Tableau- The Data Visualizer
Updated February 25, 2018

Tableau- The Data Visualizer

Chandra Bhanu Pratap Singh | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Tableau Desktop

We are using Tableau Desktop for creating dashboards for MIS reporting. These dashboards are being used by stakeholders and managers for their decisions process. They can see the changes over time and graphs, top performing agents and several similar details which are shown geographically or by state. We usually get requirements to update the dashboards as per their need so that it is easily understandable and conveys more information.

Pros

  • Graphs and charts are built very easily.
  • Tableau is very good at showing data visually
  • Easily help make a decision by looking at the pattern

Cons

  • The ETL part is missing in Tableau.
  • For huge and ambiguous data-sets, Tableau Desktop is not good.
  • Before analysis data preparation is mandatory.
1. As compared to SAP Business Objects, Tableau is very easy to use and quick in terms of implementation. Although SAP BO is reporting tool but both tool servers different purposes. SAP BO is a huge enterprises tool used mainly for creating large tabular reports while Tableau Desktop is a dash boarding tool used for visual representation of data.

2. When comparing QlikView with Tableau both are kind of similar tools, because the purpose of both tools are visual representation of data using dashboards. Although both tools are different at several points like QlikView has very good ETL and features compared to Tableau, while Tableau is very user-friendly and offers drag and drop features which makes it very easy for business users as well.
QlikView, SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform
Tableau is well suited for scenarios where we need to show data visually instead of tabular data. Because Tableau Desktop helps in summarizing the data, and summary data can be well presented in visual form only. If we have tabular data we need to first perform a few calculations and based on that we can create fields which will be used for creating graphs and charts.

Tableau Desktop Feature Ratings

Pixel Perfect reports
8
Customizable dashboards
9
Report Formatting Templates
9
Drill-down analysis
9
Formatting capabilities
10
Integration with R or other statistical packages
9
Report sharing and collaboration
10
Publish to Web
10
Publish to PDF
10
Report Versioning
10
Report Delivery Scheduling
8
Delivery to Remote Servers
8
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
10
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
9
Predictive Analytics
9
Multi-User Support (named login)
9
Role-Based Security Model
8
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
8
Single Sign-On (SSO)
8
Responsive Design for Web Access
10
Mobile Application
8
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
10
REST API
Not Rated
Javascript API
9
iFrames
Not Rated
Java API
Not Rated
Themeable User Interface (UI)
Not Rated
Customizable Platform (Open Source)
Not Rated

Using Tableau Desktop

100 - Most of they either prepare Tableau dashboards for their clients or they support tableau for their clients
3 - In my own project we have three people who are providing tableau support
  • For their own Decision making process
  • For business forecast
  • For Reporting purpose
  • To see dynamic dashboards for visual analysis
  • For decision making process
  • Earlier we were using SAP Business Objects for reporting purpose in which even a little change takes up a lot of time, but now after moving to Tableau it has become quite easy and time saving.

Evaluating Tableau Desktop and Competitors

Yes - Tableau replaced SAP Business Objects is my project, this was because for interactive visualization purpose business objects was not good, so we have to go for some visualization tool and Tableau was best to be considered due to its easy to use, less training and quick setup features and obviously business requirement.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Analyst Reports
  • Third-party Reviews
The main factor in Purchasing tableau was its usability and quick setup, minimal training.
The evaluation and selection process would be kind of similar, although for big dataset I would like to choose some tool which uses in-memory technology for faster data retrieval.

Tableau Desktop Implementation

Be very specific about the version of tableau desktop you are going to use since supporting version of tableau server also needs to set up.
Yes - Data Source and Data Preparation
Setting up 4 environments(Dev, Build, UAT and Prod)
Setting up connection and creating Tableau extracts
building dashboards
Publishing, Security and maintainance
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled - This was very important part of the project, as it was an agile project the requirements for an update was frequent, so maintaining the projects change
requests were very important. So every request has to go through a change request and approval only after that the changes use to go live.
  • Several change requests were raised parallely so maintaing the que was getting difficult.
  • We have to come up with a change window only when changes could be applied.
  • We have to keep the timeline of changes so that it doesn't overlap with the previous request of the same dashboard.

Tableau Desktop Training

  • Online training
  • Self-taught
The training for new users are quite good because it covers topic wise training and the best part was that it also had video tutorials which are very helpful.
Without training also Tableau can be mastered by you will have to give more time to practice the concepts and also need to go through online resources.

Tableau Desktop Support

Because I have never really faced any issue with the support team and they are usually quite active so it's quite helpful.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support cares about my success
Need to explain problems multiple times
No - Basically, Tableau has very good and active user community and any question are answered very quickly. Multiple times i had situations where i had to post on tableau community about my issues and community users were so active that I got 2-3 answers within 2 hrs.
Yes - There was an issue publishing data online, in that case, contact support although that was not a bug.
During the time of setting up tableau online they were really helpful, I would say that was kind of exceptional support but it could have been faster.

Using Tableau Desktop

I am really a fan of tableau for its quick setup, data connection, dashboard creation time and very easy to use UI.
As i have used multiple Bi tools like QlikView and SAP BO, i can say all other tools take really long time in performing above functionalities except QlikView which is really fast in term of performing analysis.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
None
  • Building basic charts from already available show me is one of the quickest and easiest thing in any BI tool
  • connecting to data is quite simple we don't need to write long queries(unless we want to).
  • arranging sheets in the dashboard and using filters are just clicks away, anyone can do it by first chance only.
  • Using calculated fields for special functionalities
  • Understanding and using LOD functions can be cumbersome for new users
  • building advanced graphs require a deep understanding of several advanced tableau features, which comes from regular uses.
Yes - The best thing is you can see your published content from a mobile client at your ease.
Apart from this tableau features mobile specific dashboard building, like based on mobile screen size and resolution you can create your dashboard.

Tableau Desktop Reliability

Although tableau is highly interactive and fast but with very large dataset its performance degrades heavily. So up to certain extent its really good but after that we have to take care of its performance issues.
I have really never faced any serious issue with this tool, although in some versions there were crashing issues were there.
The performance of tableau heavily depends on size of data and sheet objects and visualizations used. So yes the performance of tableau degrades based on its complexity.

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