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.

Pros

We really like the easiness to upload and prepare data visualizations, charts, graphics and dashboards. It works with the mains data files such as text crv, xls and google sheet documents. They have a free version which present the main functionalities, perfect for a small business, then if you need to upgrade to a paid version the process is very simple. Their forums and community really support, and help to improve, learn and develop great visualizations.

Cons

As any other solution, it takes some investigation and learning to understand the way it works and how to prepare robust presentations in Tableau. Some older versions do not allow roll back. Some sharing and analytic challenges are presented and really wish they develop additional features.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Power BI

Reasons for Choosing Tableau

Tableau is a better product for the easiness and the complete customer service experience.

Switched From

Microsoft Power BI and Microsoft Excel

Reasons for Switching to Tableau

Once we started working with Tableau, we would not change to another solution because the way we work with the tool fits our opertive needs.

Pros

Tableau allows for very good exploratory data analysis, and one can build amazing visualizations with it. Once you learn how to work with it, it becomes very easy to explore data and get insights from it.

Cons

Tableau is very expensive compared to its competitors, and if you want to get the whole company using it for dashboards, the pricing is certainly prohibitive for startups.
I also don't Tableau for Dashboards, as the discovery and navigation interface is not very inviting to business users and dashboards are hard do discover. At the same time, building dashboards on Tableau is a lot less straightforward than in other tools. One can build very advanced dashboards, but that requires a lot of time and expertise, which not all Data users in a company will be.

Alternatives Considered

Looker

Pros

Tableau helps us understand and appreciate data and what it means to the organization in improving operations and efficiency. Familiarizing ourselves with data filtering, grouping and segmenting. It is key in improving the process of data analysis by eliminating defects. It has eventually improved customer experiences, allows us to make better decisions and helps guide our marketing strategies towards success.

Cons

Sending larger files especially to multiple destinations can end up catastrophic. It can stop and you end up losing your files.

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.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Power BI

Reasons for Choosing Tableau

Better, more intuitive functionality. Cleaner aesthetic.

Switched From

Microsoft Power BI

Pros

I love amount of features they have as compared to it's competitors. It just makes it so easy to integrate data within the software.

Cons

I don't like the fact that it has lesser functionalities when I comes to coding, preferably Python.

Alternatives Considered

Qlik Sense

Reasons for Choosing Tableau

It's just a lot better when it comes to the features.

Switched From

Microsoft Power BI

Reasons for Switching to Tableau

Sheerly due to the features offered.

Pros

Tableau is just way easier to use. Ive used a lot of others. Yes many have features that Tableau does not. But when it comes down to ease of use and fast turn around Tableau is probably the best

Cons

Tableau is not great when it comes to time series data. Its ok. But the amount of contortion that is necessary to show meaningful data in a time series is a real pain in the neck. Also Tableau data blending is nonsense. Better than Alteryx? probably. But still.

Pros

Tableau is an easy-to-use, scalable data analytics solution that interfaces with a variety of applications to extract insights from data. Databases can be easily evaluated as it provides graphs for better understanding and success with E2E data blending, data preparation, data modeling, data visualization and data distribution. In my company we use it to analyze large databases and generate possible predictions in decision making,

Its learning curve is average, and it supports a wide range of visualizations, such as tables, graphs, among others, importing data is simple when using Excel. To transfer information.

Cons

the only thing I don't like about tableau is that it is too expensive for small business users.

Pros

Connecting and creating dashboards are really good and this is a top solution in the market for data visualization. this contains cloud-based solutions and On-prem solutions. This works with many data files like txt, CSV, xls, as well as this has a free version with really good features than other paid tools.

Cons

Sometimes tableau is getting hung while processing large data files and consume more RAM and CPU power to operate.

Pros

Tableau is very useful software for data analysts. it is very easy to create Graphical and tabular visualisations using this software. the dashboard is vey responsive and we can easly understand about the dataset

Cons

initially, the interfaces are little bit tough to understand. some times, the geographical datas did not detect properly.

Pros

Tableau is one of the best business intelligence tools available in the market. The visual interface is really good and easy to use. The entire aspect of building dashboards with ease, setting up alerts is really good.
The features available in desktop version are really good and caters to most of the requirements.

Cons

A few areas where Tableau can improve are:
1) Navigating between multiple sheets is sometimes a tedious process. Something can be done if a user wants to move multiple sheets here and there in the workbook.
2) Add more features to Tableau Explorer - a lot of features are available in Tableau Creator/desktop version which are important for creating dashboards. Those should be added to Online version as well
3) Integration with files stored in AWS S3 is not available right now - direct integration should be available.

Alternatives Considered

Sisense

Reasons for Switching to Tableau

Better pricing Better feature Better integration with databases

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.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Power BI

Reasons for Switching to Tableau

Power Bi interface did not look appealing. it looked like it was running on dos.

Pros

I really like how easy it is to try visualizing data in different ways. Going into an analysis I don't always know the best way to present my data, so being able to try different things so easily makes my analysis a lot easier.

Cons

Formatting visualizations is not easy to understand. Clunky UI for formatting. Somewhat difficult to figure out what exactly is being changed by different options.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Power BI

Reasons for Choosing Tableau

Power BI was a pain to use, slow, and did not have the same out of the box visualizations that Tableau does.

Switched From

Microsoft Power BI

Reasons for Switching to Tableau

Best value for money, easier to use, better fit for the key projects the organization was taking on at the time.

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.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Power BI

Reasons for Switching to Tableau

Based on user reviews, through product demos and feedback on the initial product walkthrough, I found the solution to be tailored more to our teams needs.

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.

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.

Pros

I used to use Access and Excel to create reports on data aggregation and analysis of the current situation, which changed every day, and I had to repeat the same tasks over and over again each time. However, since I started to use Tableau, the freshness of the most important data has not deteriorated, and I can visually view the data reflecting almost real-time data. The basic operation is not difficult for beginners. The basic operations are easy to get used to, even for beginners, and it is not that difficult to get started. I can organize data that Excel can't handle and put it together in a way that is easy to understand, and I can use the UI to cross-tabulate, graph, and visualize changes in numerical values, making it very convenient to use. Another advantage is that no knowledge of SQL or other programming languages is required to handle the data. Since visualization can be done interactively, which is usually difficult when there is a considerable amount of data, it is easy to make considerations based on the data.
Since it is possible to quickly change the chart (change the aggregation unit, change the axis, change the filter, etc.), it is easy to get new insights since it is stress-free to look at the data, consider the results, and change the approach again. Data visualization that involves aggregation is powerful anyway.

Cons

I would like to see a more complete set of manuals. Statistical knowledge is not necessary, but some of the expressions on the screen are difficult to interpret, and it takes time to get used to them. The visualization is not intuitive, and when you try to do something a little more elaborate, it has its own quirks, and I think it requires training to make the visualization look the way you want. As for the display format of the graph, you can easily switch the format by selecting from the palette, but it is difficult to find the menu for things like drawing auxiliary lines. Sometimes it takes a long time to load the data, so it would be very helpful if that could be improved. It doesn't depend on the size of the data or the environment of the PC, so I would really like to see this improved. It tends to be very slow due to slow loading of data and loading every time you switch tabs. It is not suitable for advanced analytical simulations such as statistical analysis or predictive modeling. It is only a visualization tool.
I would like to see more options for license types and prices. The price hurdle is too high, so please make it easier to introduce.

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.

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.

Pros

Tableau is used for personal dashboards for each sales rep. It is the best way to capture all their macroeconomic statistics. All the clients, facilities, states they have visited and simultaneously, showing them all their results. Their net sales and % to quota. Essentially, the sales rep can view all their information in 1 dashboard and also share any information with other clients based on their historical performance.

Cons

The biggest downside with Tableau is that once you create the dashboards and want to make minimal changes, such as add a new user to the total dashboard, many changes need to be done, it is not simple to completely update the data webs behind the dashboards so that they update properly.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Power BI

Reasons for Switching to Tableau

Best connection with SalesForce.

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.

Pros

Intuitive and user-friendly UI similar to a canvas for dashboards
Multiple data sources
Automated dashboard refresh and functionality to publish to stakeholders
Administrative privilege to provide access role wise and rule wise
Customised dashboards and ad hoc reporting are possible
The scope of calculations and aggregations is huge
Statistical and predictive analysis can be performed to uncover insights from the data

Cons

Price: Pricing could be an obstacle for small-time independent developers
Better memory allocation for large datasets to optimally refresh the data

Pros

I love the simplicity of the system. Provides a easy at a glance "tabs" that you can easily bounce from one metric to another! As a new user I have to admit the ease of use is part of the reason I give it the product a higher rating, I had no issues with self training how use the "tabs" and filters to get the data needed. I have noticed some lag time in updating of information in Tableau however this could very well be more of a delay on our side given the types of data we are asking updates to be provided on.

Cons

The main con that I can think of for Tableau is the visual aspect- It is not a eye catching as some of the reporting/productivity tracking systems. In comparison to other systems I have worked end as a user or even admin- I am not seeing the same level charting or visual graphics. Now of course because this is a excellent system for reporting/tracking you can always take the data and roll it into your own created charting. I have noticed that for us Tabeau only updates once a day, I know this maybe a company set feature though, but this maybe something to confirm you are able to adjust if needed more frequently!

Pros

Using Tableau, a top tool for data visualization, users can easily produce eye-catching visual representations of their data. Without extensive coding skills, interactive dashboards, charts, and graphs may be created using its user-friendly interface and drag-and-drop features. Tableau's vast visualization options library enables innovative and interesting data displays. Users are able to connect to a variety of data sources on-premises and in the cloud thanks to the platform's strong data connectivity features. Tableau's robust analytics features assist customers in finding insightful information and making fact-based decisions.

Cons

The learning process for Tableau can be challenging for new users or those with little background in data visualization. To effectively utilize some sophisticated capabilities, you might need more education or experience. Smaller companies or individuals with tighter budgets may want to take the licensing charges of the program into account. Performance concerns can occasionally be caused by managing very large datasets or advanced data structures.

Pros

Tableau is a great tool for constructing complex analytical dashboards, any level of complexity is possible in this tool,

it can read input data from many sources, starting from plain file systems such as XL, CSV.. to complex databases such as snowflake, mysql..

We can join or write custom queries to build the source data,

to construct dashboard we go with dimension-metrics approach, hear we can write exuberant number of calculations and computations to create a calculated fields, and that in-turn can be used for dashboard creation,

the basic module is a worksheet and multiple worksheet can be put to gather to form a Dashboard,

here we can add any kind of advanced interactive filters for the dashboard which will filter the source data ,

we construct these on a desktop application and we have to push the to the server to host this dashboard,

the server tracks of the number of views , access control, refresh extract scheduling etc..

Cons

When we develop a complex & heavy dashboard with extract data enabled, then it takes lot of time to load on the tableau desktop, to pull it from the server some times it never opens, have to retry many times

and to push from the desktop to server also takes time, i think it pushes the local extracted datas along with the tableau files