What Is Tableau? Features, Advantages and Why to Learn to Visualize Data with This Program.


By R/GA


Get to know all the details about the leading business intelligence software, key to organizing information and making decisions based on it.


What is Tableau?


Tableau Software is one of the market's leading Business Intelligence companies. Its goal is to help people see and understand their data quickly, easily and visually through the use of interactive charts and dashboards.


The tool lets you do it in a very didactic way, since it connects easily to hundreds of data sources like Excel, SQL, Google Sheets, among others. Once the connection is made, we can transform this information to give it the correct format according to specific needs. In addition, thanks to its drag & drop interface, you can create attractive visualizations that are then integrated to form dashboards or control panels.


A dashboard is a control panel that lets you give order to the enormous amount of information that can arise from our data sources. Basically, it organizes the main KPIs, metrics and dimensions using charts, tables and visual elements. Then, with the help of filters, parameters and other advanced tools, it's possible to analyze the information and make decisions autonomously and dynamically from a single place. The most common use case of Tableau usually occurs at the business level. Mainly, to visualize information and generate reports on marketing campaigns, sales results, company operations and finance data, HR management and more. In any case, Tableau is also used in other areas, such as the academic and journalistic ones, helping to analyze data from research and explain it in a didactic way. 





Tableau solutions


To use Tableau efficiently you have to take into account its suite of specialized products:


Tableau Desktop: it's Tableau's main application (it must be installed on the computer), where the visualizations and dashboards are created. Although the files can be exported and shared, it doesn't let you view them online and/or in real-time.


Tableau Server: makes it possible to upload the Tableau data and files generated with Tableau Desktop to a physical server or to the cloud to manage them and share them with other users. This way, you can easily log in from any browser to view the dashboards.


Tableau Online: It's the version of Tableau Server hosted in the cloud and managed entirely by Tableau. This way, the installation and maintenance of the server is avoided.


Tableau Prep: Although Tableau Desktop already has features for connecting to multiple data sources, often somewhat more complex processes are required to combine, clean and prepare the data. That's why Tableau created Tableau Prep, a software that simplifies the extraction, transformation and loading of data (ETL) to be able to get the most out of the information.


Tableau Public: It's the free version, limited in features, of Tableau Desktop + Online for sharing visualizations publicly (anyone can access without needing a password). Although it's not authorized to use it for profit and it doesn't have all the features of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Online, it's an excellent tool to start practicing with open data and generate your first dashboards for free.


Main advantages and disadvantages


Let's review some of the most important advantages and disadvantages of Tableau:


Advantages


1- Excellent visualization: Tableau lets you give a high level of detail, precision and customization to the dashboards, which isn't possible with other alternatives in the industry. After quite a bit of practice, you can create truly customized dashboards, with multiple filter, parameter, highlight actions and more.


2- Community: Tableau has the largest and most active community of the BI tools. With just a Google search, it's possible to find enough information to solve any type of problem.


3- Ease of use - Drag & Drop: once you learn the logic of how charts are built in Tableau, its drag-and-drop functionality lets you create complex charts in a matter of seconds.


4- Handling of large volumes of data: Tableau can efficiently handle millions of rows of data to generate different visualizations without affecting the performance of the dashboards. In addition, it has the functionality of connecting “live” to some data sources to collect only the necessary information from the database in real time. 


5- Connections: in Tableau it's possible to integrate the data from different sources into a single model. This way, you can work with native information (from Tableau Online and Server), from ERP, JDE or SAP systems, Oracle databases, spreadsheets, SQL Server, etc. Other data and environments compatible with Tableau are:


Excel


Exasol


MySQL


PostgreSQL


MongoDB


Cloud data from Amazon Redshift, Hadoop, Microsoft Azure, Google BigQuery, Google Drive, among others.


Data from pdf, txt, csv, json files, etcetera.


In summary, Tableau lets you work with any type of data. 


As the main disadvantage, we should include the cost that companies take on to be able to use the software. Its pricing strategy causes the vast majority of companies to be unable to acquire it and to take refuge in cheaper alternatives like Power BI or free ones like Google Data Studio. 


What is the difference between Tableau and Power BI?


Tableau and Power BI are two leading Business Intelligence tools with similar functions: both let us create attractive and understandable dashboards easily, without needing to know how to program.


With a longer track record in the market, Tableau is more stable and versatile, which helps to work with complex data. On the other hand, Power BI, developed by Microsoft, stands out more for its ease of use.


Delving into the differences between Tableau and Power BI, we find the following aspects:


Data volume: Tableau is capable of handling larger volumes of information compared to its competitor. Therefore, it's designed so that medium and large companies can efficiently process millions of rows of data. For its part, Power BI works better with a smaller amount of data, although it can also support (not so efficiently) large volumes. This makes it more useful for the  small and medium business segment, where Tableau doesn't usually compete.


Support: support is more extensive for Tableau users, both official and through the community. However, the number of Power BI users is greater, since it's more accessible and has a great reach by belonging to Microsoft. Therefore, it's more likely to know a Power BI user who can offer help.


Ease of use and Learning curve: Power BI's interface is intuitive (especially for Microsoft users) and can be easily integrated with other products from the company. This makes learning to use it and getting used to it a bit simpler and faster. For its part, Tableau has an interface that allows an extremely advanced level of customization, at the cost of having a slightly longer learning curve than Power BI.


Visualizations: both platforms let you create highly complex visualizations. On one hand, Tableau achieves greater customization of the charts, so they look exactly as the user wants, while Power BI lets you import visualizations created by third parties and adapt them to your own data, providing greater speed.


Data sources: Power BI supports multiple data sources but has more limited access to other databases and servers compared to Tableau. 


Price: in this case, Power BI is much cheaper. However, you have to take into account all the factors mentioned, since there's no point in acquiring a tool that fits the budget but doesn't meet the required objectives. 


Is it easy to learn Tableau?


This question doesn't have a single answer: it will depend on each user's knowledge.


While it's designed for professionals, learning Tableau is relatively simple, since it's not necessary to have programming knowledge.


Its interface is intuitive, although as noted previously, it's more complex compared to that of other programs in this field, as is the case of Microsoft Power BI.


Now then, while using this program with the first visualizations is simple, a deeper and professional use can be a bit more complex and, that's why, it requires specific training in Tableau.  


Why learn Tableau?


With data playing a leading role, the solutions to manage it appear as necessary paths to success in business.


It's already been said: “Data is the oil of the 21st century.” Consequently, tools like Tableau that let you visualize, organize and compare it would be the necessary tools for extracting and commercializing the valuable product.


Just as we've indicated in this article, Tableau stands out for integrating and generating data in record time. It even fosters the management of complex information without it being necessary to have knowledge in code (programming).


Tableau will let you interrogate the data to find meaning in it, and thus be able to act accordingly.

If you'd like to keep exploring this topic, you can also read prompt engineering for data analysts: the skill few master.

Recommended Coderhouse courses

If you want to go deeper into data analysis and applied artificial intelligence, Coderhouse has programs for all levels:

• Data Analytics Course: to learn to analyze data, build dashboards and make decisions based on real information.

• AI Engineering Course: to incorporate AI and machine learning models into your data projects.

• Introduction to Artificial Intelligence Course: to understand the AI ecosystem and complement your data profile with knowledge about language models.