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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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Learn from top reviewers

Tableau user review

Rating: 10 out of 10
March 13, 2025
Vetted ReviewVerified User
I use Tableau Desktop every day and daily basis. I built business and analytics dashboards and analysis with the tool. It visualises my analysis and allows users to help thems...
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Jannika Rasi
Analyst - Product Management
Senior Business Analyst
Schibsted Marketplaces
Tableau Desktop5 years of experience

A Powerful Tool for Visualization and predictive analysis

Rating: 8 out of 10
March 7, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
I use Tableau to analyze the asset data of our clients to manage the inventory lifecycles and monitor hardware and software usage. Tableau helps in generating reports with liv...
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Verified user
Analyst
Tableau Desktop2 years of experience

The perfect tool for presenting data.

Rating: 8 out of 10
February 24, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We use Tableau Desktop as an application that presents statistics. The first advantage is that you can group different sources of statistics in one place. The second is that t...
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Karol Kozłowski
Project Manager - Product Management
Project manager
WOLTERS KLUWER POLSKA S A
Tableau Desktop7 years of experience

Easy to Use Data Visualization Software

Rating: 9 out of 10
February 24, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We use Tableau Desktop to build dashboards for several of our internal and syndicated data sources. It is used by members of out sales, marketing, and finance teams to give th...
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Liz Brandon
Analyst - Information Technology
Sr Manager Performance Analytics
Suntory Global Spirits
Tableau Desktop10 years of experience

Tableau Desktop is a huge timesaver and way easier to learn from scratch than most

Rating: 9 out of 10
February 24, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We use Tableau Desktop to analyze engagement and ROI for clients, create interactive and aesthetically pleasing custom reports as requested by clients, and to examine various ...
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Amanda McCombs
Analyst - Other
Director Client Operations & Analysis
Usherpa
Tableau Desktop5 years of experience
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Pricing

View all pricing

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.

8.4
Avg 8.2

Ad-hoc Reporting

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

8.3
Avg 8.0

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

8.1
Avg 8.3

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
Avg 7.9

Access Control and Security

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

8.7
Avg 8.5

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

8
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

9
Avg 7.8
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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 Competitors

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 Java API highest, with a score of 9.9.

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

View all alternatives
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Reviews and Ratings

(2290)

Reviews

(1-5 of 81)

Tableau is a good entry-level visualization tool, not great for multi-user, customizable solutions or big datasets

Rating: 6 out of 10
Incentivized
September 09, 2016
AN
Alex Naumov
Sr. Manager, Pricing Strategy
The Home Depot (Retail, 10,001+ employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
Tableau Desktop
3 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Tableau is used for a lot of analytics and dashboard by pricing, merchants (buyers), finance and other functions. The mapping capabilities are heavily used.
Pros
  • Mapping
  • Simple dashboards
  • Visualizations
Cons
  • Not in-memory, very slow when published
  • Not enough customization available to create dashboards and analytical views; filters types and their positioning are limited
  • Not enough formulas
  • Lack of filtering schemes where one set of filters or individual's filters can apply to any views across multiple tabs or only to a specific view within a tab; lack of customization with filters
Likelihood to Recommend
It's a good entry-level visualization tool. It is well suited for smaller organizations, and well suited for smaller amounts of data - similar or slightly more than what Excel can handle. It's not well suited for larger companies with hundreds of users of the same reports/dashboards/analytics. It's very slow when published online as it queries the database for all requests. It's hard to build a suite of analytical views for multiple users.

Tableau Desktop For Large Data Driven Company

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
July 02, 2019
Verified User
Employee in Information Technology
Automotive Company, 10,001+ employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
Tableau Desktop
1 year of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Tableau is being used by our business analysts as well as members in our IT department. We are using it to generate reports and do cross functional analysis.
Pros
  • Visualization of Data
  • SQL Capabilities
  • Report Generation
Cons
  • Connection to External Data -Snowflake, MS Access, etc
  • Slow Connection when running Reports
Likelihood to Recommend
For companies of any size, the tool is very scaleable and compatible with nearly any data visualization use case.

A large amount of data analysis can be performed without stress

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized
March 28, 2022
NS
Nobuyuki Suzuki
CAA (Chief Applications Architect)
F-TECH INC. (Automotive, 5001-10,000 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
Tableau Desktop
2 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We have used Tableau Desktop to analyze development efforts. Until now, the work man-hours of each person in charge were collected in detail, but it took a lot of man-hours to find improvement points. We used Tableau Desktop in the scope of development man-hours management.
Pros
  • The user interface is easy to understand, so it doesn't take long to learn how to operate it.
  • Even if you handle a huge amount of data, it will not slow down.
  • It is easy to extract data from various points of view.
Cons
  • Creating a diagonal reference line requires a lot of steps.
  • In many cases, if you're used to working with Excel, you'll find that simple things can't be done easily with Tableau Desktop.
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau Desktop can handle a large amount of data lightly, but when dealing with a small amount of data, it may be easier to obtain results using Excel. If you experience stress using Excel, I recommend trying Tableau Desktop.

Data visualization made easy!

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
March 29, 2016
Verified User
Engineer in Research & Development
Higher Education Company, 501-1000 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
Tableau Desktop
1 year of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
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.
Pros
  • Data visualization
  • Publishing data visualization
  • Interactive data visualization
  • Robust/Fact calculation
Cons
  • 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.
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau is well suited for 'corporate kind' of data, and less well suited for 'science kind' of data.

Tableau Desktop: Making an Impact in the World of Drug Safety

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
June 21, 2017
Verified User
Professional in Research & Development
Biotechnology Company, 201-500 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
Tableau Desktop
1 year of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Tableau is being used within the Commercial side of business and within the R&D side within the Drug Safety department of which I am a part of and which will be the focus of my review. It is being used primarily in support of operational analytics and workflow management within the Drug Safety organization, as well as for risk management within the Pharmacovigilance and Risk Management organization. Many if not all drug safety databases capture data well, and output data decently...but only for pre-defined outputs (native to the drug safety database out-of-the-box functionality), however getting data out of the database in flexible, easy to understand graphs and tabulations is much more difficult. That is where Tableau shines...first of all it allows the user to easily access data stored in an Oracle-based database and many other data formats, and it makes this easy connection without needing any interim transformation, catalog or universe to be created. This is a huge time savings, allowing the user to focus on getting information out of the data instead of just getting to the data. So the big business problem it solves is that it allows easy access to data...and allows the user to quickly turn the data into actionable information. To give our users easy access we create dashboards with visualization and filtering capabilities, and manage the users in Tableau Server in user groups with pre-defined access rights, so it is very easy to add new users and enable them to derive information from data.
Pros
  • Allows the user to easily access data stored in an Oracle-based database and many other data formats, and it makes this easy connection without needing any interim transformation, catalog or universe to be created. This is a definite strength as other analytical applications require data to be stored in or accessed via an interim format.
  • The drag and drop nature of the user interface and the fact that it begins to understand your data is a great feature allowing very rapid creation of analytical visualizations and tabulations.
  • The ability to allow the desktop user to quickly and easily push out a series of visualization dashboards to Tableau Server is a great part of its functionality, and allows the visualizations to be more readily used across and organization.
Cons
  • The biggest area needing improvement is in the area of placement of objects in a dashboard during its design. The placement is sometimes quirky and does not necessarily translate to an optimal placement on the dashboard which has been pushed to Tableau server.
  • It would be nice to have the capability to point at a pre-defined style template which would help in creating consistency in terms of default placement of objects and overall look & feel.
  • Within the pharmaceutical industry, the ability to seamlessly read in a SAS dataset would be very useful, as currently this involves at least one interim step.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is particularly well suited for accessing reasonable denormalized Oracle database data, however it does equally well when accessing data in spreadsheets or other standard formats. The key question to ask would be how normalized is the data which the user wants to access, and if highly normalized whether some tables will need to be denormalized via new tables or views. It is also well suited organizations where there are a few super-users who can gather analytical and visualization requirements and then make these available to users of the information in the form of published dashboards. This works very well and keeps the total cost of ownership at a very reasonable level.
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