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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 8.2

Ad-hoc Reporting

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

8.8
Avg 8.1

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

8.6
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.

8.8
Avg 8.6

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

8.4
Avg 8.0

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

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

8.7
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

(2261)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(26-50 of 194)
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May 24, 2021

Robust analytics tool for analysts and business users

Verified User
Manager in Marketing
Automotive Company, 501-1000 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau Desktop is well suited where data is already well organized within the company data warehouse. Also, there should be competent data engineers who can ensure that data quality is always reliable. If the data quality is bad, it is of no use to business stakeholders and executives. Please remember, "garbage in, garbage out!"
May 14, 2021

Tableau offers a flexible and powerful tool used by all areas of our organization

Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology
Hospital & Health Care Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau has been extremely useful at our organization due to the flexibility it allows for data sources and displaying data. We have multiple types of databases, Tableau is compatible with all of them. The advanced functionality such as using scripting languages and the R open source language for statistical analysis allows for a large range of capabilities.
May 13, 2021

Tableau Desktop - A great choice for Data Analysis

RK
Rahul Kapoor
Software Engineer
Fidelity Information Services (Financial Services, 5001-10,000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau is a highly useful Business Intelligence software where you want to extract insights from a large chunk of data and present data in a storytelling way. It has a very high learning curve as you can do almost anything you can think of with it in terms of visualization and data analysis with a lot less clicks. Also you can do all of this either on your local machine using their Tableau Desktop or even on cloud.
May 03, 2021

Tableau Desktop- Exactly what you would expect from a leading analytics tool

RS
Rupinder Sehmi
Head Of Businss Intelligence
Neyber (Financial Services, 51-200 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau is best suited for easy and high-level visualisation of data. This for example could be executive dashboards, or team based dashboards which are driven by OKRs or KPIs. Tableau is less appropriate for detailed and raw data extracts which may be consumed by team such as Finance for cash or transaction reconciliation.
May 03, 2021

Tableau dashboarding experience

Verified User
Analyst in Marketing
Apparel & Fashion Company, 1-10 employees
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
[Tableau Desktop is a] good to start in the data visualization journey if you want really pretty-looking charts and dashboards, but if you need more functionality like more statistical analysis, huge loads of data it is not the best solution. Having some data cleaning features would be really helpful. Also providing more integrations and not building everything from scratch and custom ones could be more beneficial.
April 30, 2021

Quick and easy solution

Verified User
Analyst in Professional Services
Financial Services Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
[Tableau Desktop] is suited like in my situation that the legacy tools have been set and the work will not last for too large so that there is no point for you to reinvest the time and energy to recreate the graphs in other tools and have to validate the result is the same.
April 30, 2021

Highly Flexible Tool with Endless Possibilities

Verified User
Analyst in Other
Retail Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
I think Tableau is very useful for teams that are comprised of people that have intermediate developing skills. While it is not always required, having those skills helps unlock all of the capabilities of the tool. Other scenarios that it is less appropriate would be those where the organization is unwilling to adopt an end-user, self-service culture (i.e. the organization wants everything sent to their email in Excel).
April 29, 2021

30,000 ft. view of our Tableau implementation

Emily Janowski | TrustRadius Reviewer
Emily Janowski
Sr Integrated Producer
Laughlin Constable (Marketing and Advertising, 201-500 employees)
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
We've found it to be a good resource when preparing campaign metrics and website analytics, as the nature of the business ebbs and flows. Gives the client a good snapshot at any given time.

Probably less suited for something that is a quick turnaround request or a short campaign, simply because of the time-intensive setup.
April 28, 2021

Tableau Desktop: one of the best BI tools

Verified User
Analyst in Marketing
Real Estate Company, 51-200 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
I would strongly recommend Tableau to somebody who is looking for a robust BI solution with all the bells and whistles. Tableau is very well-equipped and is capable of handling the majority of the needs out there. In the same vein, if the requirement is to cater to a large set of users or subscribers Tableau is not the best choice as it gets quite expensive.
April 28, 2021

Tableau Desktop is a Highly Efficient Tool to See and Understand Your Data

Jason Guinn | TrustRadius Reviewer
Jason Guinn
Chief Financial Officer
Clinical Management Concepts, Inc. (Pharmaceuticals, 51-200 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau Desktop is a highly effective, efficient tool used to understand quantitative data. Trends can be easily identified using a number of rapid-fire tools that make iterating through different analyses, testing hypotheses, and visualizing data in a manner that makes the most sense exceptionally easy. Tableau Desktop is a perfect fit for answering very specific questions about how operational outcomes can be improved by paying attention to identified KPIs. It is important to move beyond thinking of Tableau Desktop as a tool used to "dump" raw data out into a report format for further analysis, but rather a tool to be used to do all the heavy-lifting analytics before the end-user engages with the data.
April 27, 2021

Easy to use, yet powerful data visualization tool

Verified User
Partner in Marketing
Internet Company, 51-200 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited if you want a very good internal reporting tool for your senior management or even internal teams. This can help you track your targets and ensure higher visibility across teams. We used to have reports from Tableau displayed on the TV for the entire office to track.
April 27, 2021

Tableau Desktop - intuitive dashboards and ease of use

Verified User
Contributor in Information Technology
Education Management Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau visualizations should be used when an organization at any level tries to get performance metrics regarding a certain business area. Instead of using spreadsheets, Tableau gives the users the an overall and at-a-glance view of the business operations and information regarding different aspects for different areas of interest. Is is also gives the capability to view the data in real time. Tableau maybe less suited for very detailed data analysis.
April 27, 2021

Good product that keeps up with the times

Verified User
Employee in Finance and Accounting
Higher Education Company, 201-500 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau Desktop is well suited for higher education. Many organizations will find it useful but being in higher ed I can say that it has been very helpful with sharing data and allowing easy visualization for end users. It might not be the most beneficial for organizations that need fine tuning of graphs and charts, but definitely a great start for anyone needing to share their data.
April 27, 2021

Get your data to talk

Karan Gupta | TrustRadius Reviewer
Karan Gupta
Sr. Associate - Marketing Analytics
Macquarie Group (Financial Services, 10,001+ employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau [Desktop] is suited to derive quick insights from large sets of data (organized) to create good visuals to tell a story. It helps in quick communication of complex data and makes it easier to interpret it.
Tableau [Desktop] is not suitable if the data is very unorganized and needs human understanding and manipulation before it can be used. Though Tableau can be used to manipulate data, but if the data needs to be in a certain shape in order to be read by Tableau
April 26, 2021

Tableau - Still Good But No Longer the King

JS
John Stuchly
Data developer
HKS, Inc. (Architecture & Planning, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau is a useful tool for anyone looking to provide analytics with good visualizations. It used to be the best tool on the market, but now other competitors have hit parity, or in some areas have surpassed. Spotfire and Power BI both also provide similar feature functionality. Both should be seriously considered when considering a purchase of Tableau. Power BI is probably the best bang for the buck, particularly if just using the desktop version.

Tableau's relatively recent acquisition by Salesforce does potentially make it a good fit for organizations with an existing Salesforce presence. This may become more relevant as time passes and Salesforce integrates Tableau more with their platform.
April 09, 2021

Tableau - a good tool for big companies with multiple data sources

Verified User
Team Lead in Engineering
Computer Games Company, 51-200 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau Desktop is well suited for a large organization with a sizeable budget, since it's a fairly expensive tool. It's not suited for a lean start-up which is worried about costs. Also, IT support can be required for some of the larger projects, which means extra stuff. Also, if the company has one type of data source, other cheaper alternatives can be explored.
April 08, 2021

Tableau Desktop: A Solid Data Exploration Tool

Christopher Penn | TrustRadius Reviewer
Christopher Penn
Chief Data Scientist
Trust Insights (Research, 1-10 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend

Tableau Desktop is good for business users and junior level data analyst who are exploring data sets and trying to draw some initial conclusions from data. It is not well suited for environments that are high code environments that require substantial integration with custom code; it struggles to pass data back and forth well. It is less appropriate for organizations that do not have the money to spend on the software subscription. In the early days, you could purchase Tableau as a one-time expense, but it has moved to a subscription model, making it a consistent expense.


April 08, 2021

Super Tableau

Krunal Thakkar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Krunal Thakkar
Sr. Finance Associate
Analytix Solutions (Outsourcing/Offshoring, 501-1000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
We can use Tableau Desktop from a development point of view. We can make lots of professional dynamic dashboards on this platform. As Tableau is costly, I think small businesses won't able to afford instead they can make a dashboard on Microsoft Excel.
December 28, 2020

Must use. Great ROI. Easy to learn and comprehend.

Verified User
Analyst in Engineering
Computer Software Company, 201-500 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau Desktop is well suited for exploratory analysis and easy to use for non-technical folks. The free trial of the product gives new consumers a good idea of what the software can do and an opportunity to test it and buy it for themselves or the whole company.

Less appropriate for big data handling and very expensive for smaller organizations.
December 04, 2020

Tableau Desktop brings data visualizations to you

VT
Vince Tong
Branch Chief
USDA (Government Administration, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
The Tableau Desktop is very easy to use and build dashboards without any technical background. It is flexible to save in many formats and accessible to other external users. However, the Tableau Creator licenses require keys to operate. This is too troublesome to manage and requires a lot of manpower to maintain and operate.
May 15, 2020

Expensive, but good

Carlos Ochoa | TrustRadius Reviewer
Carlos Ochoa
IT Portfolio Manager
PepsiCo (Consumer Goods, 10,001+ employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Well suited when you have a report that needs to be updated constantly. It is better to automate the extraction of information and create a Tableau dashboard. It is also well suited when you want to create relevant insights from raw data as it allows you to create your own measures.

Less appropriate when you have a one-time presentation. It is better to use other ways for presenting the info/insights you want.
March 05, 2020

Tableau Desktop Review

Pusshpendar Kumaarr | TrustRadius Reviewer
Pusshpendar Kumaarr
Project Manager Scrum Master
Optum Global Solution (Information Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
If you have a large audience who just want to see reports, Tableau Desktop is a great tool. But if there are only one or two users, it's better to use alternatives. For example, if a dashboard needs to be published for a larger audience then it is good to use Tableau Desktop and publish it online, but if you are just making a report for your manager, user another tool.
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