered based on any data dimension. This allows for efficient and easy report automation and duplication.
  • Dashboard Formatting - while the dashboard capability is robust and easy to use, it can be difficult at times to do some of the finer detailing, like formatting, coloring and highlighting. Once mastered, it is again very versatile, but is not as intuitive and there is a learning curve.
  • An Undo Button! Tableau current does not include an 'undo' button which can be extremely irritating if you make a mistake that is difficult to reverse.
  • Table Joining - the interface/wizard used when attempting to join tables and connect different data sources is not as intuitive as it could be, which makes it difficult to perform some of the incredible data connectivity that is available.
Tableau is a fantastic tool, but it is best suited to the following circumstances, where it's potential can be maximized:

  • An organization or team with a skilled data architect, that has a strong collection of clean and well built databases and data sources
  • A client who is open and excited to utilize Tableau Server to view reports electronically, as this allows for the analyst to utilize the tools fantastic drill down, filtering, interactive dashboard capabilities.
  • Somewhere where high volumes of reports that require large amounts of data - small scale reporting may not justify the investment
  • Organizations focused on analytic and data visualization best practices
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I am starting a proof of concept with Tableau to use as a business intelligence tool in a retail company. I found [it to be a] fantastic and very flexible tool.
  • Tableau is very flexible and generates analysis with graphics quite easily.
  • It is very easy to install and use.
  • Its cost is not absurd as others in its segment tools.
  • We are doing a proof of concept for the procurement planning and inventory processes of a medium-sized retail company. In this case, the tool cost and flexibility make a difference.
The key points in the evaluation of the tools were flexibility, ease of use and cost.
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