Excellent tool for Data Visualization with simplicity

I have worked on domains like Telecom and Network where in I have been using Tableau. Its really liked by senior management as it shows each and every bit very clearly to relevant stake holders. For example, Marketing head likes region wise revenue sale dashboard which gives region/sales manager/product wise sale.

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.

Best looking data analyst tool

Extremely happy with Tableau. Compared to other tools like PowerBI or Qlik, Tableau is far ahead, and improving all the time. Going forward, as the products are now, I can't imagine choosing any other.

Pros

Tableau Desktop absolutely produces the cleanest and most intuitive reports of any software like it. The learning curve for basic functionality is short and the online resources for deeper dives are plentiful.

Cons

Reports distribution in Tableau Desktop is clunky and connecting to SharePoint or similar distribution tools are too difficult to setup without professional IT assistance. Tableau Prep is still in early stages of development. Some Flows take much too long for what shouldn't be so challenging an operation.

Aggressive onboarding, false statements. Not customer-oriented.

We were on 30 days trial. The trial was about to expire but things didn't work correctly. Tableaus aggressive onboarding team made me sign for a one-year contract anyway. They promised to support us until everything works. But that did not happen. So I talked to them. Someone seemed to understand and said, he'd cancel the invoice and give us another trial and hopes, thins will work. After a few months, it worked indeed. So we purchased again. But: we never got a license even we already paid. Statement: the old invoice needs to be paid. So although we have a written confirmation, that the invoice is cancelled, tableau didn't cancel and now we have no money and no license. Very sad company. The product might be great but the philosophy horrible.

Pros

Once you have your data ready in a way, tableau is able to connect, it's an easy to use tool.

Cons

There's supposed to be a web data connector between Filemaker and tableau. This is not working. Tableau sales representative do not care about it.

A premium option at a premium price point

Overall Tableau is a great BI/Visualization tool where the only limitations are what your team can do with it. The platform itself has every bell and whistle you could want and provides a ton of customization for various use cases. The challenge arises when moving to the logistical management of the platform, specifically around access, user education and price. While it might be great for individual organizations, our use case of deploying dashboards to hundreds of clients just isn’t what Tableau was built for. If you have the right use case and team to support it, it’s a fantastic option. But if you’re lacking in those areas (or perhaps want a tool with more automatic BI/AI capabilities), there’s likely a better option for your organization.

Pros

There is a reason that Tableau is synonymous with data visualization tools to many people and organizations. It’s a premium product that can do pretty much whatever you want it to. Tableau’s features are limitless and with the proper resources to maintain and deploy it, you’ll rarely identify capabilities that it doesn’t have. It is truly a BI tool that enables your team to overcome any obstacle they face. I specifically enjoyed some of the advanced visualization capabilities of Tableau that more “basic” tools don’t offer. The time series visualizations are easy to configure and are always a crowd favorite. The ability to deploy on-premise or in the cloud means that organizations can configure to their preference. All in all, it is an incredibly powerful tool that leaves very few stones unturned.

Cons

The three biggest drawbacks to our organization continuing with Tableau were ease of use, cost scalability and functional scalability. Tableau is not the tool for organizations that lack technical resources. It’s not as “plug and play” as other options on the market and requires significant training of architects to fully take advantage of all its capabilities. Tableau also isn’t the ideal solution if price is an obstacle in your organization. Frankly, it ain’t cheap. Depending on your desired level of investment and the number of users you’ll need, it can run the tab up quickly. Additionally, user management in Tableau itself isn’t an issue, but deployment presents its challenges. Other options on the market are much easier to introduce users to (here’s your login, go to this URL and boom, you’re good to go) whereas Tableau requires more configuration. This is dependent on which Tableau version you utilize, but there are efforts involved in scaling the platform.

Very comprehensive and all-inclusive solution

The ability to build dashboards that capture data that originate from sources so that it can be compiled in reports and dashboards that are used to analyze performance data of digital marketing campaigns.

Pros

The ability to create and visualize sets of data in a number of different ways, and tailor it to your liking something very powerful about the tool that really stands out. Having one set of data and being able to visualize and paint of a picture of that data in two different ways side by side in one dashboard really stands out for me.

Cons

The time it has taken to get in touch with customer support at times when there are urgent issues has been a frustration and has prevented our team from being able to troubleshoot a few different technical product issues in a timely manner.

Easy Analytics Tool

It is one of the grate tool that is saving my bunch of time. I can utilize more timings to make attractive visualizations rather than spending time in Organizing and Cleaning of data, It has everything like calculations, Maps, Filters and lot more very cool functions.

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

Tableau - Connect, Build and Visualize your data!

Tableau helps to quickly connect with data sources and build eye-pleasing visualizations. The ease of use of the tool helped me to build dashboards and we were up and running in no time.

Pros

Tableau is an excellent to create dashboards and reports in quick time and user-friendly way. The visualizations are attractive and intuitive. The 'Show Me' option to cycle through possible visualizations is very useful. Connecting to various data sources like Oracle, Snowflake and fetching data has been very easy. Data modelling is a breeze too. Publishing to Tableau Online or Tableau Public is very easy and is available from the Tableau Desktop menu. Publishing dashboards and data sources to the server is a smooth experience.

Cons

Tableau could definitely improve on where row level security is concerned. Any options out of the box would help.

A perfect tool if you want to switch from the contemporary excel spreadsheet data analysis

This is an extremely budget friendly professional tool that is perfect for organizing undergoing a digital analytical transformation. Really love the interface and the scope and benefits this tool offers is endless

Pros

The analytics module is the best I would say It is really easy to derive charts from the available database. Linking existing databases works like a charm. It has a plethora of data visualization methods which is extremely professional and helpful for users to gain valuable insights

Cons

The initial effort required to understand and successfully generate results is on the higher side.but once after basic understanding it is really easy to generate your required output.

The Solution for Data Reporting In Systems That Don't Play Nice

Pros

Can harvest data from software and build complex reports, which can then integrate into other softwares. This saved our team dozens of hours per month. Tableau has a wide variety of uses, but mining data that does not pull in an easily reportable format is definitely the upside for my team.

Cons

The initial setup was complicated, but the customer support did a good job ultimately building it out for us.

The best of the visualization tools

It is very helpful in allowing us to visualize data for clients and set it up to be automatically refreshable

Pros

It allows for a really nice product to send to clients, it can also be set up to automatically refresh connecting into databases which make recurring reports very easy

Cons

A lot of the functions like creating calculations from data require writing queries in order to create them which should be much easier to do from a user standpoint

Easy to Perform Complex Data Analysis and Visualisation from any type of Datasource

Using Tableau has been a great learning, discovering and analytical experience, the tool has been easy to use and effective

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.

Tableau- Comprehensive Business Software with Advanced Reporting and Analysis Tools

Tableau has been a great asset for analyzing various reports and data sets. As a data analyst, I found it to be an invaluable tool for keeping my critical reports organized and easily accessible. I highly recommend Tableau as a business platform for both report designers and users as it provides unmatched flexibility in developing and using data sets in ways that will meet your complex business requirements.

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.

A very intuitive business intelligence tool

I started using it while I was making my MBA and I was amazed at the easy of use and the possibility to make chart in a very powerful way beyond excel. Later on, when I was asked to do some complex representation of many parameters, Tableau has been the best and easiest option, beyond other 3 options I have tried from major sellers

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

On the fly BI tool with rich visualizations and Dashboard features

We used Tableau for Visualization BI apart from having Business Objects for reporting. We have created a story for a given subject with all the related information to present to the user. It gives a quick glance on what is happening on the sales of drug for a pharma company that I worked. Migration from non-prod to prod is very easy (unlike other BI tools). Cost of the project reduces a lot with Tableau for BI projects

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.

Tableau Lets You Become Productive in Minutes

Tableau and especially Tableau server has helped our business share data much more efficiently and accurately than the old method of emailing spreadsheets and presentations around. The ability for anyone to manipulate the data and answer their own questions allows analysts to concentrate on the truly difficult and unique problems instead of cranking out a never-ending series of custom reports. Having the data connected to live source or warehoused data means everyone is up to date all the time.

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.

Tableau Rocks!

Overall, Tableau is a fantastic program for getting automated reports created, published, and off your plate! The visuals are amazing and the subscriptions and alert system are my absolute favorite. The software has its quirks but I've yet to have a problem I couldn't logically program my way around with a little time spent on web forums. Amazing software, very useful, exciting to use!

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.

The future of Big Data visualisation and processing

It took me some time to understand the scope and approach of Tableau. During this time i was confused and sometimes frustrated as It was hard to get static reports out of tableau. Once however I understood the magic behind it (well actually it wasn't Tableaus fault, but just me being stubborn) a whole new world of analyzing data opened up. A Magnificent, splendid, dynamic and playful way of getting answers from data and a completely new way of thinking questions to ask from my data. If you do not have to create static reports which you want to mail daily to a bunch of people but want to explre the secrets your data holds This is THE tool. Definite recommendation.

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.

Tableau: all-in-one data visualization and organization software

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.

Tableau Desktop is my must-have software. I couldn't do my job without it (nor would I want to)!

Tableau has allowed our office to look at data in new ways. Whether we're using it for data exploration or dissemination, it makes the information easy to understand and use, even for newbies. In the past, we used spreadsheets and PDFs to share data with various constituents, but they were dense and only offered a static view of the data. Now, with interactive dashboards, end-users can not only search for the exact information they need, they can also see how it fits into the big picture. This capability has led people to ask more questions and actually get excited about data and assessment. Tableau allows us to answer those new questions quickly and accurately than before.

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.

Excellent Product but Poor Support

I've been using the software for about five years and it has been able to provide insight into our data in a way that no other tool has been able to. However, support is terrible for this product and some of the versions are released with a few bugs. We will likely continue to this but it is imperfect.

Pros

The software is very powerful tool and excellent visualization tool. It is easy to get started and there is a ton of free training available. The pool of users is great and the community is very helpful to new and existing users.

Cons

The support we pay for is almost worthless. We frequently solve the problem ourselves and it is time consuming to submit everything via their helpdesk with nothing to show for it. Providing logs and files and emailing with someone on the west coast outside of normal east coast business hours is frustrating. Tickets get "escalated" to the engineering team and that ends up being code for "we don't know and this won't be fixed by us". Turnover for their sales representatives indicates it isn't a great company to work for either.

Great for dashboards, but training is required

I generally use tableau to show sales data on dashboards to executives. Overall experience is great now that I have enough skill to operate and manipulate the data to generate what I want.

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.

Express you data in real time and powerful Tableau dashboards

We use Tableau to create all the reports/ dashboards for the senior management in our organisation. It includes daily/ weekly/ monthly reports. And since every report is an interactive report, senior leadership can find answers to their questions by exploring through the reports. We struggled in making the first versions of the reports but later on, we just need to use those templates to create the reports. Therefore, in the start it can become a little overwhelming, but once ready with the template, you'll find it very useful for your reporting procedures.

Pros

1. Tableau is one of the widely accepted software. It is being used by every 8/10 data-driven companies for managing and representing large amounts of data. 2. Ready to use tools which can produce Senior Leadership level reports/ dashboards. 3. Supports channels for real-time feeding data directly into the dashboards which removes the requirement of manual creating of reports. 4. Capable of producing interactive reports which are highly liked and appreciated by Senior Leaders of any organisation. 5. Supports multiple export methods - Tableau specific dashboards, Generic Dashboards, PDFs, Spreadsheets and even PowerPoint presentations. So this gives the user flexibility to share the reports/ dashboard in whatever form they would like to.

Cons

1. Starting to produce reports for Senior Management via Tableau would take quite an amount of effort in the start. You need to learn and then setup a lot of things in the start, but once done, you can use those blueprints for all the future reports. 2. A number of formulas are supported in Tableau, but you need to have a good grasp of how to use those and input the correct parameters, else Dashboards will show data which is not correct in nature. 3. The user interface is not that user-friendly, and for a new user, it can become overwhelming at times. The feature set is powerful, but since the usage is complex, it becomes challenging for the users to find correct options and use them correctly.

Great software for data visualisation, not so great on data manipulation side

Really satisfied with Tableau, performed some great stuff over these 2 years of using it. Created over 100 workbooks with huge data sets, also created some extensions and never had a bad feeling about Tableau.

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.

Data Analysis has become effective with tableau, its a analysis with computation tool

Tableau is a great tool , its designed for complex data analysis, it works wonderfully , especially with databases as datasource

Pros

Tableau is a great tool for analysing data, unlike XL sheets the data is stored and we can analyse only the stored data, in tableau data can reside any ware it can be in any database or even in files , we can analyse them, (it supports many type of data sources), the data source can even be a complex query and can join multiple sources in different ways, Tableau can compute the data further for analysis, data is segregated into dimension and values and this value can be computing , assume it as in xl sheet there a cell value can be computation of other and this chain can continue, Can add interactive filters in the analysis screen, host these dashboards on server, the server maintains the history of uploaded changes , kind of a version control , can revert back and forth , can also download the versions, It has data refresh options , like live and scheduled , the like always queries the datasources and shows the data, ware as the scheduled runs the refresh on scheduled times, we can write the schedule logic in the server, have a good community support and documentations, it dose provide a 30days free trial on the tableau application, after which we need a product key

Cons

Don't have proper version control in tableau, could have a feature like integrating with git, since there is no such feature parallel development cant be done, this is like a single developer works on a dashboard at a time, i think we can copy one sheet from different dashboard to another its a good thing thow sort of can archive parallel development but its not a clear way

A great dashboard(-ing) tool

I have been using Tableau for more than 2 years now. The software offers a lot of flexibility with producing visuals.

Pros

Tableau has many great features but my favorite is its intuitive working which enables first-time users to quickly learn its basic functionality and gradually learn some tricks along the way. Tableau's connectivity to Excel, sharepoint, APIs, google sheets, text/csv files, databases - SQL, oracle etc covers pretty much all bases for my organisation's needs. I have also been using Tableau Prep from the suite to scrub data while recording each step along the way which is a great feature that helps with reproducibility. The Tableau online community has been a big help troubleshooting my issues and providing inspiration through showcased works.

Cons

Some of the API connections (e.g. with Safety culture) are not as seamless when compared to the competitor product - Microsoft PBI.

A flexible and powerful tool

I am an analytics consultant and used to work mostly with SAP BW (Business Objects, Business Explorer, etc), Lumira, and Qlik Sense. My first contact with Tableau was very good, I've learned many things in a few days, it's very easy to use and also very powerful. I'm happy in working with this project because Tableau makes my experience much better, I'm liking it.

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.

Best Data Visualization Tool

Tableau by far is the best visualization tool I have worked with and there is no comparison with other tools. I have never felt that Tableau lacked anything and have discovered things I wouldn't normally do with the data if not for its Tableau functionality. This has helped me create robust dashboards and stories with a lot of unstructured and confusing data. I have been using Tableau for more than 2 years now and never get tired of its interesting interface and ease of use and the best part is that the developers of the software keep updating it to new versions with new functionalities and features.

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.

Great BI Tool - Lovely Friendly Pretty!

• Anyone will be able to make Pretty visualization without much prior experience and can decipher stories underneath data. • It was really easy for me to pick up the tool and get on the speed. Really like this BI Tool but it does have its limitations. • Great for visualizations but if you want a BI Tool for numeric/tabular reports especially for financial reports - you should probably consider some other tool. With that being said, its totally worth the money for all other BI needs and seriously the best BI Tool available!

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.

Technical people to business people, this software caters to all

I started with this product as a curiosity and later in an academic setup. From then on, I have used this for my internship and at my work. This provides amazing insights to the higher level managers and as well as customers. Things can be tracked with the help of visualization without being boring.

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.

Educator who uses Tableau to analyze and display network-wide student achievement data

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.

Visualize your data with Tableau

Truth be told, our company was only given a trial period for Tableau so I did not have an opportunity to fully explore the software as much as I would have liked. However, during the duration of the trial, I was able to quickly build some useful analytics. An example was an interactive map of the United States which allowed me to show location based data along with sales information for the line of business I support. The map displayed color coded regional information which could be easily drilled down to mortgage branch locations with hover boxes showing production data. Although the trial was for evaluation purposes for the time being, in the short amount of time I had to use the software, I could tell that Tableau would certainly be a viable application to significantly improve and streamline the way our department does reporting.

Pros

Tableau makes creating visually stunning dashboards and info-graphics relatively easy. You start by connecting to a data source (SQL database, Excel flat file, etc.) and then using various tools to present your information and analytics in a graphical way that's easy for your audience to understand. It supports a great deal of data input formats and offers a lot of flexibility in how to analyze and display information. Plus, the visualizations you create can be static for delivery via a rendered format like PDF or PowerPoint or published on the web for an interactive experience. You can present information at a high level and let your report audience drill into to the details.

Cons

There is a bit of a learning curve. I am a fairly good self-learner and when I first start using new software. I like to tinker and experiment before diving into documentation and manuals. Tableau is not difficult by any means, but some of the tasks you want to accomplish are not going to be obvious in terms of how they function. For example, I struggled at first with figuring out how to add subtotals to some data I had brought in. Of course I was able to readily do so once I researched via help files but that's the sort of thing I would have thought to be more intuitive and easy to figure out on my own first.

Tableau is my go-to tools for quick, nicely looking dashboards and data visualization

I get real-time data visualization from Tableau Software and a platform for posting cool and useful data visualizations without having to purchase a server.

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).

Easy To Use With Good Performance

It's a good visualization tool. but price is not as cheap as we thought.

Pros

Extract data source - hyper. we converted some Cognos reports to Tableau, in Cognos we have to pre-schedule it because the complex query behind the scenes takes long time to run. At beginning we use Tableau live connection, put most of calculations in ETL but still getting performances issue. after switch to hyper...oh it's fantastic.

Cons

In Cognos, to view Query behind FM model or Report just one click, it's very helpful and convenient during development and troubleshooting. In Tableau have to dig into log to find the query or check from DB side.

Tableau is the Industry Standard for Data Visualization

Streamlined our reporting - provided informative dashboards to our executive team and staff.

Pros

I use tableau as an analyst every day and I like the ability to create rich visualizations from different kinds of datasets. If you are of a creative and problem solving mindset there is almost a limitless set of complex Vizzes that you can design using Tableau.

Cons

I think Tableau can be less than intuitive. While there is almost unlimited capabilty, often it's difficult to immediately understand what is required to solve your problem. It's good however that there is a huge customer base and forums that can help you. It's often better to solve your problems in the database rather than with Tableau. Use it as the Viz layer as much as you can and try to limit usage of it in doing calculations, especially with big datasets. Performance can degrade. In the dashboard design there should be a little bit more finetuning of the interface. Can't copy/paste items which would be a nice feature. Customer support staff are extremely professional and friendly - if you can get a hold of them. Tableau support has fallen away recently I have found.

Tableau, powerful visualization tool.

Overall, I love the software. It always great ability to develop great, interactive, dashboards for the Directors of multiple divisions in our company.

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.

Excellent

Overall, love the versatility and ease of use. There is some training that you need to go through to learn the full functionality and collaboration, but the options you get with this software are endless. High recommend to anyone who is into visual storytelling.

Pros

I was introduced to this product a few years ago when trying to work on data dashboards. I work large volumes of data and numbers don't make sense to high management. We need to summarize data and provide visual storyboards to provide summaries to leadership. In the past, I have employed Excel or Powerpoint to make charts and graphs. While those work great, Tableau provides a much better quality product where multiple functions and calculations are available at your fingertip. The graphics look extremely professional and provide a great variety of options or summarizing and analyzing data. Love this state of the art tool!

Cons

When I started using this software, one thing that I didn't like was how the online platform is open to everyone. The data and the graphics I produce can be accessible to anyone. Working with sensitive data that we can't give access to anyone, I couldn't use the free version. I suggest, they provide a free option where you can house your private data and dashboards. Other than that, perhaps the price would be a factor too. It took me several hoops to get it approved through my management to have it installed.

All-In-One application for you company needs...

I've worked with many different computer languages and applications over the past 30 years, and I wish this application had been there from the beginning. The need to understand every field's settings (e.g. numberic versus text, etc) is now no longer a problem. Also the ease of creating dashboards that are legible and concise is amazing! Plus, the online community is only a few keystrokes away to helping resove any challenges. In a nutshell, this application works!

Pros

Seamlessly aggregate data from various data sets into one database. An application for both the programmer and the non-programmers. Excellent pain-free dashboards!

Cons

Initial logic for connecting data sources into properly filtered data was a little bit of a learning curve, but not too difficult.

Data visualisation - with a learning curve

We did not have a proper BI tool previous to Tableau. We were extracting data to spreadsheets and cross-referencing multiple spreadsheets to generate our data. While Tableau is initially harder to use than a simple spreadsheet, it is much easier to use in the long run.

Pros

Really, really powerful data visualisation tool. You can take data from virtually any source and join it together. Then you can make visualisations, dashboards, and stories from all of this data. Sharing your data with non-technical people is a breeze. Package up the workbook, including the source data, and your users can open the file using free Tableau Reader. They can still filter the data, etc. They just can create new visualisations or refresh the data. There is a huge amount of training available online to help you on your journey. Another great feature is that you can pull from live data, or you can create a data extract to take a snapshot of the data at a point in time.

Cons

There is a steep learning curve to properly learn the software. If you have previous experience with BI software, it may not be as difficult. But it is definitely much more difficult that putting together a graph or pie chart in a spreadsheet. That being said, once your data model is humming along and you've learned how to create some basic visualisations, the world really opens up to you and you can get lots of data insights very easily.

Tableau review

Overall, Tableau does a great job providing data for you to use for quarterly reviews for customers. It's easy to transfer the information to presentations.

Pros

This software is great for pulling data when looking at sales. It allows you to see year to date and month to year. Depending on how the dashboard is organized, it is easy to navigate and does a great job showing visuals with the data.

Cons

With a lot of data it can be hard to set up exactly how you need to view the data. We have changed the look on our dashboards to make it easier to navigate. However, breaking down products to be able to sort them into different categories can be difficult.

A leader in BI Analytics

Pros

Tableau is an incredibly robust BI tool. Drag and drop functionality and built-in connectors to a wide variety of data sources make it a breeze to get up and running while creating beautiful visualizations that can help your business make intelligent, informed, data-driven decisions. Whether you are new to BI tools or have years of experience, you can easily use Tableau to help you get up and running with all of your data needs. If you aren't sure how to best visualize your data, Tableau will give you recommendations based on the type of data you're using.

Cons

While Tableau can be easy to start using, it can definitely feel overwhelming at times. With so many connectors and different charts and graphs it is easy to get lost when you are first starting out. Some of the calculated fields, while incredibly robust, feel like you need a PhD in order to figure them out. Once you get past some of these hurdles, you'll never look back though!

The most comprehensive tool to analyze multiple sources of information

A special mention should be made about their student policy. I started with the software because the company gave me a one year access while I was in school, and I brought the knowledge I acquired with it to my employers. It is a great way of promoting the software and giving students a great tool for their resume at the same time.

Pros

Tableau’s productivity suite allows you to connect it to all data sources we’re already using in a matter of minutes. This maximized our analysts' productivity, moving their tasks from the mostly mechanical to the analytical. It is incredibly easy to use; it is intuitive even for non-savvy users, and doesn’t took time, programming knowledge, or expensive training for our team to get a grasp on it. Its collaboration features facilitate group analytics, and at the same time ensure that all team members are on the same page. The best part about it is the devoted mobile app for different devices, which allowed our sales representatives to work from wherever they are. Last, but not least, their tech support team is unmatched in service and follow-up.

Cons

Even with all the flexible options they provide, it's still a pricey solution. However, it is totally worth it

Makes your data easy

I am a regular user and consumer if this tool. I would definitely say it made my life easy with data. I enjoy the flexibility it allows in terms of calculations. It's amazing from data visualization purpose.

Pros

I love how the tool allows you to quickly get the data from any kind of source and allows you to manipulate data and put it out as story in the form of dashboard. It's a very user friendly tool.

Cons

Sometimes it works slow on billions of rows, even if it is on extract. The ask data function still needs more development.

The Ultimate Custom Data Visualization!

Tableau has taken our organization into whole new seasons of innovation and effective leadership! It's helped all of our team members to see the value (no puns intended) of data, no matter their role or position. It's also inspired many team members to ask more questions, which leads to richer data and more helpful visualizations to help us grow!

Pros

As someone in my organization who frequently analyzes our data and initially built some of our team Workbooks, I love how incredibly detailed the customization and building can be!

Cons

It takes a lot of time to thoroughly learn how to build workbooks and to understand the "language" of Tableau on the backend. When I transitioned into the role where I needed to construct some unique views and workbooks for my team, the training time investment was more than I anticipated, and I still learned as I went. Be sure you have patient instructors and give your Tableau experts the full time they need to feel confident - this will allow them the freedom and comfort to "play" with more data!

Fantastic reporting tool

Reporting on trends, data analysis and looking at performance indicators.

Pros

I use Tableau daily to check on my team's productivity and look at historical trends compared to this year's data/performance. You can report on almost anything in Tableau when it comes to performance/data analysis.

Cons

The more users you add, the slower the downloading can become. It sometimes takes a good deal of time to download reports, which can be frustrating at times when you need to look up data quickly.

Very powerful, very slow

Despite its slowness, we would be much worse off without Tableau. The sheer amount of data we can present in the software helps us out across our team, department and no doubt across the entire business. It’s easy to set up and build reports and they can be displayed in a multitude of different ways - some more functional and some more visual than others. It would be difficult to analyse so much data so quickly without Tableau.

Pros

The reporting and analytics possibilities within the software are extremely diverse. Being able to pull together multiple data sources to monitor and evaluate performance across all of our metrics and KPI’s is invaluable. The range of display options is extremely helpful - there’s a chart type for everything so you can display your data in the best possible way for your needs.

Cons

I find the system extremely slow. I’m using large datasets, but I expect there to be businesses with far more data than us and I can only imagine that it would be unworkable. Even just the most benign task of changing the date range in a report can take up to a minute. Even when pausing the report and toggling the filters it still has a few seconds of delay.

Best Self Service Business Intelligence tool

Pros

For Data Scientists and advanced users, Tableau is the most efficient and powerful. Tableau offers different kinds of data visualizations and connectors to load once data. Tableau has 3 offerings. A free version with limited functionality. Then Tableau desktop and Tableau Online are available on subscription pricing model, which is way cheaper when compared to the traditional pricing. Tableau is a mature and stable product with a wide user base. Tableau is widely used in most companies i have worked for. Tableau introduced a new data engine called Hyper recently, which promises faster performance. Overall Tableau is a great product with bright future. In our company we leveraged it well.

Cons

Tableau is for sophisticated users. It requires training to get the best out of it. In our company we hired an experience consultant, who trained us and worked with us, so that we learnt all kinks of the tool.

Turned an average Excel user into a data analytics pro

We used Tableau to combine over 2 million lines of health claims data from Excel spreadsheets with approximately 85 data points per line. Tableau made it possible for our team to compare each line of data and locate the specific lines of data that indicated problems within the coding for health benefits. After locating the issues and fixing the coding, we used Tableau to compare the data again and validate that the potential issues were corrected. Without the use of a tool like Tableau, our comparison process would have taken weeks longer, and would have been less effective.

Pros

Able to gather large pieces of data from multiple spreadsheets and combine them to create a cohesive picture Flexibility in creating different types of reports and graphs for sharing with a variety of audiences Overall, most functions were easy to learn, and once the graphs were created, it was easy to copy them and alter them for additional purposes

Cons

Some of the functions were difficult to master quickly--had a higher learning curve than I would have liked for some tasks

Good data visualization tool

Pros

a) Easy to use and make data to tell stories about its insights b) Visualization is very clear and with the help of dropdown its make your life easier to drill down the granularity of data and you can see the different metrics and KPI in the same chart. c) The various chart especially the heat chart is very useful if you are dealing with the geographical data. d) Apart from the data visualization, the transformation data with the help of SQL Queries is very useful in it. e) Data shaping you can mold the data as per your need but to a certain extent.

Cons

a) Data bending is a major concern, sometimes the view get lost or the data you want to show isn't correct number b) Location of Extracts, the extract get misplaced although the extract is at the location then also it is not showing the view. c) When you try to make twbx file to twb file then views and data get misplaced or vanish from the report

Great report and dashboard development tool in the market

Our company has pretty big needs of data analytics and visualization with more than 100 clinical data analysts. Tableau is an expensive solution, but it is worth to invest it to deal with all the variety of development and maintenance needs.

Pros

We adopted it for our internal report and dashboard development, to monitor clinical data and key performance indexes. The Tableau server was well integrated with out clinical database. It provides rich functions of easy report authoring, configurability, security control, and automated data extraction. Arguably, Tableau is one of the leaders in the area of business intelligence tools for many aspects.

Cons

Tableau Desktop for authoring report in local machine used to be slow when it is loaded with heavy data. It is stable when it is in authoring mode, but used to crash especially when it is connected to large volume of data in remote databases. Fault tolerance should be improved.

Great Tool for Automating Visual Reports for your Enterprise

Tableau offers comprehensive Business Intelligence and Data Visualization features that most organizations will find sufficient for their use. The somewhat steep learning curve is eased by the availability of good-quality online resources. The compatibility with various devices and Operating Systems makes the software even more compelling.

Pros

Tableau allows you to visualize your data, whether simple or complex, in nearly limitless ways. Although the software taks some getting used to, once you have a hang of the bassic features, you can set about automating most of the routine reporting for your enterprise easily. Also it is a breezeto share your data and the visualizations are rendered faithfully on to diparate devices and different platforma like iOS, Android,Windows etc.

Cons

Uploading data from certain data sources can sometimes get very, very slow. Also, the software is not the simplest to use and the "Help " section for most topics offers precious little. However, this minor problem is easliy sorted due to the vast, high-quality user-created content and tutorials available online.