Tableau - The One Stop Shop
September 17, 2018
Tableau - The One Stop Shop
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Tableau Server
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.
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.)
- Tableau is costly but I will say this: You get what you pay for when it comes to Tableau, Tableau Desktop and other Tableau products. I haven't been disappointed with anything Tableau has done or has to offer.