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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

(76-100 of 194)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
May 18, 2019

Very robust BI tool, but a steep learning curve. Be sure to dedicate enough time to learn it well!

Verified User
Program Manager in Customer Service
Computer Software Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • It's a highly flexible for building dashboards. Once you know how to use the tool, you can design a dashboard to look exactly how you want.
  • Has a broad range of data connection options.
  • An easy UI for joining datasets.
  • The learning curve is really steep. Even with online self-help resources and training modules, it takes a long time to learn fairly basic operations compared to other tools I've used. Basic operations in Tableau Desktop should really be simplified to acclimate new users.
  • I experience lots of unexplained connection errors and the error messages are really ambiguous. I've learned to keep retrying multiple times and that often resolves the error, but sometimes if a workbook has been inactive for a while, the only way to resolve the connection error is to restart Tableau Desktop. That is really buggy behavior, and I have wasted a lot of time (as have many colleagues of mine) trying to decipher these errors. This really needs to be fixed.
  • The application runs really slowly. I have a powerful PC, but Tableau Desktop really saps its resources. The previous BI tool we used was cloud-based, so this was a big adjustment moving to this resource-intensive thick client. I think it should be optimized to run faster. I spend too much time waiting.
May 10, 2019

Easy to use and share reports

Tim Ryan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Tim Ryan
Senior Project Manager
PEMCO (Insurance, 501-1000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Very easy UI for all level of users.
  • Easy to save/favorite different dashboards.
  • Granting access to different levels of users is easy.
  • You still need to have a fair amount of technical skills to set up some dashboards.
  • Drag and drop functionality could work a little easier.
  • Keep working on the UI.
April 25, 2019

Solid product but not cheap

Verified User
Program Manager in Corporate
Financial Services Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Real-time view.
  • Connects to database
  • Provides click-through analysis.
  • Visually appealing layout.
  • It is not intuitive to use.
  • Requires time and effort to create a dashboard.
  • Should offer out of the box functionality.
December 22, 2018

Tableau Desktop great for individual users

Verified User
Analyst in Marketing
Marketing and Advertising Company, 501-1000 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Tableau allows me to quickly explore a dataset and find meaningful visualizations and segments in the data. I find that it's the tool I turn to when I have a fresh set of data and need to quickly pick apart what's important to know about that data.
  • A lot of my business stakeholders can't understand data without being able to see a visualization. Tableau enables me to take structured data and build those visualizations much faster than something like Excel.
  • I enjoy the flexibility in being able to create calculated metrics within the tool. This saves several steps in creating those new metrics within the raw data. The calculated metrics are robust, allowing you to write logic to get at the data that you really need.
  • I spend a lot of time customizing dashboards for clients to match their branding and aesthetic. The one particularly annoying thing is not being able to change the font colors on the y-axis labels. It seems so simple, but there's honestly no way to do it!
  • I work from a laptop that is a few years old. Tableau software is not a light program and I often run into system memory issues when I'm running Tableau Desktop along with other programs. I probably just need a faster computer, but IT has budget constraints and I'm not sure when I'll get a PC upgrade.
  • Sometimes I could spend a lot of time just trying to find a feature in the tool. Like a lot of other Tableau users, I end up googling my question and finding the answer on a community post or YouTube channel. I know it's not just me, as sometimes formatting and customization are not very straightforward.
December 19, 2018

Tableau Desktop - A Great BI Product

Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology
Computer Software Company, 5001-10,000 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Scalability of Tableau is amazing. We have thousands of users who interact with the Tableau reports on a daily basis without any major issues. It is exactly like the bigger organizations like us need.
  • Ease of use is another thing that is very good about Tableau. With a very less training, a user can start creating basic reports. As there are many Tableau users around the world, we get a lot of materials, videos online very easily.
  • Beautiful visualizations are the best part of Tableau. Once you get the hang of Tableau, you can impress your boss by creating visually appealing dashboards. Many types of charts are available in Tableau, but if not, you will always find a way to create the visualization you need. Tableau never disappoint you.
  • When creating a data source that needs several tables to be joined together, Tableau does its thing by loading the metadata, executing a query and loading data for preview. It does it after each and every join condition. Basically, every time you add a join condition you wait for a minute to create another one. God bless you if you are joining ten tables. There has to be way to pause this data load or at least some part of it to make this process faster.
  • We had this issue of connection looping with Tableau. Even with a good connection, Tableau ask us to reconnect to the data source. This thing goes in an infinite loop until you hit "No" or "Cancel". And it doesn't exactly show in the log that why is it doing that. Logging needs to be improved.
  • Tableau doesn't like Star or Snowflake schema even with a columnar database. We have these big Star schema (some of them are a little snowflaked) that we tried to load in Tableau. But they were slow. We converted those to the flat tables and Tableau works great with it.
October 31, 2018

Tableau: A robust solution for your reporting needs!

Aryeh Brickner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Aryeh Brickner
VP Marketing
Aryeh Brickner, management consultant (Management Consulting, 1-10 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Allowing users to export data and manipulate the data based on their needs. This means that although there are prepopulated reports, they aren't rigid and inflexible and they allow users to see the data in other prisms.
  • We are able to track users at various stages of the product lifecycle, which means we can see drop-offs, conversions, and other critical touch points.
  • Allowing for lay users to create individual reports. Currently, we need to request a Tableau data person to mold new reports for us.
  • A drag and drop interphase would be amazing for allowing users to mix touch points as they need.
  • The ability to copy and paste data into Excel as opposed to exporting. We don't always need an entire report.
October 19, 2018

work tool for presentation of data in chart and professional quality table.

Andres Meza | TrustRadius Reviewer
Andres Meza
Ingeniero de Homologación de Terminales Inalámbricos
Movilnet (Telecommunications, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Pros and Cons
  • It has easy-to-use bar-type graph options that allow you to group a lot of content.
  • It offers the possibility of working with a database in order to position your exact location on your territory and display your information on a map.
  • It has options to superimpose information between two related variables.
  • It has the potential to work with ideal trend data for decision making.
  • Although it allows you to link variables, I consider that the presentation of the information is not ideal. I think the vendor can work on improving that tool.
  • It is difficult to use the tool for georeferencing data, because it asks you to check many options to apply the task. I think the vendor can work on simplifying the process.
  • They should review the process of linking data sheets with the tools from Tableau. On some occasions, I had to do the work again because I did not recognize the database. Work on simplifying the process please.
August 03, 2018

One of the best data visualization tools for established companies.

Verified User
Director in Marketing
Staffing and Recruiting Company, 11-50 employees
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Pulling data from multiple sources
  • Create beautiful charts and graphs
  • Saves time by creating reports we would normally have to do in Excel manually
  • It lacks support for certain data hierarchies
  • Too expensive for startups and SMBs
  • The constant updates are a bit annoying
July 16, 2018

Tableau-the best

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Information Technology and Services Company, 501-1000 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Data visualization
  • Quickly create interactive visualizations
  • Tableau can handle large amounts of data
  • Can use of other scripting language in Tableau
  • No Custom Visual Imports
  • Static and single value parameters
  • Screen Resolution on Tableau Dashboards
  • Custom formatting in Tableau
June 27, 2018

With Tableau Desktop I quickly analyze my data giving efficiency and speed to my work

Yusmelys Lopez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Yusmelys Lopez
Analista financiero
BANCA PUBLICA (Banking, 201-500 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • With Tableau you do not need to have technical knowledge to do the data integration and you get a quick response of what you are looking for, being your visualization of high quality.
  • We can say that it is free software and it is not a limited version
  • Improvements in the fast analysis data engine were designed to make queries much faster
  • We can take more advantage of the capabilities of the source databases to run more queries at the same time; this being a new feature of parallel queries improving the performance of dashboards in Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server.
June 01, 2018

Tableau Desktop: the best to present information

Jennifer Lamas | TrustRadius Reviewer
Jennifer Lamas
Analista
Fondo de Compensacion Interterritorial (Telecommunications, 201-500 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Unions between databases: combines data from different sources, such as Excel and Oracle, and creates a data source integrated in Tableau. You can also create a Tableau extraction from this data source and publish it.
  • Tableau Mobile for Android, came to Android phones.
  • Share dashboards on any type of screen, with Tableau you can design, customize and publish a single dashboard with views optimized for tablets and phones, managing to see the information wherever you are.
  • The company can consult data sources and with a single glance, it supervises the statistics of use of the data sources and it is labeled as the favorites that are used the most.
  • Excellent experience to analyze databases that help simplify and summarize jobs in the office.
  • Allows you to create enriched visualizations and control tables using an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that allows you to see each change as you make it
  • When the changes are made, in many cases the error that can be made.
  • The data and visualizations of the users are not completely private.
  • Without internet you can not perform any type of update.
May 18, 2018

Tableau Desktop Review

Maria Gabriela Hernandez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Maria Gabriela Hernandez
Analista
FCI (Accounting, 51-200 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Pros and Cons
  • With Tableau, you can easily analyze information, interact, filter, drill down and graph data
  • Tableau allows you to work with multiple data sources, allowing you to convert them into visualized information in easy-to-analyze graphs
  • You can use unlimited amounts of data
  • It facilitates access to the information you need at the right time.
  • The information emptied by the users are not totally private
  • Improve the modality of granting permissions to access files
  • The files used for graphics must be updated constantly, it is suggested that this act be automatic
May 01, 2018

Graphics Graphics Graphics!

Verified User
Engineer in Product Management
Construction Company, 51-200 employees
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Allows you to perform queries without the need to write any code.
  • Very useful for weather tracking data.
  • Allows you to utilize maps & data at the same time - very effective graphics.
  • Easy to share data with others both within and beyond your company limits.
  • Slightly better training facilities would help.
February 25, 2018

Tableau- The Data Visualizer

Chandra Bhanu Pratap Singh | TrustRadius Reviewer
Chandra Bhanu Pratap Singh
BI Developer
Cognizant (Information Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Graphs and charts are built very easily.
  • Tableau is very good at showing data visually
  • Easily help make a decision by looking at the pattern
  • The ETL part is missing in Tableau.
  • For huge and ambiguous data-sets, Tableau Desktop is not good.
  • Before analysis data preparation is mandatory.
February 22, 2018

Tableau Desktop a tool for BD and BI

Arlex Guzman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Arlex Guzman
Project Engineering
EYEMAR EXPRESS (Airlines/Aviation, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Pros and Cons
  • the quality of its graphic tools.
  • the intuitive and easy in the elaboration of database queries.
  • I think Tableau should improve interoperability with document editors such as ms word.
  • Support in multiple languages is necessary.
January 12, 2018

Tableau Desktop

Verified User
Analyst in Corporate
Hospital & Health Care Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Interactive Reporting
  • Easily prepare and present information in both table and graphical formats
  • Easily modify report and graph parameters
  • Limit table details to those related to specific chart/graph/table points/views
  • Better printing capabilities and more printable formats
  • More control for super users
November 14, 2017

Tableau Review

Verified User
Employee in Product Management
Retail Company, 201-500 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Filter by category & refinement to see which items are the best sellers in the particular field.
  • Able to break down each item number by SKU and see which one is performing better than others.
  • Able to see excess inventory and conversions.
  • There is no search option, if you are trying to find a certain item you will have to use the filters to find it.
  • Some of the category refinements do not match our website. For example, there's a "solutions hardline" category filter and we do not have this on our actual website.
  • You cannot check previous weeks/months of data. This would be helpful to have when comparing product performance.
October 24, 2017

Tableau - Only BI Tool that you need

Verified User
Analyst in Corporate
Telecommunications Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Live data connections and making data blending is just a few clicks
  • Intuitive and fresh design compared to other BI tools
  • Filtering, aggregating data is very dynamic and fast
  • Maps for visualizing data by geographically
  • Number of data source options
  • Drag and drop functionality
  • Still lacks in statistical analysis features
August 09, 2017

Not bad

Ben Lowe | TrustRadius Reviewer
Ben Lowe
Senior Manager/Associate Director
Verizon Wireless (Telecommunications, 10,001+ employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Tableau is a good at visualization of data.
  • Fairly straight forward to use.
  • Good at pulling data from a single location.
  • Could be better at handling multiple data sets.
  • Launching Tableau on desktop can take a long time especially if the report has many filters.
  • It should strengthen its data discovery capabilities.
August 09, 2017

What a Tool

Wallace Hu | TrustRadius Reviewer
Wallace Hu
Sr. Director, Principal Big Data Architect
Leadership for Data Analytics & Big Data (Hospitality, 10,001+ employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Dashboarding.
  • Visualization of data.
  • Trend analysis.
  • Rich graphic presentation.
  • Should easily include D3.
  • Server performance needs to be enhanced to handle a large volume of data.
  • It's high version needs to be backward compatible.
July 27, 2017

Microsoft Power BI is cheap but Tableau has better functionalities

Verified User
Analyst in Marketing
Telecommunications Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pros and Cons
  • Data mapping: create quick data exploration by joining text file data with xls file
  • Gantt Chart: better Gantt Chart capability than Microsoft Power BI
  • Mapping: excellent mapping capability down to suburbs and post codes in Australia
  • Box plot: quick box plot creating
  • Colour scheme: currently only have limited control over default colour scheme
  • Scheduling dashboard creation and distribution via email currently not available.
  • Table format visualisation: difficult to control as Tableau tends to concatenate fields once it has more than many characteristics fields shown as one.
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