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Tableau Server

Tableau Server

Overview

What is Tableau Server?

Tableau Server allows Tableau Desktop users to publish dashboards to a central server to be shared across their organizations. The product is designed to facilitate collaboration across the organization. It can be deployed on a server in the data center,…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Tableau Server has become an essential tool for organizations across various industries, offering a wide range of use cases that have …
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Tableau to the rescue

8 out of 10
October 05, 2021
Incentivized
It is being used across the organization. It helps us visualize business trends in a nicely presented format which can be easily used by …
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Tableau Server Review

8 out of 10
May 17, 2019
Incentivized
Tableau Server is used by our organization to create and use real-time dashboards and reports. It is used across the entire organization. …
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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 28 features
  • Customizable dashboards (94)
    9.4
    94%
  • Drill-down analysis (95)
    8.7
    87%
  • Formatting capabilities (93)
    8.5
    85%
  • Multi-User Support (named login) (93)
    7.4
    74%
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Pricing

View all pricing

Viewer

$12.00

On Premise
Per User Per Month

Explorer

$35.00

On Premise
Per User Per Month

Creator

$70.00

On Premise
Per User Per Month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

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

Tableau Server | How to Restore a Backup

YouTube

Tableau Server | How to Backup Server

YouTube

How Tableau Works | Tableau Tutorial for Beginners | Tableau Server Online Training | Intellipaat

YouTube

Installing Tableau Server 10.5 on Linux

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.

9.3
Avg 8.2

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.

7.9
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.

8.5
Avg 8.1

Access Control and Security

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

7.4
Avg 8.6

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

7.7
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

7.2
Avg 7.9
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Product Details

What is Tableau Server?

Tableau Server is an enterprise self-service analytics platform that supports data-driven decision making throughout the user's organization.

Customers can deploy the way that makes the most sense for their organization - on-premises or in the cloud, on Windows or Linux, while integrating with their existing security and authentication protocols. Customers can provide governed data access while promoting sharing and collaboration with data, dashboards and insights. It includes automated processes and workflows, and users can define access for individual users and groups.

Tableau Server Features

BI Platform Features

  • Supported: Administration via Windows App
  • Supported: Administration via MacOS App
  • Supported: Administration via Web Interface
  • Supported: Live Connection to External Data
  • Supported: Snapshot of External Data
  • Supported: In-memory data model
  • Supported: Multi-Data Source Reporting (Blending)

Supported Data Sources Features

  • Supported: MS Excel Workbooks
  • Supported: Text Files (CSV, etc)
  • Supported: Oracle
  • Supported: MS SQL Server
  • Supported: IBM DB2
  • Supported: Postgres
  • Supported: MySQL
  • Supported: ODBC
  • Supported: Cloudera Hadoop
  • Supported: Hortonworks Hadoop
  • Supported: EMC Greenplum
  • Supported: IBM Netezza
  • Supported: HP Vertica
  • Supported: SAP Hana
  • Supported: Teradata
  • Supported: Salesforce
  • Supported: SAP
  • Supported: Google Analytics

BI Standard Reporting Features

  • Supported: Customizable dashboards
  • Supported: Report Formatting Templates

Ad-hoc Reporting Features

  • Supported: Drill-down analysis
  • Supported: Formatting capabilities
  • Supported: Predictive modeling
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
  • Supported: Report sharing and collaboration

Report Output and Scheduling Features

  • Supported: Publish to Web
  • Supported: Publish to PDF
  • Supported: Output Raw Supporting Data
  • Supported: Report Versioning
  • Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling

Data Discovery and Visualization Features

  • Supported: Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
  • Supported: Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
  • Supported: Predictive Analytics
  • Supported: Support for Machine Learning models
  • Supported: Pattern Recognition and Data Mining
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages

Access Control and Security Features

  • Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
  • Supported: Role-Based Security Model
  • Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
  • Supported: Report-Level Access Control
  • Supported: Single Sign-On (SSO)

Mobile Capabilities Features

  • Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
  • Supported: Mobile Application
  • Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding Features

  • Supported: REST API
  • Supported: Javascript API
  • Supported: iFrames

Tableau Server Screenshots

Screenshot of Tableau Server interface and administration view 1.Screenshot of Tableau Server interface and administration view 2.Screenshot of Tableau Server permissions view.Screenshot of Tableau Services Manager (TSM) view 1.Screenshot of Tableau Services Manager (TSM) view 2.

Tableau Server Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android, Mobile Web
Supported CountriesWorldwide
Supported LanguagesEnglish, French, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese

Frequently Asked Questions

Tableau Server allows Tableau Desktop users to publish dashboards to a central server to be shared across their organizations. The product is designed to facilitate collaboration across the organization. It can be deployed on a server in the data center, or it can be deployed on a public cloud.

Domo, IBM Cognos Analytics, and Looker are common alternatives for Tableau Server.

Reviewers rate Publish to Web highest, with a score of 9.6.

The most common users of Tableau Server are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(876)

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 Server has become an essential tool for organizations across various industries, offering a wide range of use cases that have proven valuable to users. Its ability to transform complex data into user-friendly visualizations has been particularly beneficial in emergency preparedness analytics within the healthcare sector. Additionally, dedicated analysts have utilized Tableau Server to create and deploy dashboards that are accessible to all employees, serving as the main repository for reporting needs. This versatility extends beyond healthcare, with organizations from IT to Human Resources leveraging the platform to address key issues such as device availability, performance tracking, and enterprise reporting.

Marketing teams have also found value in Tableau Server, using it to gain a better understanding of their customer base and track product ownership and usage trends. The platform's storytelling approach has been especially valuable for data scientists who use Tableau Server to present data to managers and executives, facilitating understanding and supporting decision-making processes. Furthermore, Tableau Server has been integrated into third-party applications and platforms such as Microsoft SharePoint, making it a convenient one-stop-shop for reporting needs.

Tableau Server's ease of maintenance from an administrator level and seamless integration with Active Directory for user permission management have made it a preferred choice for many organizations. It fosters secure and controlled sharing of work done by Tableau Desktop analysts and developers, enabling real-time data visualization and monitoring across the organization. This has led to increased adoption and expansion of its usage in various departments such as Finance, Supply Chain, and HR.

Overall, Tableau Server's ability to store, visualize, and share information effectively has provided organizations with leverage over other systems. Its versatility and ease of use have made it a trusted platform for reporting and analytics needs across different industries, enabling self-service analytics, cost savings through improved tracking capabilities, enhanced customer experience operations, and centralization of reporting.

Tableau users commonly recommend seeking advice from Tableau representatives to determine the best licenses for their needs. They also suggest optimizing data flows and extract refreshes from the beginning. Additionally, users emphasize the importance of being specific when setting up reports to avoid incorrect data. For example, providing clear filters and selecting the appropriate dimensions and measures ensures accurate results. Another tip is to utilize Tableau's training resources and attend user groups and conferences for additional tips and tricks on using Tableau effectively.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(26-50 of 111)
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Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Tableau to aggregate data from a lot of different systems. It brings it all together to a single place where users can build and access reports and dashboards to gain insight into different areas of the business. The insight gained through Tableau across systems is essential to our business functions and would take much more time and effort to do manually.
  • Allows for aggregation across multiple systems
  • Allows reports and dashboards to be self serve for end users
  • Allows for ad-hoc reporting
  • Initial setup of data sources can be time consuming.
  • Some native connectors didn’t work as well for us like Salesforce. We had to build our own ETL process.
  • Setting up permissions originally was burdensome.
Tableau is great for aggregating data for reporting across many different systems. The perpetual licensing made it an affordable solution for a small subset of our company. It is nice that end users can create reports and dashboards without a dedicated report writing resource. If Tableau is used for reporting outside the company to external users it can get very expensive.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used to help our clients visualize their usage data from different angles. It is being used by a handful of people across the organization. It helps expose our big data hosted on Cloudera clusters to display them in a unique way.
  • Very easy to create neat visualizations in a professional way.
  • Easy to publish workbooks to Tableau server for global access
  • Different ways to group and slice the data
  • Custom SQL are not intuitive when dealing with Cloudera connections
  • Simple data tables are harder to create than complex visualizations
  • Large extracts are not very performant
  • Cubes are not supported on Tableau
  • Group aggregates and stacked charts are some of Tableau's better visualizations.
  • Simple data sums and data points are not well suited for Tableau
Eli Massey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
At Vinyl we use Tableau to develop dashboards for insight into our business. It houses most of our day to day reporting and we are now developing our KPI system on it.
  • Access to our data sources such as MS SQL and MySQL
  • Ease of use and administration
  • Relatively small footprint for hardware
  • Reasonable pricing
  • Better exposure of the engine components for diagnostics and reporting
  • Having to uninstall the product and reinstall to upgrade is odd and cumbersome
  • Bring the command line options into a modern web admin interface with better information like backup processes and history
  • Admin reporting on use of data sources and ability to search out dependencies in the database
Tableau does a great job of providing a simple interface to access various dashboards by groups, and has powerful development tools, but they can be a little quirky. It would be much better if there were better admin tools to analyze data sources, the dependencies in the database, and who owns the various dashboards throughout the system.
Justin Pulley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it across the organization, but I only manage 1 or quite a few. It is the trusted platform for visualization across the organization.
  • User management; you have a plethora of options built in (LDAP, Domain, SAML, etc.) for SSO and user management.
  • Dashboard Hosting; you have the option to host your dashboard in a few different ways. You can embed it as part of a larger web page, have it emailed automatically, or view it directly on the server.
  • Web Editing; while not as robust as a full fledged desktop I can see that it is edging that way. The web editing is great for fast, small, on the fly edits during a working session with a customer.
  • Installation; the latest iteration was an absolute nightmare to install. It failed to install several times.
  • Web Editing; while it is okay at small edits it would be a very nice feature to have an integrated solution that is as robust as desktop.
  • User Management; in certain aspects user management could use a small boost. Have a setting that allows Active Directory / LDAP based users be removed/deleted from the server automatically instead of forcing a script be written and deployed. If the user no longer exists in the AD or LDAP group they should be removed vice set to inactive as an option.
Server is appropriate anywhere really, but it comes down to cost. If you are a small org, say 20 people, that cost is going to be $16,800 per year. That is a steep price and other options might be more cost effective. Additionally, large high availability Tableau clusters increase the costs.
Shoaib Yari | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau Server is being used at Ellie Mae as a platform for not only sharing enterprise level Tableau dashboards created by our BI developers, but also as a location to host business specific data sources for end users to create their own ad-hoc visualizations.
  • Allows for easy sharing of data and actionable insights with an extremely user-friendly visual interface
  • Acts as an environment to implement and enforce data governance with centralized and certified data sources
  • Easy to deploy, scale to our specific needs, and monitor
  • Enterprise level implementation is very pricey
  • Dashboard layout changes if the screen resolution of the Tableau developer is different from the end user's screen resolution
  • Embedding is limited and difficult
If you want a BI tool with the capabilities to create and share rich, vibrant reports with advanced data visualization options, Tableau can’t be beat. It’s easy to implement and has a very active and helpful online community. If, however, you are looking for a more affordable option, it’s better to look elsewhere.
Yigael Chetrit | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
[It's] Used across the entire organization and for client-facing reporting. Solves the issue of centralized reporting and a-la-carte reporting using automation and predetermined data sources.
  • Centralized reporting
  • Role-based security
  • Data visualizations
  • Animated time series visualizations
  • Custom filtering
  • Easier D3 integration
Tableau Server is extremely well-suited for centralized reporting within an organization, or for client facing reporting. There are some very useful visualizations that exist, but allowing for more advanced visualizations to be seamlessly integrated would be a huge benefit.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used in a single product using the in-line version in a web application. It is a huge selling point to the application suite as it allows the users to see the effectiveness of using the application. The visualizations are powerful.
  • Powerful visulizations that can be customized with the desktop suite.
  • Can be scheduled for emails or exported to PDF.
  • Supports many different charts graphs and has plenty of filtering options.
  • Default dates parameters do not work.
  • Not a lot of room for custom queries to the end user.
  • Desktop customization software is buggy.
Quickly getting a reporting solution integrated.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
With the growth and expansion of our company into the overseas markets, we felt a need to be able to collaborate better on our projects and provide management with tools to get better insight into our Key Performance Indicators. We first on boarded our marketing and sales departments to the Tableau Server. Now we have dashboards being used by the implementation and engineering departments as well.
  • One of the main features of this product is the ease of generating reports. Dashboards can be shared among team members instantaneously.
  • Scheduling and alert notifications can be easily configured to help managers find out critical information in a timely fashion.
  • Some of the reports and dashboards generated by Tableau Server are not fully mobile responsive.
  • We have had several issues with Tableau being unable to communicate with other data sources and servers, possibly arising through some authentication failures.
In the few years that we have been using Tableau Server, we've had good success in utilizing it as the single point of data access and visualization.
Henry Yennie | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau Server is the backbone for emergency preparedness analytics for the Louisiana State Department of Health. As the lead agency for public health and medical services during an emergency, we collect a large amount of near real-time information from over 1,500 healthcare facilities. This data includes operational statuses, power statuses, fuel usage and needs, and census/bed availability. Tableau takes this data stream and transforms it into user-friendly visualizations for staff both in the field and in the State Emergency Operations Center. On a day-to-day basis, Tableau provides tools and interactive maps to our state trauma network so that they can determine the most appropriate facility for high risk patient routing.
  • Summarize complex data in an easy to understand format.
  • Very fast idea/need to realization timelines.
  • Ability for end users to interact with data sets, giving them filters, groupings and other tools to get the data they need.
  • Tableau's mapping capabilities are "almost there". We would love to have Tableau able to function as our sole GIS product. Each version of Tableau brings us closer to that goal.
  • We would like to have the ability to schedule data transfers. The new Data Prep tool is step in that direction.
  • We still have need to produce lists of summarized data. Making this process a little more straightforward would be nice.
Tableau Server is able to handle our data very efficiently and quickly. The design to publish cycle, using the Desktop Creator tool, is very fast making needed adjustments to visualizations very easy in a rapidly changing event. The ease with which a non-technical person can make changes to a visualization that is connected to our source data is unmatched. We can put this tool in the hands of "unsophisticated IT users" and have them productive quickly. This efficiency and usability is deeper with the mobile application. We now have field hospital coordinators using the mobile app to assist in patient routing and facility evacuations.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Across organization, augmenting our client-facing web portal that helps us optimize our clients' database marketing efforts.
  • Allows non-technical data scientists and analysts to approach and visualize data.
  • Allows reports prepared by non-technical analysts to be readily adapted by technicians into an always-live web portal.
  • Its "extract" capability, although imperfect, can help to digest and visualize larger amounts of data in a moderately performant way.
  • Consume hardware resources like crazy. It is implemented using a raft of heavy technologies, including Postres, Java, Apache httpd, and more.
  • It has decent support for tabular data, but this support is somewhat rigid.
  • It nags end users to upgrade their desktop versions frequently, even though this risks compatibility errors with the server.
  • It's a significant resource hog. To some degree this is understandable, but it is largely due to its use of many heavyweight technologies (Postgres, Java, Apache httpd, and more).
  • You can't change its use of port 443 when using SQL, forcing extra deployment complexity (e.g. proxy servers) in many deployment scenarios.
  • The look and feel of their "story" feature is surprisingly hard to customize (beyond basic style elements) -- it's "a row of blocky buttons" only.
  • It's geographic maps are fairly basic, and the UI controls for navigating them are clumsy.
Well suited when non-technical analysts need to approach and visualize data sets. Poorly suited for shops that are well-positioned to do their own, more nimble web application visualization (e.g. using D3).
Kishore Ummadisetti | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Tableau as the primary BI tool for Accurate organization. We used Tableau for creating dashboards, and we integrate those into our Clients portal using JS API. We also use the tool internally across all departments for data analysis and to build self-service reports/dashboards.
  • Tableau is an easy to use yet powerful analytics tool. We have created 100+ dashboards for our clients in a short time.
  • Tableau supports multiple data connectors to pull data from almost any database, and CRM tools. We are able to pull data into Tableau from multiple databases.
  • If your business is looking at a tool to put data in the user's hands and avoid IT requests overhead around reporting, Tableau is the tool.
  • It is not easy to subscribe to dashboards or send e-mails outside of Tableau users. We have to use open source solutions like VizAlerts to make this happen. I believe for a tool like Tableau this should be an out of box solution.
  • Even though Tableau is an easy to use tool, there is still a solid learning curve to get familiar with the use of Tableau. One should invest a good amount of time to get an organization to adapt to Tableau, especially if the organization hasn't already used similar tools already.
  • Tableau Desktop is powerful. Tableau Web Portal provides a lot of the same functionality as Tableau Desktop, yet there are lots of gaps.
  • Data blending is one of the more powerful features. However, this only works with limited data. If you are blending a million rows of a data source, we found it very difficult to blend.
Tableau Server works well in providing a self-service analytics tool. To work with live data, you better have the data in query efficient schema (data warehouse.) Tableau has a good security model. It is easy to integrate with other external tools.
David Vander Leest | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau Server is being used across multiple business platforms at Wells Enterprise. We have used it as our primary analytics tool and as our primary catalyst to provide self-service analytics to all business platforms. Our most active departments currently include Revenue Managment, Finance, Sales, Quality Assurance.
  • Tableau Server is a must-have if you want to easily foster an environment of collaboration of dashboards and analytics built by your end users.
  • Tableau Server has a strong and very flexible security model.
  • Upgrades and maintenance of Tableau Server are fairly painless.
  • Tableau Server provides a one-stop-shop for Tableau Desktop users to find data to work with.
  • Content Discovery can be challenging. Unless users have security to data sources or dashboards, they often don't know they are there.
  • Tableau Server doesn't natively support the ability to send PDF versions of dashboards to users that aren't Tableau Server users. An open source project was developed called VizAlerts that provides a workaround for this, but it should really just be built into the product.
  • There are no phone numbers to call if you need support. The only way to contact Tableau Support is via email. If we have an urgent problem we typically need to reach out to our account executive to get appropriate attention.
Tableau Server does a great job at visualizing data. It's very fast and flexible when dealing with data that comes from multiple sources. It also allows users to quickly pull in other non-federated data that may just live in a spreadsheet or file. Tableau is not necessarily the best fit if you want traditional tabular reports.
October 05, 2018

Tableau Server is great

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
At the moment just a small group is using it. However, we hope after we have more workbooks set up and people see the benefits, the user base will expand to the whole department and then organization. It allows for quick dissemination of the usual data and quick question answering, as well as consistent outputs within our group.
  • Quick access to data in one place that is easy to find
  • Ability for inexperienced users to interact with the data
  • Easy sharing, downloading. Everyone can get what they want.
  • Management of users is easy
  • Editing a workbook in Server has gotten much better, but it would be nice to add even more Desktop-like functionality.
  • Not being able to get rid of the Default project is annoying.
  • When tasks fail, send an email to the admin instead of just a notification in server.
  • Would be great to be able to purchase more licenses within Server.
It works best when the majority of people won't be building workbooks themselves, then the data can still be shared, but for a much lower cost than buying everyone desktop licenses.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
TS is used as a reporting framework that connects to a legacy SQL server that stores Time and Expense information for a national consulting company. We primary use tabluar\xtab reporting formats
  • Easy connection to SQL Server. Easy creation of SQL statement, data source for reporting. Easy drag and drop report creation
  • Flexible report formats
  • Easy to set permissions on a per User basis
  • We use Tab CMD extensively; documentation is poor (specifically on how to format some exports - a topic we recently had to rerseach).
  • We leverage xtab reports a lot, and we run into the 16 column limit
It works great for our applications; internal reporting directly connected to our back end database. In our case we were replacing the reporting tools that accompanied a legacy system - and Tableau performed that role easily. We're a middle sized company, and only have 12 licenses because adding more is too expensive...
Scott Peterson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau Server is used to access data and view analytics across different groups at my organization. It makes data from our data warehouse easily accessed and viewed by users.
  • Tableau Server does a good job of making data easily accessible for consumers of data and analytics.
  • Tableau Server is very easy to populate with data using extracts and storing that in the hyper data engine.
  • Tableau is very fast for viewing complicated analytics - even better when using extracts.
  • Tableau Online would be better if it used Encryption at rest and in transit - this would allow my organization to use it instead of managing our own VM in Azure with Tableau Server.
  • More color palettes would be nice for both Tableau Server and Desktop.
Tableau Server works well when you need to present a large dataset to consumers of the data and allow them to both use analytics and visualizations they design as well as being able to download the data into a tool like Excel where they may be more comfortable working.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau Server is used across the whole organization to deliver reports and dashboards.
  • Data presentation
  • Visual data exploration
  • Story telling
  • Deployment and management are quite hard.
  • Required Tableau Desktop for report design (embedded browser version is too weak and incomplete)
Good: Advanced Data analysis for reports creation. Internal users report consumption. Bad: Required lots of training to use all the features to create reports. Bad: Interactive dashboards are hard to build and not flexible enough.
Dan Colbert | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a Tableau OEM partner. We are a SaaS company with a web application that incorporates Tableau Server in the delivery of analytics for the education space. Through our web app - and by proxy, Tableau - our clients are able to run comparable analysis against a back-end data warehouse using the visuals we design, create, and maintain.
  • The visuals are beautiful and powerful, and the interface is easy to understand.
  • The Tableau REST API provides a very functional programmatic interface between our web app and the back-end server.
  • We use Tableau Server for Linux, which greatly simplifies the installation and maintenance of the server architecture.
  • While I have some thoughts for improvements in the Tableau Desktop application, the server environment is a powerful, growing, and improving software. No significant cons.
Tableau Server doesn't come cheap, so it is better suited for organizations with a large enough budget to get a return on the investment. It is also better suited for teams that are large enough where analysis-by-email can quickly become unmanageable.
Thomas Cook | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Tableau Server across the organization. It started in a business unit (Revenue Cycle, which handles healthcare billing, coding, claims, etc.) to help share information. From there it was shared with other business units, and Revenue Cycle also played a role as a center of excellence and consulting. Five years later it was absorbed by the main IT organization. Now we are in the process of rolling out, formalizing, and organizing that same role.
  • Democratizes information. Any user can share information.
  • The community is supportive.
  • Auditing has always been lacking. The repository has some information, but being able to see what is clicked and what filters are used is needed.
  • The UI has improved over the years, but finding content is still hard. People keep looking at custom portals or embedding content since it is hard to find.
  • The 2018.2 upgrade is onerous and we have been putting it off. Not just because of tabadmin to tsm changes but also because o the updater not making the upgrade seamless. I have to reset every configuration.
  • Backup and restore is slow.
Good for
  • if you want answers and interactivity
  • self-service
Not for:
  • well formatted and paginated pdf reports to print out
  • an Excel replacement
  • printing
September 23, 2018

Tableau Server and IT

Shaheed Ahmad | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used for data virtualization.
  • We were using a third party tool to visualize data in SSRS reports. Tableau is very helpful to visualize the data. Tableau visuals are easy to develop and need a very minimal amount of IT support.
  • It would be better if Tableau could work like Microsoft SSRS reports work. Through SSRS , we can call the Stored procedures and pass the parameter, but in Tableau there are a few constraints.
Visuals can be made quickly and with out having much technical background.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau is an amazing software, it’s very easy to create all kinds of reports. It can be well integrated with our systems.
  • Easy to build.
  • The Linux version is very stable.
  • Upgrades fast.
  • We can't open admin web because of the certificate issue.
  • It needs automatic backup and recovery.
It's good enough for most of our areas of need; so far I haven't found any use to which it is less suited.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
At our firm as we started building solutions for clients from overseas, we felt the need to have better analytics for our marketing and sales departments. Previously we had a wide array of different services that were pretty much offering the same results for us. We decided to go with Tableau Server to consolidate most of that information into a single source.
  • Reporting through Tableau Server is just a matter of few clicks. Anyone with the correct user access can we the dashboards instantaneously.
  • Using dynamic filtering, users can access the relevant sections of the reports without the need for any admin re-configuration.
  • Thus far I have not seen Tableau generated reports being mobile responsive.
  • Some of the navigation required to access workbooks, folders and projects can quickly get messy.
So far into our implementation of Tableau server for single point of data access and visualization we have seen good success. We've managed to retrieve data from different databases like Oracle and SQL server. Our next step is integrating our HR solution Workday with the Tableau Server as well.
September 17, 2018

Tableau - The One Stop Shop

Ryan Akana | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Tableau Server as the main repository for all reporting needs for the entire organization. It is used by all parts of the organization, from IT to Human Resources. About 90% of the data is pulled from our various SQL databases within the organization. With less than 10% of the data coming from external resources such as clients/vendors that are merged into some of our reports.

We also use Tableau to pull data for some of our third-party applications, since Tableau provides so many options for connecting to different data sources. We also use Tableau to create reports for data that resides in Microsoft SharePoint. It has basically become the one stop shop for all our reporting needs. We are looking forward to Tableau adding a scheduling feature to produce extracts from their application someday soon, wink, wink! =-)

I will also say that the software, from an administrator level, is very simple and easy to maintain. There are a few maintenance items that must be completed such as running tab admin - cleanup, since there is so much information that is stored in the cache of the Tableau Server, but you can schedule that to run on its own. It easily integrates with Active Directory, making it easy for us to manage user permissions to the various projects in Tableau. We manage all permissions at the project level and we do not go below that as it becomes a nightmare if you were to do that at the report level. Save yourself some time and headache by managing it at the project level.

Tableau allows you to set up a PROD, QA and DEV environment under one license, which is nice. When we perform an upgrade we will normally copy our PROD server and rename it to a QA server to perform the upgrade. Once the QA environment is upgraded we have a few of our analysts from different parts of the organization perform rigorous testing to ensure reports, functionality, processes, and so on, are working correctly in order to avoid any interruption to the business. Once everything has been signed off by the testers, we perform a back up of our PROD server, and after that we perform the upgrade. We haven't had any issues with our Tableau Servers ever, and we are always on the latest releases for Tableau. We perform two to three upgrades in a year in order to take advantage of all the latest and greatest that Tableau has to offer in order to give you an idea of how easy it is to upgrade to Tableau.
  • Various connections to different data sources all in one product. We have so many different data sources within our organization. Tableau makes it easy for us to have all of our reporting in one place.
  • The ability to leverage the software with the company's growth. We have acquired three companies in the last 3 years. Our company has grown from 800 to 1500 plus employees in that short amount of time. Our Tableau Server is the same from day one when we purchased the software, and that was 6 years ago. We haven't need to buy additional cores as we have eight cores right now and we are doing extremely well for an organization with such large growth.
  • The process of how one manages permissions to the different projects saves IT time and resources.
  • I would really like to have the ability to schedule a report as an extract (TXT, CSV, Excel, PDF, or other) that I can either email, place onto a network share, or other transfer method.)
It is well suited for any type of business or organization. I cannot see anyone or group that would not benefit for a software.
Duran Roberts | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau is being used across our entire organization for data analytics and reporting. The business problem it addresses is our business requirements, meaning us being able to keep a close watch on whether we're hitting our goals that were in the contracts with our clients.
  • Geo-mapping
  • Data drill-down
  • Sharing dashboards online
  • Better ways to move dashboard items, like when all items need to be moved 2 x or y radius to the right, down, etc.
  • More Graphs and Charts
  • Better color customization
  • Maybe a search bar for tools or other items
It's great with complex graphs but it isn't user-friendly for the intermediate user.
September 07, 2018

Experience with Tableau

Sandeep Munagala | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
When I started with GOGO, Tableau was one of the BI tools used across the company, where we have distributed usernames to multiple people for their development or usage. I played a key role to enable Tableau as an Enterprise tool with AD Authentication (OKTA Integration,) which helped hugely increase traffic to the Tableau Server.

Most of the departments like Finance, Supply Chain, Airline customers, etc., use Tableau. The only department that I see we are lagging in is HR. HR is looking forward to automating the dashboards, but due to connectivity issues with Workday (as Tableau doesn't have a Workday connector,) we are unable to automate the dashboards.

The Supply Chain department is very much impressed with the tool, as they have had a lot of work reduced at their end. Also, they have better tracking of the vendor details & gap analysis of the stock purchase, which saves a good amount of money for the company by avoiding penalties for late delivery.
  • Saves plenty of time in Development Work.
  • Better Visualization
  • Flexibility to connect to plenty of databases, if not create your data set, using WDC functionality
  • Easy Server maintenance & very quick releases by Tableau.
  • Workday connectivity will help easy integration for HR department & this will encourage more usage in our company
  • Enabling the XML format of the dashboard will help easily share the dashboard, like in COGNOS
There used to be a lot of limitations in the past for Tableau to integrate with various databases. Now most of the time, if we are not able to find the connector, we are encouraging users to provide the source of data and we are automating using R script to download the dataset on the server and utilize it from the server This is what's happening in our situation where we help users to automate the reports. Tableau is flexible in these situations.

As HR data is a larger chunk of data, we are unable to automate using R Script and have security issues with Workday. This would be a scenario where we'd have to look into alternatives.
Brett Mendes | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it as a part of an Analytics-as-a-Service offering for our clients. Clients purchase the service and we create an analytic database that brings together a number of source systems supporting customer service operations, from that database analyses are run based on various hypotheses and visualized using Tableau Server, which clients have purchased seat licenses to log in to and interact with. The administration is handled by myself and my team. The business problem being addressed is not specific to customer service operations, but we utilize it exclusively within that environment; namely, that 5-6 source systems (Automated Call Distributor, Workforce Management System, Quality Assurance System, Customer Satisfaction Surveys, Customer Relationship Management, etc.) are interdependent and yet exist in silos. While all of them are required to operate a CX operation, one can only look at the effectiveness of an operation through the lens of the individual systems. We design a data model to allow querying of data across systems in order to create a full "customer journey" so that the customer experience can be seen from start to finish.
  • Set up and administration are very easy. It takes little time to implement and structure according to the business needs.
  • Broad customization is possible through the use of embedded analytics. Even without that - simple tweaks such as replacing the landing page logo with a company logo and modifying the logos within the standard tableau server interface allow for enough customization to ensure professionalism.
  • Permission structures are thoughtful. It's not challenging to create groups of users that are able to access only the elements appropriate for them to be viewing.
  • .\tabadmin cleanup is an essential function that would benefit from an automated run option through the configuration menu. Currently a batch or bash script must be created and scheduled.
  • Tableau Server extracts are currently very good, but occasionally if a user needs to run a full refresh from within the server environment it can end up appearing to have worked, but bad data has still made its way through. the only solution for this that we have found thus far is to actually re-publish the workbook with a fresh extract
It's useful as a simple client portal for BI analytics or for sharing analyses across departments; it's also very useful as a repository of common queries and thus helps maintain governance when people may not be as skilled with SQL as one would like. It's not as well suited to data science and I would be hesitant to recommend it in that scenario.
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