Skip to main content
TrustRadius
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,…

Read more
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 …
Continue reading
TrustRadius Insights
TrustRadius Insights

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 …
Continue reading

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. …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

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)
    7.5
    75%
Return to navigation

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
Return to navigation

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
Return to navigation

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.

7.5
Avg 8.6

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

7.7
Avg 8.0

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another

7.2
Avg 7.9
Return to navigation

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 Integrations

Tableau Server Competitors

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

Tableau Server Downloadables

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).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(875)

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 111)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
January 09, 2023

An experienced general review for Tableau Server

Verified User
Manager in Sales
Consumer Goods Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Likelihood to Recommend
I have done many projects on Tableau Desktop, Public and need to share a large data sets or completed projects with clients so i just shared on Tableau Server and provided links to see or approve without any data loss and security provided to our data . Little bit need some technical training to get used to of it, it has great features and options to get your work easily done if you are well trained.
June 30, 2022

The WORST company to do business with

Gianluca Ruggiero | TrustRadius Reviewer
Gianluca Ruggiero
CEO & Founder
MASSIVE (Market Research, 1-10 employees)
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
January 14, 2022

Data Analytics with Tableau

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Computer & Network Security Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
December 02, 2021

Laddy's Tableau Server Review

Bob Ladd | TrustRadius Reviewer
Bob Ladd
Vice President Global Procurement & Manufacturing
Potter Electric Signal Co. (Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, 201-500 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
  • 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.
November 16, 2021

Pretty. Unstable product + poor support = operations nightmare.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Information Technology & Services Company, 51-200 employees
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
November 13, 2021

Tableau Server is a world class product

Verified User
Project Manager in Information Technology
Financial Services Company, 11-50 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
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 visualisation tools is outstanding. Customisation and dynamic data visualisation capability is superb. The user interface takes some time getting used to.
October 05, 2021

Tableau to the rescue

Verified User
Analyst in Finance and Accounting
Financial Services Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited where data is clearly arranged in a particular format and is less useful if the data is not in the format usable by tableau
The formulas are sometimes difficult to enter into tableau and that restricts some analysis to be performed.
Visualization within tableau is the best but the trend line graphs are not great
March 18, 2020

Tableau - Good Viz, Poor Admin

Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Architecture & Planning Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
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

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Higher Education Company, 51-200 employees
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
May 17, 2019

Tableau Server Review

Verified User
Technician in Information Technology
Machinery Company, 201-500 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau Server is great for gathering data from different sources and displaying that data through dashboards and reports that are easy to create and modify. It can be easily used on a mobile platform. However, Tableau Server can be expensive for a company, and may not be able to create all kinds of graphs, dashboards, and reports.
May 13, 2019

Tableau Server for Sharing and collaboration of Dasboards

KM
Kanthesh MALLESH
RPA Developer
DevTools (Financial Services, 11-50 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
It doesn't have any particular scenarios...but If you are using Tableau Desktop and if you want to share your dashboard with other people in your organization, then you need to go for Tableau Server for sharing and collaboration. If you want to share your dashboard by using cloud-based functionality, then Tableau Online is sufficient. Tableau Server is not required.
March 26, 2019

Tableau Server is a great tool for small, medium, and large companies

Jacob Rasmussen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Jacob Rasmussen
Data Engineer
Qualtrics (Computer Software, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau Server is extremely well suited for a company with a few dedicated analysts creating dashboards and reports for a few stakeholders. It is also great at handling a large amount of report viewers, but it is more expensive because you have to pay for each user.
January 28, 2019

Tableau Server is an absolute must for getting the most out of the Tableau Platform.

Verified User
Program Manager in Customer Service
Computer Software Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
The scenario where you need Tableau Desktop is if you need to share the content of workbooks across a broad audience, and access it through an on-demand web interface. The alternative being downloading a workbook from some shared drive and opening it in Tableau Desktop. I suppose the latter could work in small team environments, but that would be very tedious for anything beyond a small project.
January 24, 2019

Getting up and ready with a great data visualization platform in a few days with Tableau Server

Mathieu Gaouette | TrustRadius Reviewer
Mathieu Gaouette
Consultant BI senior/Administrateur - spécialité SAS
Prospective MG inc. (Telecommunications, 10,001+ employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
January 09, 2019

Tableau Server is perfect for real-time visualization and interactive dashboards, not for advanced analytics

Thomas Young | TrustRadius Reviewer
Thomas Young
Owner, previous CEO
Econometric Studios (Financial Services, 10,001+ employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau Server is awesome for creating easy to understand visualizations for busy executives. An analyst can be up and running with some cool visualizations fairly quickly. But, if you're thinking of using Tableau Server for real machine learning, this is not the tool.
January 02, 2019

Intuitive and easy BI

VM
Viktor Mulac
Senior Consultant
A.T. Kearney (Management Consulting, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
If you have to quickly explore a large volume of unknown big data (really large tables), then Tableau is a great choice.
It is a great tool for any ad-hoc analysis that has to deliver an interactive story to management (client), it will not only deliver nice visualizations, but will also allow for drill-downs to the primary data and proof for your audience that your numbers in the presented graph are correct
December 28, 2018

Tableau: Powerful, Flexible, Agile

Verified User
Executive in Information Technology
Education Management Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau is a fully agnostic tool for simply representing complex data. If thought is given to the design of the visualizations, they are very powerful and intuitive to use. We recently used Tableau to go deeper into our staffing. We looked at various demographic profiles of attendance centers to see which ones should receive more FTE. This would have taken much longer and been much less insightful without Tableau.
December 20, 2018

Tableau Server: A No-Brainer

Cody Kimball | TrustRadius Reviewer
Cody Kimball
Machine Learning Engineer
The Data Guy (E-Learning, 501-1000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
If you have sensitive data that you are wanting to share in a High Level Visual Analytics environment, Tableau Server is the way to go. Your executives will appreciate no longer wondering how their business is actually doing, but can in a lot of cases have real-time visual depictions on the health of their companies, or at least accurate as of the previous day (depending on your data ecosystem).
November 29, 2018

Tableau Server - Connecting the visualization

Subhadipto Poddar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Subhadipto Poddar
Research Assistant
Iowa State University (Higher Education, 5001-10,000 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
When you are using it to collaborate with other Tableau Servers, it is very useful. However, if you have data sets to be added from another sheet, it is not possible using Tableau Server. Tableau desktop version needs to be used to cope up with such a scenario. Thus we should have both Tableau Server as well as the desktop accounts.
November 02, 2018

Tableau is a gold mine, be the first or last, worth a dig!

Sachin Basappa | TrustRadius Reviewer
Sachin Basappa
Business Analyst III - Consultant
Neo Prism Solutions LLC (Transportation/Trucking/Railroad, 501-1000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited in an industry rich with data flow and more room for public information. The reason behind the public information use case is that can Tableau can be made visualize value, and in return adds value to proof of concepts or detailed plan. Tableau Server is economical, and many organizations look for such products, as it is no harm to test and try such an enterprise tool.
Return to navigation