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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 Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 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

(1-25 of 39)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Gianluca Ruggiero | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Tableau Server as a data visualization tool for our customers. Our proprietary data are delivered to our customers via Tableau Server. Tableau Server is installed on our servers and we provide our customers with an URL for them to engage with our data and analyze them. Seriously TrustRadius, I don't know what to write anymore.
  • Data Visualization
  • Data Interaction
  • Flexibility to find the best visualization
  • Handling of Licenses
  • The "Activation Key" business is a thing of the past millennium, in 2022 it is ridiculous
  • Customer Service is HORRIBLE
  • Just don't ever buy it, it will make your life miserable.
The software is ok, but it was developed by people with their heads in the 80s and the Customer Service is so horrible that you don't want ever to do business with them. And since they have been acquired by Salesforce, things have only gotten worse, from ridiculous to plain farce.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau Server is an online platform to host and hold all the tableau workbooks, data sources, and related tableau data. Users should have a license in order to use Tableau server and its features. creating security, folder setup, automation, data refresh are some of the best features Tableau servers provides. Scheduling the data extracts and dashboard refresh is the main scope of our project
  • Security
  • extract refresh schedule
  • subscriptions to workbooks & Dashboards
  • download data in crosstab
  • download workbook as image, pdf, twbx
  • permissions should flow from primary folder if changes are made later.
  • download pdf content doesn't have scroll bar it just takes snapshot leaving some data
  • data cache issues should be resolved
Ask data is one of the new and good feature that is available in tableau server. Tableau Server is well suited for a data warehouse build and handling big data. Tableau data aggregation, transformation, clustering capability is powerful and easy to implement. The choice of charts and visualization tools is outstanding.
Bob Ladd | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it to deploy dashboards that help our decision makers across all companies. It helps our sales associates direct their attention to customers for changes in business activity. It helps our MFG department plan and visually see future demands. We use it to analyze our forecasting and on time delivery.
  • It always available and allows us to make it easy for users outside of the building get their BI info.
  • It's easy to manage and takes very little daily or monthly maintenance.
  • The subscription service really helps users stay on top of things with their alerts.
  • Doesn't send out PDF versions of the dashboards.
  • Tabcmd is old and needs to be updated to a visual client.
  • It is sometimes slow opening dashboards and the new data methodology hasn't proven the improvement as promised.
  • Is well suited at deploying BI dashboards to any audience that has a license.
  • It not good at servicing users outside of the license for one-off reporting. Microsoft BI does this very well.
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Tableau Server as an add-on service to our SAAS product. It's integrated via API, using "Trusted Tickets" functionality. Multitenant environments. It allows our clients some self-service reporting capability using pre-defined datasources which connect tableau to their SAAS product database.
  • It's pretty
  • Installs easily
  • Impresses decision makers
  • Support is costly and practically nonexistent
  • Their windows server application is fragile
  • Product not well designed for multitenant architectures
  • Licensing is convoluted in ways
As a person responsible for administering their self-hosted product, I would never recommend this to a collogue. Fragile product + ineffective support = operations nightmare. It breaks frequently (upgrades, extracts, backups/restores, sometimes a service just stops during normal usage), and basic support (costing 5 figures/yr) with a 3 bizday follow-up SLA on downtime events is essentially useless for anything more than functionality questions (which take weeks to resolve). Stack restarts take over 15 minutes and are required for just about every configuration change. [I believe] the product was a poor fit for our use-case (add-on service for multitenant customer SAAS applications) for several reasons: - There's no supported method for changing datasource connections, which is a problem if you plan on publishing data sources from dev to prod environment without Tableau Desktop and manual effort. You'll have to make your own tooling to modify the XML directly (unsupported) - Trusted ticket implementation is secured via IP whitelist. If you want to use a modern SAAS product and not have to manage this IP whitelist (every change requires 15min restart), you'll have to write your own ticket-granting service over top of this API. - Security architecture offers poor segmentation between client databases. You can very easily provide customer A access to customer B's database. This danger is aggravated by the lack of a supported method for modifying data source connections in an automated fashion. - All users exist at a server level. This adds to the "poor segmentation between sites" argument, and also complicates things when you have 2 clients bound to different sites, trying to add the same username "jsmith". But hey, it's really pretty. Our product team bought it, infra team has paid for it since.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau is being used as one of several reporting tools. Its primary use was for creating dashboards that could be leveraged by a large segment of the company. The web enablement allowed for broader user adoption than other tools adopted at the time of implementation. Navigation of the workbooks was also more palatable to users vs running individual reports.
  • Visualizations.
  • Simple deployment method.
  • Easy to navigate interface.
  • Server administration is cumbersome.
  • Recent changes (after 10.x) have required rewriting of admin scripts.
  • Cumbersome licensing management.
Tableau may be well suited to non-Microsoft shops. Its methodologies, internal management, and overall approach seem geared more toward Oracle/Java shops. It also does require a decent amount of care and feeding. Backups, upgrades, etc., tend to be cumbersome and require some level of IT knowledge, despite how the product is often sold. Smaller shops that wish to pursue Tableau may be better off leveraging their SaaS offerings.
September 13, 2019

Failed to meet expectations

Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau Server was purchased by the IT department in an effort to expand the institution's use of analytic data. Prior to buying Tableau Desktop, there was very minimal use of analytics data of any kind. Tableau Server was purchased with the intention of expanding the use of Tableau and storing data in a central repository for collaboration.
  • It's part of the Tableau ecosystem of products.
  • Easy connectivity to Tableau Desktop.
  • Easy installation.
  • Slow, even with a solid server running it.
  • Overly complicated.
  • Still not 100% sure why I need it in the first place.
We are a small organization, and it was a budget stretch to get Tableau Server in the first place but we took a chance. Our goal was sharing analytics data. Unfortunately, we found the product to be overly complicated. It was not easy to transfer data between Tableau Desktop and Server as advertised. That made sharing overly difficult, which was our primary goal. In the end, we chose not to renew the license and are pursuing other options for collaboration/sharing of analytics data.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized

Tableau server is used across multiple departments, with the bulk users in our reporting and finance department.

It allows end users to see more comprehensive/dynamic reports versus what we used. Our clients are now asking for access so they can start looking at reports that we have created.

  • It provides easier reporting for end users
  • It allows for better comprehensive reporting
  • It allows us to connect to multiple sources with one product
  • Desktop should not allow updates unless server is updated first
  • Need a better management tool that doesn't take a long time to start-up
  • Better documentation online
When multiple people need to look at the same report (either with or without Tableau desktop). Allowing users to see data dynamically versus an Excel spreadsheet.
Mathieu Gaouette | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau is being used mostly by marketing to get a good view of their customer base. It covers the present footprint in terms of product ownership and the trend in usage of services.

Tableau is used by data scientists to present data to managers and executive. It has a storytelling approach that facilitates the understanding of data and eases the decision-making process.
  • Tableau server's portal and general look is really convenient and pretty. Users feel comfortable using it.
  • The learning curve of Tableau Server from an end-user perspective is really short. For the creator of content, it is a little more complex but easy to learn. Tableau has really succeeded in creating a user-friendly software.
  • From an administration point of view, Tableau is great. Installation and housekeeping are really easy and quick.
  • Visuals are really appealing and will help "sell" your presentations.
  • Tableau allows connectivity to a huge selection of data sources and data formats.
  • Online training for software is free and of very good quality.
  • Tableau doesn't (at least when I used it) have custom widgets or elements in the creation of dashboards. Its main competitor, Power BI, allows this. Because of that, some visualizations are challenging and need the use of advanced tricks that most users don't know about.
  • Tableau logs a lot of information, and sometimes, getting the right information from these logs when something goes wrong is challenging.
  • Tableau support is not the quickest. This sounds bad, but I have to specify that I very rarely had to contact them. However, when I did, the answer took a few more days than with other providers.
Tableau Server should be considered in organizations where you have several consumers of data and fewer creators. The licensing of the server will make you save and allow you to have some governance over your dashboards.

In an environment where you have a lot of creators, the use of a server might not bring a lot of benefits, because creators using the desktop version can open and modify other people's dashboards.
December 28, 2018

Tableau Server Rocks!

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The medical department uses it to keep everything organized. It works very well.
  • Very well organized.
  • Menus are clear to understand.
  • The product works without issues.
  • Their technical support sometimes doesn't understand the issues.
  • One technician may know the product very well and another technician may not know the product well enough and has to engage a different team.
  • Their licensing is very strict, doesn't give me many options and if you run into any issues, you have to contact the licensing team via email and only email.
Document management and scheduling work very well. No complaints about the product.
Anand KK | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The entire organization of internal users and external users use the Tableau dashboards hosted on Tableau Server. We use Tableau to address health care analytics data.
  • The installation, upgrading and migrating to new hardware is straightforward
  • The Tableau Server admin can adjust the server processes to make it tailor-fit for the organization, hence increasing the dashboard and query performances.
  • The core-based licensing and user-based licensing of Tableau Server is very useful based on the required scenario.
  • Support for Exasol Data Connections in Tableau Server for Linux.
  • Publish Document Covering Tableau Server Architecture on 2018.2 with HA environment.
  • Improve historical reporting for extract schedules on Tableau Server.
The Tableau Server can be used based on different requirements and is very user-friendly.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
September 04, 2018

My Tableau server review

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Tableau Server is implemented as an enterprise visualization tool across the organization. At present we are migrating the reports/dashboards running in legacy tools. In the future, Tableau will be used to find the insights of the business happenings, which will help us make better decisions, identify business challenges, and learn how to improvise business solutions.
  • Architecture of the Tableau Server is very simple and easy to implement. It can be easily scaled up/scaled down based on the business needs
  • The licensing concepts of user-based/CPU core based is best in standards. We can choose based on our needs
  • Tableau DB connectors. It connects all types of data sources available and it is also made very simple and powerful
  • Too many releases of Tableau Server products. Maybe it could be half yearly so that we can plan for the upgrades of our server as needed
  • Two Node installation should support high availability by making the repository in both nodes
It is suited across all industries. Simple and powerful tool for any business solutions
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The Business Analytics department uses Tableau Server to share reports and data sources internally. A small number of visualizations are shared outside the department. We currently have 50 users and the majority of those log in at least once per month.
  • Shares data sources very well.
  • Solid security at the folder and file level.
  • Recently added a "read-only" licensing option.
  • Performance can be problematic when using MS SQL stored procedures as a published data source on Tableau Server. We've only tried this twice, but it has failed spectacularly under two completely different situations.
  • Maintenance upgrades are extremely slow. That may be improving in version 2018.2.
  • New subscription pricing models are more expensive than the discontinued perpetual licensing model.
We have not found an excellent use case. However, our limited number of users rarely complain, so that is probably a good sign.
Matt Fette | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have 55 licenses for Tableau Server. The licenses are dispersed across the organization . . . Executive Suite, Finance, Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain, Operations, QC, etc. We collect much more data in our DW than we are currently asked to report or visualize via Tableau. That being said, we have Tableau workbooks with dashboards that allow our data consumers to analyze customer profitability, product, brand & category performance, overall state of the business, fulfillment performance, etc. Our operations group uses Tableau workbooks and dashboards to forecast SKU demand and adjust pick location designations, etc. The product is very ingrained in our organization.
  • Tableau Server allows our Business Analysts to customize existing dashboards or connect to published data sources to do their own what-if analysis with needing our BI group to intervene to get them what they want. Careful thought, you need to get their adhoc results validated.
  • Tableau Server allows users to save filter settings and to save various workbooks/dashboards as favorites, either for themselves or publicly for all users to use.
  • Tableau Server allows the ability to subscribe to a dashboard and receive updates.
  • Tableau Server allows you to access the statistical data regarding what users are accessing, who is accessing it and how often, very useful
  • Tableau Server allows you to monitor the status of data source refreshes and to view errors that may have occurred.
  • Tableau server has an extravagant set of commands that allow you script many day to day reports, backups, etc.
  • Enhanced ability for end consumers to do ad-hoc analysis using near/pseudo English what if's. This is huge. We create dashboards working with end users. Afterward the business has some changes and the dashboards do not unless we/IT changes them. So the dashboards we develop pretty much follow the 80/20 Pareto rule. Over time, they only temporarily cover the most integral 20%. Unfortunately the other 80% can usually be ball parked.
  • The DB write-back capability that just came out in 2018.2 sounds very cool. Hopefully it's well documented and not too complex to implement/use.
  • Fix the TSM upgrade script for 2018.2. This is probable not the right forum.
Its well suited when a workbook/dashboard is flexible enough to continue to meet ever changing business needs, but that can degrade over time. The end user edit capability is great, but most of our users are not very technical and don't use it.
August 10, 2018

Great Tool!

Grant MacDonald | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used to display data from several data sources into easy to read charts and graphs. We are a manufacturing company and it allows us to visualize the data.

It is being used primarily by the Manufacturing support team.
  • Easy to use.
  • Installations and upgrades have always run smoothly.
  • Flexibility in the types of data sources.
  • Would like to see a lower cost licensing model for casual users.
Perfect for manufacturing environments where there are many disparate systems to collect from. Tableau provides connections to just about everything.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Tableau Server in a variety of ways. Currently in my Business Unit at OpinionLab we use an instance of Tableau Server for internal reporting needs for our Professional services team. We publish workbooks connected to live data sources, schedule a refresh, then using another application we send pushed reporting to a distribution list. At Verint Mainstream we use Tableau Server for our registered digital survey customers to set up reporting to interact and share within their organization.
  • The ability to share metrics across an organization with one source of truth (published data source)
  • Allows users the ability to author their own visualizations without having to purchase a Desktop license
  • Subscription and Data-Driven alerting to alert users to changes in their data
  • Add in the ability to search for fields while using web authorizing on Tableau Server. It's tedious to find the fields you want to add to a visualization when you have 100 fields and multiple joins to search through
  • Allow web authors the ability to reorder the worksheets after creation
  • Include ability to set up parameters while web authoring
Tableau Server is well suited for users who want the ability to interact with their data, find out the why, behind some of the changes they are seeing. Also great for sharing information across an organization; however this shares a static image.
Ilham AB | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We implemented Tableau in the company several years ago and the main the decision was because at that moment we do not have a COTS data visualization product in place. Previously we only relied on Microsoft Excel and an in-house tool for data visualization and BI. It was not interactive, hard to maintain and not user-friendly. There were many challenges like too much time for preparing the data and report, and many formulas and processes before producing a visualization that were creating a pain point. There was a necessity to create one governed reporting platform and centralized BI for all departments. So, it was a turning point to select Tableau for complimenting the company's purpose and goal.
  • Ease of use
  • Automatic data visualization
  • Lower cost of ownership
  • Interactive visual exploration
  • Multiple data sources
  • A license model need to be enhanced to capture small and medium business requirements
  • Capability for data discovery
  • Supporting the cloud functionality
If you need out-of-the-box software to create an analytical dashboard that is easy to use, then Tableau will be a fit for your purpose. Tableau supports multiple data sources and provides a conversion tool for your raw data. Drag-and-drop is a key feature to develop the data visualization. In our industry, this capability is critical to differentiate with the competitor. But you also need to consider Tableau's performance to directly analyze huge volumes of datasets.
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