TrustRadius Insights for Tableau Server are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Business Problems Solved
Tableau Server has become an essential tool for organizations across various industries, offering a wide range of use cases that have proven valuable to users. Its ability to transform complex data into user-friendly visualizations has been particularly beneficial in emergency preparedness analytics within the healthcare sector. Additionally, dedicated analysts have utilized Tableau Server to create and deploy dashboards that are accessible to all employees, serving as the main repository for reporting needs. This versatility extends beyond healthcare, with organizations from IT to Human Resources leveraging the platform to address key issues such as device availability, performance tracking, and enterprise reporting.
Marketing teams have also found value in Tableau Server, using it to gain a better understanding of their customer base and track product ownership and usage trends. The platform's storytelling approach has been especially valuable for data scientists who use Tableau Server to present data to managers and executives, facilitating understanding and supporting decision-making processes. Furthermore, Tableau Server has been integrated into third-party applications and platforms such as Microsoft SharePoint, making it a convenient one-stop-shop for reporting needs.
Tableau Server's ease of maintenance from an administrator level and seamless integration with Active Directory for user permission management have made it a preferred choice for many organizations. It fosters secure and controlled sharing of work done by Tableau Desktop analysts and developers, enabling real-time data visualization and monitoring across the organization. This has led to increased adoption and expansion of its usage in various departments such as Finance, Supply Chain, and HR.
Overall, Tableau Server's ability to store, visualize, and share information effectively has provided organizations with leverage over other systems. Its versatility and ease of use have made it a trusted platform for reporting and analytics needs across different industries, enabling self-service analytics, cost savings through improved tracking capabilities, enhanced customer experience operations, and centralization of reporting.
Loading Reviews List....
Tableau Server Reviews
45 Reviews
Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Search is temporarily unavailable. Filters are still applied.
Tableau has allowed my team and cross-functional teams to build full-funnel marketing channel dashboards to monitor performance and daily trends. Before using Tableau, using in-house data sources was a siloed and long process. Tableau has enabled us to create robust dashboards, such as multiple-touch attribution and campaign-specific dashboards. The ease of use and automation have enabled my team and stakeholders to access data and make important optimizations across marketing channels easily.
Pros
Automation
Cross channel performance.
Integrations with marketing platforms.
Cons
Learning curve for some teams unfamiliar with UI.
Loads time for various larger data set/dashboards.
Real time data enablement.
Likelihood to Recommend
Whole funnel and specific channel performance from upper to lower funnel metrics. The ability to view full channel performance for some time, such as weekly, monthly, or quarterly, has truly been monumental in how my team optimizes specific channels and campaigns. Daily performance tracking is a bit overwhelming, with load times and having to refresh specific live views over time. It can be challenging to do so at times, as extensive dashboards take much longer to load.
We use Tableau Server as an add-on service to our SAAS product. It's integrated via API, using "Trusted Tickets" functionality. Multitenant environments. It allows our clients some self-service reporting capability using pre-defined datasources which connect tableau to their SAAS product database.
Pros
It's pretty
Installs easily
Impresses decision makers
Cons
Support is costly and practically nonexistent
Their windows server application is fragile
Product not well designed for multitenant architectures
Licensing is convoluted in ways
Likelihood to Recommend
As a person responsible for administering their self-hosted product, I would never recommend this to a collogue. Fragile product + ineffective support = operations nightmare. It breaks frequently (upgrades, extracts, backups/restores, sometimes a service just stops during normal usage), and basic support (costing 5 figures/yr) with a 3 bizday follow-up SLA on downtime events is essentially useless for anything more than functionality questions (which take weeks to resolve). Stack restarts take over 15 minutes and are required for just about every configuration change. [I believe] the product was a poor fit for our use-case (add-on service for multitenant customer SAAS applications) for several reasons: - There's no supported method for changing datasource connections, which is a problem if you plan on publishing data sources from dev to prod environment without Tableau Desktop and manual effort. You'll have to make your own tooling to modify the XML directly (unsupported) - Trusted ticket implementation is secured via IP whitelist. If you want to use a modern SAAS product and not have to manage this IP whitelist (every change requires 15min restart), you'll have to write your own ticket-granting service over top of this API. - Security architecture offers poor segmentation between client databases. You can very easily provide customer A access to customer B's database. This danger is aggravated by the lack of a supported method for modifying data source connections in an automated fashion. - All users exist at a server level. This adds to the "poor segmentation between sites" argument, and also complicates things when you have 2 clients bound to different sites, trying to add the same username "jsmith". But hey, it's really pretty. Our product team bought it, infra team has paid for it since.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (51-200 employees)
Tableau Server was purchased by the IT department in an effort to expand the institution's use of analytic data. Prior to buying Tableau Desktop, there was very minimal use of analytics data of any kind. Tableau Server was purchased with the intention of expanding the use of Tableau and storing data in a central repository for collaboration.
Pros
It's part of the Tableau ecosystem of products.
Easy connectivity to Tableau Desktop.
Easy installation.
Cons
Slow, even with a solid server running it.
Overly complicated.
Still not 100% sure why I need it in the first place.
Likelihood to Recommend
We are a small organization, and it was a budget stretch to get Tableau Server in the first place but we took a chance. Our goal was sharing analytics data. Unfortunately, we found the product to be overly complicated. It was not easy to transfer data between Tableau Desktop and Server as advertised. That made sharing overly difficult, which was our primary goal. In the end, we chose not to renew the license and are pursuing other options for collaboration/sharing of analytics data.
VU
Verified User
Manager in Information Technology (51-200 employees)
Tableau Server is used by our organization to create and use real-time dashboards and reports. It is used across the entire organization. Tableau Server makes it easy to gather data from multiple sources and easily create dashboards and reports for different users. The data can be updated instantly and allow users to view real-time data.
Pros
It can gather data from various sources and combine it in one place for users to view and use the data.
Visualizations created by Tableau can be easily modified and updated by users.
Tableau Servers can provide daily reports that are up to date, along with dashboards that can provide real-time data.
Cons
Tableau Server needs to provide more options to modify and update user-friendly dashboards.
Tableau Server can be expensive for a company.
Tableau Server sometimes takes a long time to load reports with a lot of data.
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau Server is great for gathering data from different sources and displaying that data through dashboards and reports that are easy to create and modify. It can be easily used on a mobile platform. However, Tableau Server can be expensive for a company, and may not be able to create all kinds of graphs, dashboards, and reports.
VU
Verified User
Technician in Information Technology (201-500 employees)
The medical department uses it to keep everything organized. It works very well.
Pros
Very well organized.
Menus are clear to understand.
The product works without issues.
Cons
Their technical support sometimes doesn't understand the issues.
One technician may know the product very well and another technician may not know the product well enough and has to engage a different team.
Their licensing is very strict, doesn't give me many options and if you run into any issues, you have to contact the licensing team via email and only email.
Likelihood to Recommend
Document management and scheduling work very well. No complaints about the product.
VU
Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology (201-500 employees)
Tableau Server is a vital part of our data ecosystem. Without it, our data analytics and general reporting efforts would be greatly impeded if not completely derailed. It hosts a large majority of our internal facing reporting KPIs and metrics, and enables our business leaders to keep a watchful eye on the status of the company and its health.
Pros
It is able to extract data very efficiently, as compared to extracting data on one's personal machine
It is able to handle a large quantity of content and traffic to the reports hosted on the server
It is fairly self-sustaining and doesn't require too much maintenance, though it is hosted in our own environment.
Cons
Some of the metrics and data relevant to Tableau Server are difficult to get to, and it would be super insightful if it was more accessible and readily available to users trying to report on it
Likelihood to Recommend
If you have sensitive data that you are wanting to share in a High Level Visual Analytics environment, Tableau Server is the way to go. Your executives will appreciate no longer wondering how their business is actually doing, but can in a lot of cases have real-time visual depictions on the health of their companies, or at least accurate as of the previous day (depending on your data ecosystem).
The entire organization of internal users and external users use the Tableau dashboards hosted on Tableau Server. We use Tableau to address health care analytics data.
Pros
The installation, upgrading and migrating to new hardware is straightforward
The Tableau Server admin can adjust the server processes to make it tailor-fit for the organization, hence increasing the dashboard and query performances.
The core-based licensing and user-based licensing of Tableau Server is very useful based on the required scenario.
Cons
Support for Exasol Data Connections in Tableau Server for Linux.
Publish Document Covering Tableau Server Architecture on 2018.2 with HA environment.
Improve historical reporting for extract schedules on Tableau Server.
Likelihood to Recommend
The Tableau Server can be used based on different requirements and is very user-friendly.
Tableau is used by a department and it addresses key issues such as device availability, performance of devices deployed, and enterprise reporting for roadway data. Tableau Server has helped store information and visualize it in a great fashion. We have great leverage over other systems because Tableau Server is standalone. Our future goal is to use it across the whole organization.
Pros
Tableau Server is compatible and flexible in terms of data connection and usage.
Tableau Server has the option of configuring on-site or cloud, which is excellent.
Tableau Server is economical and easily adaptive in nature.
Cons
Tableau Server could be made more flexible in terms of data connection and ease of use in terms of documenting.
In Tableau Server, the workbook folder itself should be made available with share options to web embed.
Groups should be enhanced with more test case scenarios so organizations can easily follow the protocols.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited in an industry rich with data flow and more room for public information. The reason behind the public information use case is that can Tableau can be made visualize value, and in return adds value to proof of concepts or detailed plan. Tableau Server is economical, and many organizations look for such products, as it is no harm to test and try such an enterprise tool.
We use Tableau to aggregate data from a lot of different systems. It brings it all together to a single place where users can build and access reports and dashboards to gain insight into different areas of the business. The insight gained through Tableau across systems is essential to our business functions and would take much more time and effort to do manually.
Pros
Allows for aggregation across multiple systems
Allows reports and dashboards to be self serve for end users
Allows for ad-hoc reporting
Cons
Initial setup of data sources can be time consuming.
Some native connectors didn’t work as well for us like Salesforce. We had to build our own ETL process.
Setting up permissions originally was burdensome.
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau is great for aggregating data for reporting across many different systems. The perpetual licensing made it an affordable solution for a small subset of our company. It is nice that end users can create reports and dashboards without a dedicated report writing resource.
If Tableau is used for reporting outside the company to external users it can get very expensive.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (51-200 employees)
It is being used to help our clients visualize their usage data from different angles. It is being used by a handful of people across the organization. It helps expose our big data hosted on Cloudera clusters to display them in a unique way.
Pros
Very easy to create neat visualizations in a professional way.
Easy to publish workbooks to Tableau server for global access
Different ways to group and slice the data
Cons
Custom SQL are not intuitive when dealing with Cloudera connections
Simple data tables are harder to create than complex visualizations
Large extracts are not very performant
Cubes are not supported on Tableau
Likelihood to Recommend
Group aggregates and stacked charts are some of Tableau's better visualizations.
Simple data sums and data points are not well suited for Tableau
