Tableau Prep Benefits and Insights

Why use Tableau Prep?

Key differentiators & advantages of Tableau Prep

Improve Data Analysis: Achieve better business results by ensuring high-quality data preparation before data analysis. Manipulate data for “what-if” analysis, and forecast trends and patterns to make more informed decisions.
Self-Service Data Prep: Quickly get up to speed with the same familiar data connectors, calculation language, user permissions and admin views as Tableau.
Localization: Unicode-enabled, it easily pulls data stored in any language. Access the interface and supporting documentation in any of 10 different languages.
Deploy Anywhere: Deploy easily on both Windows and MacOS environments. Set up within virtual solutions — Citrix, Parallels and VMware — with minimum effort.
Data Connectivity: Pull structured and unstructured data from disparate data sources and then blend, cleanse and prepare it. Create and publish flows to the web; automate scheduled data flows to Tableau Online and Tableau Server to keep analytics metrics up-to-date.
Data Visualization: Turn tidy data into easily digestible business insights, and display in the form of dashboards and data visualizations. Gain targeted views of business data through double-click and drag-and-drop functionality.
Regular Updates: Its regular updates include user-suggested improvements and new feature requests.

Industry Expertise

Tableau Prep provides data preparation and analytics for Tableau customers in a multitude of industries worldwide. These include aviation, software manufacturing, aerospace, brokerage, medical testing, management and business consulting, safety and productivity solutions, financial services and many more.

Key Features

Tableau Prep Builder

Integrations: Pulls from Tableau data extracts and published data sources. Run R and Python scripts from within data preparation flows.
Data Discovery: Gain confidence in data through no-impact manipulation of large data sets, and view the results.

Aggregates and Joins: Aggregate data stored in a data source through simple drag-and-drop actions. Assess the result of joins by viewing a summary of unmatched values.
Data Views: View three coordinated data views simultaneously — row-level data through a data grid, column level profiles and a flow pane that displays the entire data prep process.

Accessible Interface: Access the most recent data flows on the start page itself; view data tables and connectors in the Connections pane. Perform repetitive tasks faster in seconds through point-and-click functionality, then preview in Tableau Desktop.

Tableau Prep Conductor

Data Management: Get a clear view of the data prep processes across the organization. Data analysts can schedule and monitor the data cleaning process with data governance and security in place.
Data Flow Scheduling: Publish data flows to Tableau Server or Tableau Online, and schedule and automate updates to keep data fresh for real-time analysis.
Auditing: Track run history of data flows and data connectivity processes for audit and get alerts for fails. Seamlessly aligns with role-based permission settings of other Tableau offerings.

Limitations

At the time of this review, these are the limitations according to user feedback:

Doesn’t provide time-series analysis capability
UI functions such as Group and Replace and Remove Punctuation are not ubiquitous
Can be slow at times
Prep Builder doesn’t autosave data flows

Suite Support

Before emailing support, sign up on the vendor’s website to access a library of free training videos and on-demand and live webinars. Or, search for the issue and possible resolutions on the product support page from the customer portal.

Access to the standard support package is included in all subscriptions and is available for the duration of that subscription. The vendor also offers extended and premium support programs that include accelerated response times and options.

Email: Only license support queries are processed through email and accessed through the customer portal. Submit a web form or customer portal request through the vendor’s website.

Phone: Available only to premium support package subscribers.

Training: Sign up on the vendor’s website to access a library of free training videos and on-demand and live webinars. Enroll in role-based learning paths through e-learning and live/classroom training courses to train both virtually and in-person.

Tickets: Submit a support request from either the “Contact Us” page or the product support page from the customer portal.

Pricing & Cost Details

Includes Price/User and Minimum Commitment Terms for Tableau Prep

Tableau Prep Reviews & Pricing

What is Tableau Prep?

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