Tableau Reviews

Pros
There are many features which lot of users would have liked:- 1. Connection to almost all database 2. Many types of Charts can be created including Sankey, Doughnut, Maps etc. 3. Its has the feature of data blending and data extraction 4. Dashboards can be viewed on multiple devices like tablet, mobile and laptops. 5. Its really fast while drilling down or filtering out from any dashboard.

Cons
Its a bit expensive tool as compared to other data visualization tools however its a value for money.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
- Very intuitive way o assemble data, no need for programming or special commands - Easily change data from numeric to alphanumeric - The most common and useful charts are available - Easy to breakdown data into several clusters - I once plotted 6 parameters in a 2 dimensional chart: X, Y, bubble size, color, name, icon - You can build special read-only docs with the functionality to be read by Tableu Reader (as in acrobat reader) - You can customize label, axis, trend and references lines

Cons
- Eventually some very specific charts are not there as chord, tornado, tree maps, nodes, gauges, alluvial diagram, dendograms - Even with all the clustering, it lacks statistical analysis as Anova, hypothesis test between two set of data, normal probability plot

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
So Easy to Clean and Reorganize data , data cleaning takes forever via database or Excel, Tableau makes it easy to load and clean before its ready for analysis

Cons
Takes to much time at first load or update large amount of data. Once it load successfully then you are good to go

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Tableau is a great data visualization tool. If you need to make charts, graphs, tables or other types of data visuals, Tableau can get it done. You are able to upload files or connect directly to data sources on a server. After data is loaded, it is literally a drag and drop interface.

Cons
Tableau is great for creating visuals but is not so great as a data analysis tool. It lacks the ability to analyze and manipulate data that uses complex formulas and calculations.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
The software is user friendly and easy to figure out by reading books (manuals) and watching tutorial videos.

Cons
The company's customer support is lacking. The statistical analysis part of the software is weak. It will get you by the minimum types of calculations.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
I like that you can merge different data sources to generate new views of data. for example, overlay a census report above your sales data and have a demographic profile of sales for the country. Also the hundred different graphs and charts to choose from. this scores me high points with the executives when I show them a fancy graphic in meetings.

Cons
We had some trouble with tableau speaking to our servers and applications which took longer that we wanted before we could start using live data to run reports. You must clean your data before you upload to tableau. the data scrubbing system on tableau needs work. This makes it difficult when using live data. I usually just use and extract, clean and upload.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Easy way to create reports, graphics and play with your data if you take in consideration all the formulas you have to create in Excel and the knowledge you need to have to be able to work with Excel, This software it's good for people who know how to read data but don't know how to use excel.

Cons
sometimes it's a little bit complicated create some specific reports from scratch special in the early stage of use and start having doubts about the software and you start thinking to go back to Excel

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
The interactive interface is easy to manipulate once information is ingested into the program as long as the data is following the rules-based parameters that you've set up. The labelling of data enables an easy story to be compiled when sent around to internal stakeholders.

Cons
There is a lack of diversity and modelling that can happen as the system is not used to cross-data sourced systems. The speed of the system can be slow. Not to mention there is a lack of plugins or API into other systems.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
1) Rich options for inputting data ranging from CSV, Excel, SQL to almost every source. 2) Lots of data presentation/interpretation options available, Tableau provides the options ranging from table to different graphs itself based on the data selected. 3)In-depth analysis of data is easily possible. 4)The dashboards created can be set to update manually or relative to dates. 5) The created reports can be shared easily for view with teams. 6)Custom indicators can be created quickly.

Cons
1)The software for new learners is available for only 2 weeks, there should be at least 3 months period. 2)The cost of the product is also high.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
The results that Tableau can create are stunning and very helpful. I have used it on a few jobs and have enjoyed it each time. I have used competitor software, and by far Tableau has been the most enjoyable.

Cons
There is a learning curve when using the software for the first time. However, Tableau has a lot of tutorial videos, which have been very helpful.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Tableau has a good community support, almost any question that you get has been already answered, Tableau supports any type of datasources, it supports data from a simple spread sheet to any modern time Databases (such as Snowflake , AWS Redshift , psql, mysql etc...) Dataset can also be a query or joining multiple tables etc, which gives us a flexibility to compute required datas in the initial stage itself so that worksheet creation becomes simpler, Tableau has a wide set of functions and operator that can be used for data processing and has verity of visualisation options from a simple table to complex charts, histograms, etc .. We have a option to use live datasource or schedule the data refresh on the extracted datasource to improve the performance of the dashboard, has good verity of filter support using which data can be drilled down slice and diced, supports column level sorting etc .., the dashboard can be created using set of worksheet, worksheets are easy to create with the help of drag and droop support, most of the things here is drag and drop which makes it more easier to use Tableau server maintains all versions of the dashboard, it kind of ensures version control

Cons
Tableau desktop application can perform slow when we are dealing with large data set, especially when dragging and dropping KPI's on switching from one worksheet to another, can reduce the development speed, so to avoid this use a small data set for development. When we are using Extracted Datasource the publishing to server and importing to desktop works really slow, since it is transferring the extracted data along with the tableau logic, Editing the alias of table columns are quit tricky not flexible, In filters the Dropdown listing are hard coded strings, it wold have been better if we could us a dimensions or values and and also if it supported chain filtering use of functions like TP90, Average etc , require the data set to be extracted , will not work with live data.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Expansive functionality that allows the user to both manipulate and export data in a wide variety of formats. Export as an image, excel workbook, PDF file, Powerpoint or more. Multiple custom filter options that allow you to sort to the data that is most important to your needs. Easy to navigate through reports and convenient features such as adding favorites that will show up on your dashboard. Clean and professional interface that helps with organization of projects. Sharing reports within your organization is simple and there are restriction features which will allow you to determine who has access to the data sets as you see fit. Software gives information on when data was last refreshed, if the report is in real-time, or when the data is scheduled to refresh again.

Cons
Inactivity will cause you to have to refresh the page and remove any applied filters which will require you to wait again for the filtered data to load. This can be a little frustrating especially when pulling very large data sets that take a long time to load before you can pull them and then forgetting to export the data before the page refreshes. However, this is a rare occurrence as the refresh time is pretty generous, at least a couple of hours in my experience. Nevertheless, something to note for improvement in future versions.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Tableau has changed the BI world a lot. It has brought in a software, using with business user can create dashboard & reports on the fly and can check what is there inside. It allows the user to read through the data and derive the insights without much technical analysis. First it can connect to any database (I know about 44 database it connects) and you can set the data, slice the data needed for current analysis and then you can do quick reporting. It provide multiple features, like different charts, graphs and tables and mathematical and statistical functions for analysis. Once you have create multiple visuals you can put them onto one dashboard or multiple dashboards into a story and present the same to business

Cons
Even though it has rich features but it can support the Enterprise BI needs like business object or Cognos does. It does not provide all the feature for E L T (extraction, load and transform) which requires complex transactions. As data gets huge the graphs and charts become unreadable. also, this software is more useful to the business user for personal purpose than company wide reporting etc. The administration part of it needs a lot.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Tableau is exceptionally easy to pick up and be productive, and has the ability to connect to almost any data source you can imagine, including REST APIs (though this is a pretty advanced process). Cross database joins are an amazing feature that allow you to mix data from Excel, Oracle, MySQL and others on a single dashboard. There are a ton of online resources available from Tableau, and the broader user community which help you in the event that you get stuck on a thorny issue. Tableau also supports the Tableau Public desktop software which allows anyone to create and share visualizations for free on the web (though data sources are severely limited with Tableau Public).

Cons
Price is an issue, particularly if you're an individual or a small business. Woe be unto you if you're a small business and you'd like to set up a Tableau server. There are some functions which we've all grown accustomed to in Excel which new users will expect to be in Tableau but just aren't--robust Conditional Formatting, for instance. However, in most cases there are workarounds and other ways of accomplishing the same task. While it's easy to become quickly productive, most users will outgrow the easy stuff pretty quickly as they attempt join new data sources, or produce more complicated visualizations.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
I love Tableau because, to me, there is almost nothing else out there that does data visualization so quickly and so effectively. I love that you can import almost any kind of data source (I only use SQL or Excel as sources, but there are hundreds of other options). I love that you can then add your own calculated fields, group data into custom buckets, and create parameters which the user can input on the published workbook. I love that you can visualize the data so quickly and in so many ways (with color and shape/size as further attributes). It's like a pivot chart in Excel but so much more agile to use! Finally, I love that you can then build dashboards with these individual reports/worksheets that you create, publish them onto the web, and essentially "set it and forget it," thereby providing your end users with future reporting that is automatic and requires no further work on your end! The real beauty is the creation of alerts and subscriptions, which can email users on a schedule or depending on certain conditions. That's when life really gets exciting--it's like having a full-time robot managing your processes!

Cons
I definitely wish Tableau could write back to a database. That would be amazing. I've heard it's in the works, but for now, it's still just on my wish list. I dislike various aspects about Tableau that can make it quite tricky to use. When you publish a data source, you should really publish it first before creating any calculated fields, groups, or parameters. Otherwise, it becomes much more difficult to edit these fields later as you have to re-download the published data source to make your edits to those fields, and then republish your data source, which results in my having to ask IT to re-input the server refresh password to get the data to refresh on a schedule again. This is a tremendous headache. So it's best to create and save new fields at the workbook level, not the data source level. There are also a great many bugs I still run into with Tableau from time to time. Strange behaviors that show me it was created by a human being, as all software is. There is usually a way to figure out a workaround but you have to get creative. Tableau is quirky, for sure. Some actions in the local program work great but don't necessarily translate to the web form. For example, if you create a calculated field that depends on data from two different sources, that works great locally, but it doesn't work well once you publish those data sources to the Tableau Server, because, for some reason, it does not allow the calculation to draw from the separately published data.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Tableau is centered around you as a user asking questions to your data. It is as simple as that and it works in ways not imagined before. Via graphical user antierface and drag and drop you combine aspects of your data and visualize relations. The coolest thing is that Tableau supports you without pushing or distracting. The process is emergent and makes it possible to walk the line from coherence to causality and have fun along the way. The End results look great and can be reformated by a couple of clicks in order to shift perspective or look from a different angle or with a different point of interest towards your findings. Tableu picks you up where you are and you can run it as SAAS or on premise, depending on your preferences. Also the API is simple and powerful, making the integration as a dedicated reporting and statistcs module, or more precise data visualisation playground to your existing product easy and convenient. By doing so you can add tableaus product-versatility, ease of use and beauty to a product and participate from its user friendly and open aproach to data analysis.

Cons
The licensing was a bit of a hassle as we started in the early days of tableau. Also Sales were very eager and pretty actively tried to support us. This never was a bad thing, just a bit too much. Also Tableau introduced support for document based databases rather later than earlier so we had a slight wait there. Then again, every time the did include a feature it was just bug free and worked like a charm so this was allright as well. Two things are especially important when evaluating Tableau, from my point of view: The data you whish to process with it must adhere to a minimal standard (or you will have to do a lot of conversion before you can enjoy it within tableau). So older datasources might become somewhat bothersome or at least require a preprocessing step. Most important is that you understand what tableau is for: You will have a great time when dynamically and actively exploring data, even rapidly changing data or real time streams. If you use a tool for creating static reports you waste the potential of this great piece of human engineering and might run into issues.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
I have tried many ways to organize my files, especially my data for work. I had tons of trial and errors with different software. I tried Tableau and I have been using it ever since. Tableau lets me store my files and so much more. Tableau allows me to view my data in a way that I wanted it to be shown, organized and sorted. I can access different files using cloud and data warehouses. No other software allows me to merge two different data and viewing them as one except for Tableau. And because my data are to be shared with most of my co-workers, it allows me to do just that. It is amazing how easily everyone in my team can access the files through online and server. Another great thing about Tableau is its availability on iOS, Mac and windows, which increases the ease of my team’s accessibility. My work requires me to review different trends on different topics and with a simple drag and click; I am allowed to review what I need with Tableau. It seems that Tableau is really created for my needs; it is just amazing that this software can be of so much help.

Cons
Tableau is great but it really was confusing at first, especially without any help or tutorial, the software had too many functions that it can take time to be able to learn a single task in it. A helpful solution is that Tableau has a help area where frequently faced difficulties can be answered and since many has already been using it, asking for help from others was not that hard. It was not that difficult to learn the functions of Tableau.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
I have been using Tableau Desktop for over five years now and I still get excited about it. First, Tableau is so easy to learn and use--the intuitive interface allows even first-time users to create amazing visualizations. Second, Tableau is a time saver. What used to take me weeks now takes days and what used to take days now takes minutes. Third, Tableau is versatile. There are many different chart types available, and with the ability to tweak everything from size to font to color, your imagination is the only limit. Fourth, Tableau is always evolving and improving. With each update, Tableau adds new features and capabilities that continuously make my job easier to perform. The software is capable of connecting with data in many different formats from spreadsheets and SQL to PDF's and spatial files, making it useful for any field or company that works with data. I could go on and on about the benefits of using Tableau, but the best way to understand my enthusiasm is to try the product--it speaks for itself!

Cons
Sometimes large data files can take several minutes to load. Tableau allows for the creation of extracts to speed up the process, but the initial upload still takes time. Tableau also does not have an auto-save feature, which has caused me to lose work on several occasions.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
It's pretty easy to use Tableau, it's really intuitive, colourful and self explanatory. The overall design of this software comes in hand with charts and pretty neat visualisation tools. The charts are really user-friendly and have some default values that are subject to formatting, painting, resizing, etc. to fit your needs. Has some great built in functions on Server that allow users to pull the raw data directly or in some form that they need the report. Subscription option on server is a great feature that allows you to get daily/weekly or monthly reports on your email address. Also data source feature of this software is a fantastic part of this tool, as you'll able to connect almost anything on the market, from SQL queries and excel files on OneDrive to Tables on Azure or lists on SharePoint.

Cons
Performance is a little bit tricky, as in any other software. When you use big chunks of data, it can cause some troubles in speed and charts loading. If you add some joins, blends or multiple data source dashboards, and you have data sets of multiple million rows, that will cause some headaches, but just until you learn to manipulate the data and prepare the data for your charts.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
The easiness on creating simple reports don't obfuscate its power on creating complex dashboards. If you want to create a simple bar graph that shows your sales amount, you can do it easily and quickly, but it doesn't take out the tools and mechanisms that allows advanced users and consultants to do more, like creating complex non-existent (not ready-available in the tool, but possible) charts like exploded bar charts. It supports formulas and also have a very good engine for it, as you can define one and reference it by its name wherever you need. As an analytics consultant, I've seen many other reporting tools, like Qlik View (and Sense), Power BI, SAP Lumira and so on, so I can tell that Tableau is a major competitor in segment.

Cons
A common problem that takes place inside large companies lies on the difference between how we think Tableau looks for data and how it actually does. At one of the cases we have SAP Hana as a database with its views as data source and Tableau as the reporting tool. Some of our dashboards have been stated as "slow", but we figured out that the problem was not on the columns that was available and being used by Tableau, but in the other columns. The Tableau doesn't ever create the same SQL as we are expecting for a situation, it has a complex way to determine the better SQL for the best user experience. This slowness is known wherever you ask for "Tableau main problems". So the problem was not entirely on Tableau, but in the way we created the views. This is a very light con that has the main purpose to aware software buyers instead of saying "don't buy". In short, the slowness may lie on data source instead of Tableau's engine. You should care about how data is delivered to it.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
• Awesome BI Tool • Very User-friendly • Pretty visualization • Easy to ramp up. Even new users can get to the speed really fast • Tableau Reader is free - so developers can make it and anyone can view it for free • Creating Interactive Dashboards and Storyboards is an awesome way to tell a story with the data - Great for presentations! • While you can have only limited developer licenses but pretty much anyone in your organization can view or even interact with Tableau reports on the server - which is very nice if your audience is huge. Easy to export data/reports in Excel and PDF.

Cons
• Not much flexible for numeric/tabular reports, if you need a BI Tool for Finance reports - you really need this part! • If you are building a tabular report with numbers you will miss few very basic and must have things - assigning row numbers. There is no such feature to append row numbers. • In tabular reports, your hierarchy will remain fixed for every section. You can't have 2 rows in section and 3 in other. All secitions will be rigid.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
I love each and everything about working with Tableau . It is by far the best tool for visualization and none of the other tools is a match for its versatile uses. I like the ease of use and step by step guidelines. What I like most about Tableau is its integration with a vast number of Softwares, platforms, and databases which I do not think are offered by a lot of other visualization Softwares. Tableaus ability to handle customized calculated fields, create stories and dashboards and animations are some of its strongest points that make it a market competitor in Viz

Cons
There are a lot of features on one single interface as Tableau wants to maximize the user experience. But because there is so much on the one single interface that tableau has, a lot of features go unnoticed and unused. Also since there are so many features and functionalities, it sometimes is difficult to locate a particular functionality. Being an avid user, I have noticed that sometimes, arranging pills in a particular order on rows and columns, changes and undoes the entire visualization to a backtracked point which undoes important steps at times and leads to rework.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
How easily it can retrieve the data from worksheets and sql server is really amazing. Once done it is easy to publish or put this into production. I like the capabilities it has to offer on how to visualize data with simple chart techniques. Also hover over option helps to provide more details for a data point either by calculated field or with an picture.

Cons
Fewer time it becomes difficult to process larger amount of data and it does not offer support to google big query. So manual extraction or an intermediate source has to be used.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Tableau is the software I use most (outside of Excel). The software's visualization tools are nice, at times amazing. Tableau connects with every data source I've ever needed (with the exception of one problem). The interactive capabilities and Tableau Public make for a perfect fit for a beginner to intermediate data visualizer. Advanced data visualizers probably find the functionality somewhat constraining, but that's one of the benefits of the software. Tableau is more than just a supped-up Excel graphics system. The analytical capabilities, although not best in class, offer all the basic calculations that most users will ever need.

Cons
Tableau is limited in its analytical capabilities. Tableau is working on making its use of R script more user friendly, although this requires the user to know R. Tableau's graphs are also somewhat limited at times, and Tableau for some reason takes pride in limiting its options (it apparently knows better than the user on what graphs are useful).

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I'm a K-4 public educator who uses Tableau to analyze and display network-wide student achievement data. As the literacy director for six elementary schools, I analyze scholar data on a daily basis. I primarily use Tableau to display English quiz results for each of my schools to compare and contrast performance by question and by standard. I appreciate the ability to categorize data (by school, by section, by question, by standard) and to easily sync it with our data uploading system (we use Illuminate). Displays are easy to read and easy to implement -- overall a pleasant user experience. I really like how you can create workbooks on Tableau that will auto refresh whenever you open them. This is SUPER helpful to me considering I analyze data daily. Given that I work with multiple schools across multiple grades, the filtering options that Tableau offers are also very helpful to my work. I also appreciate that it's free, even though I'm not the one making all the high level budget decisions.

Cons
It took me about 2-3 hours of perusing the internet to feel comfortable using Tableau. Perhaps they offer user support resources but I did not have any access to them. It's definitely not the most self-explanatory software out there, and I wish there was an easier way to either train myself on how to use it or read articles/watch videos that could quickly help me learn how to use it efficiently.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10