Tableau

What is Tableau?

Tableau is an excellent data visualization and business intelligence tool used for reporting and analyzing vast volumes of data. It is an American company that started in 2003—in June 2019, Salesforce acquired Tableau. It helps users create different charts, graphs, maps, dashboards, and stories for visualizing and analyzing data, to help in making business decisions.

Tableau has a lot of unique, exciting features that make it one of the most popular tools in business intelligence (BI). Let’s learn more about some of the essential Tableau Desktop features. Now that we know what is tableau exactly, let us understand some of its salient features.

 

Tableau Features

• Tableau supports powerful data discovery and exploration that enables users to answer important questions in seconds
• No prior programming knowledge is needed; users without relevant experience can start immediately with creating visualizations using Tableau
• It can connect to several data sources that other BI tools do not support. Tableau enables users to create reports by joining and blending different datasets
• Tableau Server supports a centralized location to manage all published data sources within an organization

 

 

Tableau Product Suite

Product	Version	Features
Tableau Desktop	Paid	Tableau Desktop helps to create reports, dashboards, and stories using different charts and graphs. The workbooks and the dashboards created using Tableau Desktop can be shared locally or publicly.
Tableau Server	Paid	Tableau Server is mainly used in organizations to share workbooks and reports that are created using Tableau Desktop applications across different teams. You can ask questions with natural language, and you will receive AI-driven explanations for your data.
Tableau Online	Paid	The Tableau Online analytics platform is hosted on the cloud, and it helps users publish dashboards and share discoveries with anyone. You can connect to cloud databases, like Amazon Redshift and Google BigQuery. It automatically refreshes data from web apps, like Google Analytics and Salesforce.
Tableau Public	Free	Tableau Public is free to use, but the workbooks created cannot be saved locally. They can be saved to Tableau's public cloud,  which anyone can access and view.  Due to the lack of privacy options, any user can download and access the files saved to the cloud.
Tableau Reader	Free	Tableau Reader is a free desktop application that enables users to open and interact with reports built using Tableau Desktop.
Tableau Mobile	Free	Tableau Mobile provides interactive previews where users can check data and reports anytime from anywhere. You can select, filter, and fine-tune the data with a tap of your finger using the mobile app.

 

Advantages of Tableau 

1. Data visualization
Tableau is a data visualization tool first and foremost. Therefore, it’s technology is there to support complex computations, data blending and dashboarding for the purpose of creating beautiful visualizations that deliver insights that cannot easily be derived from staring at a spreadsheet. It has climbed to the top of the data visualization heap because of it’s dedication to this purpose

2.  Quickly Create Interactive visualizations:
Using drag-n-drop functionalities of Tableau, the user can create a very interactive visual within minutes. The interface can handle endless variations while also limiting you from creating charts that are against data visualization best practices. You can check out some of the amazing visuals created at the Tableau Gallery.

3. Ease of Implementation:
There are many different types of visualization options available in Tableau which enhance the user experience. Also, Tableau is very easy to learn compared to Python, Business Objects and Domo, anyone without having knowledge of coding can easily learn Tableau.

4. Tableau can handle large amounts of data:
Tableau can handle millions of rows of data with ease. Different types of visualization can be created with a large amount of data without impacting the performance of the dashboards. 

 

 

Dis-advantages of Tableau 

1. Scheduling or notification of reports:
Tableau does not provide the feature of automatic refreshing of the reports with the help of scheduling.

2. No Custom Visual Imports
Tableau is not a complete open tool. Unlike other tools like Power BI, developers can create custom visuals that can be easily imported Tableau.

3. Custom formatting in Tableau:
Tableau’s conditional formatting and limited 16 column table displays are pain points for users.

4. Static and single value parameters:
Tableau’s parameters are static and always single value can be selected using a parameter.