Skip to main content
TrustRadius
Tableau Prep

Tableau Prep

Overview

What is Tableau Prep?

Tableau Prep enables users to get to the analysis phase faster by helping them quickly combine, shape, and clean their data.According to the vendor, a direct and visual experience helps provide users with a deeper understanding of their data,…

Read more
Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Tableau Prep has been widely used by users to solve various data-related challenges. One common use case is syncing data between reservoir …
Continue reading
Read all reviews
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing

Viewer

$15

Cloud
per month billed annually per user

Explorer

$42

Cloud
per month billed annually per user

Creator

$70

Cloud
per month billed annually per user

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.tableau.com/pricing/teams…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $15 per month billed annually per user
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is Tableau Prep?

Tableau Prep enables users to get to the analysis phase faster by helping them quickly combine, shape, and clean their data.

According to the vendor, a direct and visual experience helps provide users with a deeper understanding of their data, smart features make data preparation simple, and integration with the Tableau analytical workflow allows for faster speed to insight. Tableau Prep allows users to connect to data on-premises or in the cloud, whether it’s a database or a spreadsheet, and access, combine and clean disparate data without writing code. Easy sharing reduces friction and helps users bridge the gap between data preparation and analytics, for better business results.

Tableau helps people and organizations become more data-driven. With an integrated platform that is easy to start and scale, Tableau supports the entire analytics journey, from data preparation, to deep analysis, to the shared insights that drive the business forward.

Tableau Prep Competitors

Tableau Prep Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Tableau Prep starts at $15.

Alteryx and Alteryx Designer Cloud are common alternatives for Tableau Prep.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 5.3.

The most common users of Tableau Prep are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(29)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Tableau Prep has been widely used by users to solve various data-related challenges. One common use case is syncing data between reservoir engineering software/database and SAP, allowing for seamless data visualization. Users have found this feature particularly valuable as it enables them to analyze and visualize their engineering data more effectively.

Another key use case of Tableau Prep is its utilization by the commercial side of organizations. Users rely on the software to clean up datasets before creating dashboards or running analytics/data science projects. The tool helps identify missing or erroneous values in datasets, empowering users to address these issues before visualizing the data. By ensuring data cleanliness, Tableau Prep plays a vital role in generating accurate insights and visually appealing reports.

Tableau Prep is also employed for preparing data from multiple sources for report generation purposes. This involves connecting various data sources, cleaning up the data, performing appropriate joins, and generating final outputs. With its intuitive interface, users can conveniently explore the data to recognize any quality inconsistencies and create calculated fields for further analysis.

Additionally, users have found Tableau Prep useful for simple data set preparation tasks for analysis in Tableau itself. However, when dealing with more complex data cleaning and preparation requirements, some users prefer using Alteryx, another popular data preparation tool.

Furthermore, Tableau Prep finds extensive usage in finance departments where it connects to live data and consolidates it with budget files to produce clean and categorized outputs for Tableau workbooks. Additionally, the software proves handy in reformatting invoices and organizing them for easy accounts payable entry into the system.

Overall, Tableau Prep serves as a versatile solution for a wide range of use cases, from syncing data between different systems to cleaning up datasets and preparing them for analysis and reporting purposes. Its functionalities are valued by users across various industries and departments within organizations.

Effective Data Synchronization: Several users have praised the product's data synchronization feature, which has been described as effective in keeping data up to date and accurate across different platforms or systems.

Reliable Matching Capability: Reviewers have consistently mentioned the product's reliable matching capability, allowing them to easily identify and link similar data points or records. This feature has proven to be valuable for users in their data processing tasks.

Clear Display of Raw Data: The clear and informative display of raw data coming in from the data warehouse has impressed many users. This feature enables them to gain insights into the initial state of the data, facilitating better decision-making and analysis.

Not as Robust: Some users have mentioned that the product is not as robust as other software on the market, which may limit its capabilities and functionality compared to competitors. They feel that certain features or functionalities are missing or not up to par.

Sluggish Performance: Several reviewers have found the product to be sluggish when making a lot of changes, leading to delays and impacting their workflow efficiency. This slowdown in performance can be frustrating for users who require quick and seamless data manipulation.

Lack of Clear Initial Visualizations: Users have expressed the need for clearer initial visualizations in the product. They suggest that the current visuals provided by the software might be confusing or insufficient for effectively analyzing and interpreting data at first glance.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-6 of 6)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau Prep is used for re-creating an ETL workflow to connect data sources, clean data and then combining it to perform joins, and in generating a final output to use operations like pivot, join, rename, union and the control flow plane. Tableau Prep also helps with exploring the data to figure out data quality issues and in creating calculated fields for analysis.
  • Data Cleansing
  • Automation
  • Joins
  • Use of Macros within Workflow (and more types of automation)
  • Join Editor also giving a SQL Update Query
  • More types of visuals
Tableau Prep is a very powerful tool when it comes to creating workflows to monitor each stage for data analysis and quality issues. Also, it is convenient to explore the data with the wealth of operators and checking work at each stage of the process. Also, some areas that would help is if there are more types of automation provided.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
[Tableau Prep] is used by the commercial side of our organization to clean up data sets before we create dashboards or run analytics/data science projects. Some of the data sets can have missing or erroneous values and Tableau Prep helps to point out such situations so that we can address them before creating visualizations.
  • Display the raw data coming in from the data warehouse
  • Point out situations that might be erroneous
  • Show the distribution of raw data figures
  • Should allow you to connect to more databases and platforms
  • Allow clearer initial visualizations
  • Run through data quicker
If your data sets are coming in without much stewardship then Tableau Prep can help to clean the data before you start trying to create visualizations for your end users. You will save a lot of time this way - rather than seeing problems once you are creating dashboards. If you don't have large data sets or your data is relatively simple, then Tableau Prep may not be needed.
October 07, 2020

Good basic ETL option

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it to prepare data from multiple sources for report generation.
  • Clean data
  • Join data files
  • Create calculated values
  • Output to CSV
  • More output options
  • Allow SQL code to input data files for prep
  • Allow row level edits/deletes
Great for pulling in multiple files to combine and clean for an output file for further analysis. Not good if you need to query your database for a data set to review and prep for analysis.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have been using Tableau Prep to prepare simple data sets for analysis in Tableau. We do not use it for more complex data but it definitely helps with smaller, simpler data sets. we have most of our Tableau Desktop users utilizing Tableau Prep when needed, but when we do more complex data cleaning and prep we use Alteryx.
  • Easy to use
  • Integrates perfectly with Tableau
  • Can be sluggish when making a lot of changes
  • Not as robust as other software on the market
Tableau Prep is a great software if all you need to do is prep some files and do some simple joins and other simple data prep steps in order to get your data in Tableau shape. However, if working with large sets of data and doing more complex calculations and other more complex data prep, there are better products on the market.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Prep in our finance department to connect to our live data (Microsoft GP) to consolidate with our budget files to produce an output that is clean and thoroughly categorized and ready to be used consistently across Tableau workbooks, allowing us to more easily produce reports to be published on our server. We also use Prep to pull in several invoices (for example, cellular, shipping, etc) to reformat the output such that it is organized and clean for accounts payable to enter into our system.
  • Data cleaning.
  • Data exploration/validation.
  • Automated flows.
  • Bug fixes with updates.
Tableau Prep is a great tool for consolidating budget with actual data. When joining sources, it gives you all the insight and transparency you need when joining data sources and any cleaning/aggregation needs to be done. If financial data comes from multiple sources (ex. a budget platform and an accounting software), Prep allows your organization to build a flow to consolidate the two sources so that everyone can open a workbook and begin from the same point. Once flows are built (especially when connected live), refreshing reports can be done with a click of a button. The capabilities Prep has to manipulate, clean and join data goes far beyond what was possible in Workbook. The extracts that are created as a single output allow working with multiple data sources in a single workbook to be a lot smoother and quicker.
Todd Coble | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We did a pilot to use prep to sync data between our reservoir engineering software/database for forecasts -PHDWIN and actuals in SAP. The prep tool was used to sync the datasets and prepare them for visualization. This was used instead of using Tableau straight to sync the datasets. The outcome of the pilot was that the tool was more robust, but we chose not to do it in order to add more software/tools to the data chain.
  • Sync data
  • Match
  • Repeatable results
  • A stand alone product vs integrated
  • More training of a specialized tool
I think that if the data sets are constantly changing then the value added would be more significant than in our case. If data and schema were constantly changing then the toolset would be much more suited for the case.
Return to navigation