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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 (157)
    9.3
    93%
  • Drill-down analysis (159)
    9.0
    90%
  • Formatting capabilities (162)
    9.0
    90%
  • Customizable dashboards (166)
    8.8
    88%

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 8.1

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.

8.6
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.

8.6
Avg 8.0

Access Control and Security

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

8.8
Avg 8.5

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

8.8
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 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 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

(2259)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(126-150 of 194)
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June 30, 2016

Tableau: If you don't use it... I don't want to work for you ...

David Fickes | TrustRadius Reviewer
David Fickes
Decision Sciences - Modeling, Simulation & Analysis
San Francisco State University (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau is a wonderful tool for exploratory data manipulation. It has a learning curve but once you understand its view of the world, many things fall into place. Lot's of flexibility -- you'll never want to go back to Excel alone. The storytelling feature could use a bit more polish in its choice of defaults. You can end up with a great final result but it takes a while to get there.
June 29, 2016

Tableau-University Use

Verified User
Former Employee in Information Technology
Higher Education Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited for predictive analytics or other hypothetical scenarios. It is obviously useful for interactive dashboards. It seems to be for a single point-of-time data and is not useful for live or changing data.
June 09, 2016

Best data visualization and analytics tool out there

Libardo Lambrano | TrustRadius Reviewer
Libardo Lambrano
eCommerce Manager Florida/Latin America & Caribbean
Hilton Worldwide (1001-5000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Likelihood to Recommend
For data analysis I think is the best tool out there. MicroStrategy has similar features but not the flexibility that tableau offers to create and manipulate dashboards and reports on the flight. Both Tableau and MicroStrategy are very fast, but in terms of flexibility Tableau is king. Plotting geo data in MicroStrategies is a disaster, Tableau does a much better job identifying countries, cities and regions around the world. The connectivity to external files is smoother in Tableau, in MicroStaregy it is not easy to update a data source once is connected with MicroStrategies desktop. Both Tableau and MicroStrategy are good sharing reports, but i like more the interface of Tableau and the capability to save specific views.
June 09, 2016

Increased productivity and client satisfaction

Judith Breisch | TrustRadius Reviewer
Judith Breisch
VP Analytics
Citrix Systems, Inc., SaaS Division (Computer Software, 5001-10,000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau was (is) a great solution for our situation, but you will want to evaluate your needs and cost trade offs. While a bit dated, the Gartner Group Research Wave Q3 2012 on Advanced Data Visualization Platforms, could be a good starting point in the process. It has many criteria to consider and a summary of major players.
June 08, 2016

Tableau Desktop - Why & Why not?

Abanish Mishra | TrustRadius Reviewer
Abanish Mishra
Business Intelligence Analyst
Match.com (Internet, 201-500 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
It definitely depends on the use case of company. If they have the data cooked and ready for reporting they can always add a layer like Tableau on top of their EDW or Data Marts which would make their reporting goals successful undoubtedly. Gartner's magic quadrant rates Tableau the best visualization layer for last couple of years.

One thing to keep in mind is if the company is very small and has less of a budget to spend on tools for each ETL layer, architect and visualization layer then Tableau won't be a good choice. It might be expensive for them. Also you can't bring in facts and dimension inside Tableau Desktop to create relationships and logical model like MicroStrategy.
May 31, 2016

The joyous ride to developing interactive dashboards with Tableau

Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology
Higher Education Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau Desktop is very much in sync to the new world of big data and data visualization for amazing analytics. Its user GUI is so simplistic that we let new employees especially interns, students and temporary workers start development using ready datasets in tableau. They gain useful experience and we get much more ROI on the short working periods of these employees as they are able to learn fast and produce data reports faster. Users too love the interface and our capabilities to make small tweaks for them easily.
May 26, 2016

Tableau - the better BI tool

Paul Morgan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Paul Morgan
Senior Product Manager
Experian (5001-10,000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Likelihood to Recommend
If you are looking for a BI Visualization and Analytics tool and have looked at Tibco and MicroStrategy (to name but two), then this is worth putting on the top of your list.

This application is great for displaying BI content on screens but not really best used for the dumb reporting that tools like Crystal do better - however it can do it but it's a hammer to crack a nut.

This application may also redefine how you think of your BI solution. Get the public version and try it out.
May 25, 2016

Tab - Blows away Crystal Reports and Business Objects

Mashhood Syed | TrustRadius Reviewer
Mashhood Syed
BI Analyst
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan (Utilities, 10,001+ employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Likelihood to Recommend
If you have large data sets that you need to aggregate or process, where does the computation occur? On the local machine where the installation sits or remotely on a server? What is the maximum sized data set that you can comfortably work with in Tableau Desktop?
May 24, 2016

Tableau Desktop for BI Professionials

Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology
Information Technology and Services Company, 501-1000 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Our primary use is a BI platform to create dashboards. However the application also has many analytical uses. I would recommend it as a base for a BI stack on top of your database. There is not much version control so maintaining changes will be a difficult task if highly regulated. I would recommend a trial to see if it meets your needs first.
May 24, 2016

Tableau: An enhanced graphical analytical experience!!!

Prafulla Kharwadey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Prafulla Kharwadey
Senior BI Consultant
Vistakon, Johnson and Johnson (Pharmaceuticals, 201-500 employees)
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Most suited:
  • When you need a fantastic user interface, tableau is perfect.
  • When need a better map visuals, tableau is better

Less appropriate
  • When you want to build a solution that is easy to maintain, with lots many charts, and you need lot variety of tables (Cross, straight, graphical, summary)
  • When you want to do a complex programming using R, scripting


May 24, 2016

Dashboard Experts, Scorecard Headaches

Phillip Smith | TrustRadius Reviewer
Phillip Smith
Sr. Financial Analyst (Finance Manager)
Spring Mobile (Wireless, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau Desktop is great if you have simple and/or stable data sources. It's great for dashboards, but not scorecards. High level reporting with drill-down is great, but it does struggle on the drill down if the data is too granular or immense. Some aggregation is required to get speed. You'll love it as long as you're not trying to make it do more then it was intended for. It's not a one-size fits all reporting tool.
May 24, 2016

Tableau - a fantastic product for delivering modern business intelligence

Ivan Miller | TrustRadius Reviewer
Ivan Miller
Business Intelligence Engineer
Experticity (Marketing and Advertising, 51-200 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau is extremely well suited for most business intelligence use cases, in my opinion. In situations where users wish to perform deep statistical analysis or predictive modeling, a tool like SSRS would likely be more appropriate. Additionally, for cases where users wish to analyze extremely large volumes of data (think in excess of 100M rows), a big data solution would likely be more fitting. For typical use cases of creating dashboards and providing detail on most pre-aggregated data, Tableau really stands out as one of the top offerings in my experience.
May 24, 2016

Tableau is great at showing your value

James Northway | TrustRadius Reviewer
James Northway
Enterprise Program Analyst
Assurant (Insurance, 10,001+ employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Some of the audience of the end product have not bought into it yet. They prefer the powerpoint method and it could be mainly because they like to see that type of presentation vs. creating another account on Tableau server and logging in. They'd prefer to get a powerpoint and click through it and have the presenter walk through the slides.
May 24, 2016

The power tool of the digital analyst

Stéphane Hamel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Stéphane Hamel
Renowned digital analytics consultant, innovator, speaker, thought leader
(self employed) (Internet, 1-10 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
I see Tableau as answering two very different needs:

  • Day-to-day slicing, dicing, exploration, visualization of data - for me this is by far the most powerful approach.
  • Creating powerful dashboards - from the simplest to the most advanced dashboards, you can use Tableau (with the free reader or through Tableau Server) to empower business users with control over filtering and segmentation of the data.
I would also add the evaluation version, or Tableau Public, are excellent ways to get going and learn about the tool. The community is strong and active with plenty of help and examples.
May 24, 2016

Tableau is the perfect solution for our business needs with it's flexibility, ease-of-implementation, and low cost.

Tom Bertolino | TrustRadius Reviewer
Tom Bertolino
Product Development
Cass Information Systems (Financial Services, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
In my opinion, Tableau may not be as useful for access to detail-level data (e.g. 1M+ records). It's a reporting tool; daily exception handling tasks may be better suited for other systems and processes.
May 24, 2016

Tableau - Great for business needs small to XL

Verified User
Director in Other
5001-10,000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Likelihood to Recommend
I would definitely recommend the tool to anyone who needs a way to view extra-large data sets. There are different product versions depending on who, what, and how people are going to use the tool. The key questions to review are: How many users do I have? How many programmers do I have? How are my users going to access the tool? Do I want to allow different permissions to the dashboards? What data sources am I going to link to the tool?
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