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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)
    9.4
    94%
  • Drill-down analysis (158)
    9.2
    92%
  • Customizable dashboards (165)
    9.0
    90%
  • Formatting capabilities (161)
    9.0
    90%

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.

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 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 9.4.

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

(2260)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(101-125 of 194)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
July 10, 2017

Best BI tool to do things really quickly and get insights from data very easily.

sanjeev pandey | TrustRadius Reviewer
sanjeev pandey
Software Engineer
GGK Tech (Telecommunications, 501-1000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Very easy to come up with the dashboard, you can develop the dashboards in a few minutes.
  • Good support to database connections, the best thing is that it supports R.
  • It's fast when you use one sheet as a filter for other sheets in the dashboard.
  • Median calculation using live data(version 8.0, now it has) - although we found a workaround to get this functionality, it would be good if we had an option to use it directly.
  • Editing font and color of text is really complex. The user needs to do it all manually so there should be an option so that you can apply styles in a complete sheet and dashboard at once.
  • When you try to work quickly and switch from one sheet to other, it crashes.
June 21, 2017

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

Verified User
Professional in Research & Development
Biotechnology Company, 201-500 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • 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.
  • 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.
March 20, 2017

Warming up to Tableau Desktop

Charles Saulnier | TrustRadius Reviewer
Charles Saulnier
BI Consultant
Larochelle Groupe Conseil (Information Technology and Services, 51-200 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Connection to data sources, and variety of connectors available
  • Easy-to-use data blending functionality, once you experiment it a few times
  • Makes visual analysis accessible to a wide variety of users
  • Publication of dashboards on Tableau Server is a breeze
  • Tableau is ill-suited to work with SSAS cubes, at least when you are used to analysis within Microsoft tools
  • Data preparation is not up-to-par with other leading vendor tools (although can be improved through Alteryx if you have access to it)
  • The ease-of-use is true for basic analysis, but rapidly gives way to a steep learning curve with more complex queries or when the business context is more mathematics oriented
March 06, 2017

Why do organisations or people keep using Tableau instead of Power BI

Verified User
Employee in Information Technology
Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Helps spot visual patterns correctly.
  • Apart from using an Excel you can also connect to your own data set or database to import large amounts of data and use it to drill down and prepare charts.
  • The charts and graphs made with Tableau are very interactive with the right information.
  • When data is highly granular Tableau must render and precisely place each element.
  • Green data fields are continuous and blue data fields are discrete. It is essential to understand what they do previously or else one can get confused. If you do not take Tableau video lessons or read about how the data fields with green or blue fields are different, it would be confusing. Tableau can improve that.
February 27, 2017

Great product

Linda Stacy | TrustRadius Reviewer
Linda Stacy
Digital Marketing Manager
Centurion Medical Products (Hospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Multiple data sets configuration and interpretation.
  • Graphing.
  • Ease of use.
  • Beginning learning curve for staff.
  • Can become too complex.
  • None other. It's a good product.
February 21, 2017

Tableau ease

MeghanMarie Fowler-Finn | TrustRadius Reviewer
MeghanMarie Fowler-Finn
Performance Analyst
DC Department of Public Works (Government Administration, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Easy to learn
  • Simple vizualizations
  • Interaction with Tableau Server so non-developers can explore with filters
  • Easy connections to many different types of data sources
  • Automatically updated parameters - when my database encounters a new date field, the parameter should automatically update to include that date
  • Easier mapping capabilities so I can more easily connect geo-located items with a polygon
February 20, 2017

Tableau Desktop - The Easy Button Analytics Tool

Verified User
Employee in Marketing
Retail Company, 201-500 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Create visualizations of your data
  • Join data sources from various files or servers
  • Very easy to use even for beginners and as complex as you want it to be
  • Could use more tutorials and advanced tutorials even though they have a great community
  • Geocoding maps should and can be a lot easier especially when trying to plot points
February 17, 2017

Tableau: The present and future of Business Intelligence and Reporting

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Retail Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • I like the way tableau integrates with different other tools like Alteryx. I have been using both in combination which makes it pretty easy to get the extract ready for use.
  • The vizAlerts is a very interesting and useful feature which makes the data available to users through a simple alert.
  • Tableau mobile is something new and I look forward to implementing it in my organization.
  • I think Tableau data source/extract as an input is not possible in Alteryx. I think this needs to be integrated well with Alteryx which will definitely increase its power.
  • Sometimes the loading time is way too much in Tableau. Should do something with it to match up with competitors.
February 09, 2017

Wonderful Tableau!

Agni G | TrustRadius Reviewer
Agni G
Research Assistant
UTD (Higher Education, 1-10 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Master filter and sub filters.
  • Maps and location view.
  • Easy to use dashboards.
  • Story.
  • Drag and drop.
  • Using a common filter for multiple dashboards is needed in many cases but when we use sub-filters for a common filter, it doesn't work well.
  • When you change the data source, all the customization gets reset which is not good.
January 31, 2017

New on the fence about anything but, still 2 feet away from this one

Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology
Wholesale Company, 201-500 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Aggregation: SQL aggregate functions are come last to the aggregation power of Tableau. There are various formulas for annual growth, retention, and ratios that can break a query or stress at database. Tableau simplifies that through calculated fields and presets.
  • Mapping: Normally aggregate maps are created in SAS but, Tableau takes the guess work out of creating maps that display various levels of change using metrics.
  • Calculated Fields: If you know SQL or even Excel then calculated fields are the gold nuggets of Tableau. Coding custom formulas that are reusable across workbooks, save so much time.
  • Measured Names and Values: I struggle getting that blank area of Measured Names to vanish for cleaner reporting but, if you delete one then it removes the metric as a whole.
December 29, 2016

Worked superbly for analyzing web traffic data.

Verified User
C-Level Executive in Finance and Accounting
Internet Company, 51-200 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Pros and Cons
  • Tableau is an excellent tool for quickly making sense of millions of rows of data. It does an excellent job of recognizing facts and dimensions in denormalized data files (say CSV or Excel) as well as connecting to larger databases. The learning curve is slight but not too steep if you are comfortable with Excel Pivot Tables or similar.
  • The visualizations are particularly good as well, as there is a good library of them as well as an auto-suggest feature that for a given series of dimensions and metrics will recommend what chart types might apply. If you have data it recognizes (or is typed) as zip codes for instance it will recommend a geospatial / map visualization.
  • If you have broader enterprise needs for data security and segmentation, heavy duty report customization, or data transformation, this is less comprehensive a tool than other enterprise BI packages (e.g. Business Objects, MicroStrategy, or similar). That said, what it does, it does amazingly well and at a tremendous value.
  • One minor annoyance is that formatting applied to a workbook doesn't carry throughout or get remembered as a template. The default choices for font sizes tend not to export well to presentations or printed text, and having to hand-enlarge every axis label every time gets obnoxious. I've seen third-party tools developed specifically for re-using formatting selections across one or multiple workbooks.
October 18, 2016

Tableau Desktop Review

Andy G Teasdale | TrustRadius Reviewer
Andy G Teasdale
Analyst - Asset Managment
MoneySuperMarket.com (Internet, 201-500 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Ability to overlay data onto geo maps to show customer distribution.
  • Ability to forecast trend lines.
  • Ability to create dashboards by dragging and dropping individual reports.
  • Shared filters are not always made explicitly clear.
  • No way to stop the auto sizing in the dashboard view unless you have all reports as floating panes.
  • Not possible to print off a full dashboard to a PDF when the embedded report has a scroll bar, simply prints the scroll bar.
October 07, 2016

My Tableau Review

Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology
Construction Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • TDE - takes a selection of data into the in-memory and helps in quicker processing
  • TDE - data can be refreshed and scheduled
  • TDE - can work offline with the snapshot of data and later connect
  • Smart-Trigger the data extract refresh
  • More varied sources of data input
  • Thin client, smaller footprint, invoked as an applet in browser
October 07, 2016

Tableau - helping you to tell your story ....

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Mining & Metals Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • It guides you through the types of visualisations that are possible given your data sets.
  • The interface is simple and uncluttered, it easy to access data, manipulate it and it shows immediately.
  • There are many different types of visualisations available, and even the browser version is very good.
  • Our users complain that it takes a lot to sometimes get their data ready for Tableau. The process is not too complicated but could be simpler.
  • Time series data is difficult to deal with. Might have something to do with using time formats from different geographies.
  • The geographic capabilities could be improved. Work with geo-info is still difficult and requires pre-work before it works. The MapBox integration looks promising.
September 16, 2016

Tableau Desktop - Leader of the pack

David Shi | TrustRadius Reviewer
David Shi
Technical Business Analyst
Westpac (Banking, 10,001+ employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • User friendly interface, easy to take up.
  • Numerous updates, throughout the years I've used tableau, many new features have been added.
  • Looks great out of the box, saves time on formatting.
  • Licensing is still difficult to explain to new users/stakeholders - could be simplified.
  • Lack of backward compatibility, where version 10 worksheets can't be opened by version 9 applications.
  • Can be pricey for smaller organisations.
September 09, 2016

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

Alex Naumov | TrustRadius Reviewer
Alex Naumov
Sr. Manager, Pricing Strategy
The Home Depot (Retail, 10,001+ employees)
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Mapping
  • Simple dashboards
  • Visualizations
  • 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
September 07, 2016

Tableau is my favorite data visualization tool

Alex Garnes | TrustRadius Reviewer
Alex Garnes
Vice President
Veritas HHS (Government Administration, 51-200 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Tableau's charting is its best functionality, at least for what we need.
  • A second, critically important feature is the ability to pull data from a variety of sources, without requiring ODBCs.
  • I'd like Tableau to increase its data analysis functionality. I always start an analytics project with visual analysis, and Tableau does that really well. But when I have to go deeper in the analytics (regression testing, ANOVA, means testing, etc.), I have to switch products.
August 29, 2016

Tableau is great for reports!! Wish it looked better and had better options for visualizing.

Christopher Tung | TrustRadius Reviewer
Christopher Tung
Coordinator
Netflix (Entertainment, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • It generates great reports that are easy to read.
  • It can take data from a variety of accounting systems.
  • It can refresh data in real time.
  • Visually it's pretty boring. Could have a more modern look.
  • It would be nice to be able to easily visualize the data on the fly from the reports it generates. If there is a way, I have not found it!
August 24, 2016

Tableau, Hands down best in the pack for self-serve data visualization tool

Ravi Ada | TrustRadius Reviewer
Ravi Ada
System Architect
Medlio (Hospital & Health Care, 1-10 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Data visualizations using array of charts etc.
  • Ability to connect to multiple data sources.
  • Support of mobile and tablet devices with pinch, zoom and drill down capabilities.
  • It is like a UI interface for iPhone.
  • Enterprise federated security for deployed scenarios.
  • Its primarily self-serve tool works well within a department, but if IT has to roll it out enterprise wide, it lacks some of those capabilities.
August 22, 2016

Tableau Desktop - A Powerful, Insightful, Dynamic Tool

Verified User
Analyst in Finance and Accounting
Automotive Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Tableau can handle huge data sources and crunch through the numbers.
  • Tableau can shine the light on trends and issues that are hidden among the rows and rows of data.
  • Tableau has great visuals that help users tell insightful stories.
  • Tableau has great dashboards that are easy to use and easy to make.
  • Tableau has a learning curve that is fairly steep.
  • Users that are not familiar with joins will struggle initially.
  • Formulas in Tableau can be a challenge.
August 19, 2016

Big Data Made Pretty

Michael Fibison | TrustRadius Reviewer
Michael Fibison
Director Sales, East Group
Gannett (Media Production, 10,001+ employees)
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Graphically, Tableau represents complex data in an easy to view way. We use it to map vehicles purchased by zip code.
  • And it makes building a story based on data much easier. We graphically can cross reference our newspaper subscribers to vehicle sales, for example.
  • Additionally, we leverage Tableau for presentations -- easy to take maps/charts and build compelling presentation pieces that are client-facing.
  • Would like to see easier export functions of the graphical displays.
  • Would like more intuitive guides to the use so we don't need training.
  • File sizes used sometimes cause the tool to be "slow."
August 10, 2016

Tableau Review

Danish Ali Ahmad | TrustRadius Reviewer
Danish Ali Ahmad
BI Specialist III
Houston Methodist (Hospital & Health Care, 10,001+ employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • The ability to schedule a refresh or cache is very powerful.
  • Measures calculations, graphics and the ease of use (user friendly) is very robust.
  • Ability to edit, share and create stories.
  • Drop down menu (prompt filter) can only be applied on 1 page of the story. I need to control all pages in stories by 1 change in value.
  • More types of charts. They have Pie charts, but what about Donut charts?
August 02, 2016

Tableau is an easy way to get started with high quality visualizations.

Firaz Peer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Firaz Peer
Fellow
Georgia Institute of Technology (Higher Education, 5001-10,000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • It is easy to start building visual representations of data sets quickly.
  • Tableau makes is very easy to share your data and visualizations with anyone across the web.
  • It is easy to change the type of visual representation you use (bar, scatterplot, etc.)
  • It has a bit of a learning curve. Make sure you go through at least a few tutorials before jumping in.
  • Map based representations are not as straightforward as they seem.
  • Kinda pricey!
July 18, 2016

Best tool for visualisation

Verified User
Engineer in Research & Development
Research Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Stunning dashboards.
  • Good visualizations.
  • It is easy to use.
  • Different functions like average, sum, and count.
  • Easy to create graphs and dashboards.
  • Tableau is great for analyzing data.
  • Huge license cost.
  • Difficult to create complex charts.
  • Limited data.
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