Flexibility and ease of use
Choose any one analytical solution provider (Choose in consultation with your lecturer) and research its key analytical capabilities by seeking answers to the following questions:
1. How comprehensive is the solution and what company data can it incorporate?
Tableau has long been used due to its limberness and simple frontend and smooth interfaces that ideally require less expertise to handle making it suitable for almost anyone. However, despite its simplicity it quite boats with powerful tools for progressive analytics and progressive modelling.
This are some of the ways the analytics software works.
Tableau provides and intuitive flow by facilitating a drag and drop segmentation hence enabling a flexible and quick contingent analysis (Tableau Reviews: Overview, Pricing and Features. n.d.).
For instance, one can drag and drop fields to create a filter on the dashboard to show a particular product line on a particular country.
Using Tableau, you can rapidly modify predictions and calculations on different scenarios or frameworks. This can be done by applying certain filters and data manipulation. Parameters as well provide a way of producing an interactive report.
Nair &Shetty. (2016). Tableau allows experts to leverage work done on other Platforms for further analysis such as webAPIs, for instance using Various data input formats are also possible on Tableau from excel worksheets to text files, also you can integrate various server architectures such as MS SQL. Again Tableau robust arithmetic parameters one can easily supplement your analysis with random calculations and perform complex data manipulation producing very comprehensive reporting.
2. Does it provide data security?
Tableau takes into consideration that data is the most strategic and the most important assets that an organisation has, therefore providing the highest priority on security and privacy of company data.
Love. (2014, June 11). The security approach is multi faced it covers operational security, user security data security and network security. On data security is mainly by user filters on the particular data, however you can as well edit user filters themselves for better customisation.
- Data restriction by user filters can be applied based on the role of the user excess security will directly translate to more user-filters on a particular user.
- Restricting data this way in Tableau is called row level security whereby there are inherently two approaches
- Manual mapping This approach is often seen as tentative because user filter must be applied to each workbook as per each user account, updating and republishing on every change on the workbook
- Dynamic mapping On this approach you create a calculated field that automate mapping users to data value, for instance if you only want a certain individual to view specified data then the underlying data should contain the specified usernames and outline each user role.
Due to the fact that filtering is defined at the data level and automated by the calculated field the approach is more secure as compared to the manual approach
Authentication verifies one’s identity. Meaning an individual must exists on Tableau repository so as to access content or view any related information. Two approaches to the mode of authentication exist in Tableau, one is local-authentication-where it is performed on the resident architecture or otherwise it can be on an outsourced platform.
Powerful analytics and modelling tools
Local authentication
Josang, A. (2014).Trusted interaction between users and service providers in online environments depends on robust mutual authentication
On this framework useraccounts are generated and configured within the Tableau framework itself (server) .However this can be dynamic as earlier illustrated .Users are therfore seen local to the server can only be authenticated through the server respository Store .On login the user credentials are verified aganist the server details and acess is granted accordingly.
Active directory
(Active Directory.2017 ). Active directory is a service developed by Microsoft. A server may run this service as a Domain Controller, If Tableau Server is configured to use Active Directory authentication, it authenticates and authorises users in the domain network. For instance, when a user login in and fills in the credentials, then the credentials are checked against rights and permissions on the directory. If verified it sends access tokens to the Tableau server for permission access. Tableau Server will then administer user access to Tableau resources based on the roles stored in the local repository store.
3. How easy is the solution to use?
Tableau provides an interactive, flexible and smooth flow analysis format by use of dashboards. Its powerful visualisation tools help communicate answers to questions allowing users to as well interact with the reports to refine their needs such as through;
Tableau data visualisation which are created in very intuitive, drag and drop fashion allows users perform complex data virtualisation.
By use of graphs a more holistic picture is seen to give a clear picture for quick decision making.
Tableau separate data layer from presentation layer allowing end users conduct analysis and make interactive dashboards to make gainful discoveries with far much less technical support.
This provide a rather interactive interface that use various parameters to provides an intuitive and more so an interactive experience providing a rich report for end users
Tableau has extensive data integration approaches on a range of data platforms. For instance, Tableau integrates with R IN the business intelligence language used by data scientist.
Hoque & Dykman . (october 2017). Tableau also offers native support for Google BigQuery API– a plus for organizations that want highly detailed analytics.
Numerous data source connectionsTableau has a large user base and a number of forums ,which offers a large consultant base and comprehensive research database as from journals,articles,and online forums.this makes the user to maximise capability of the solutions through consultation in areas of challenge.thus the wealth of resources helps enrich the solution.
Security and privacy of data
4. How scalable is the solution?
Tableau exists on different platforms been Server, Tableau public, Tableau desktop and Tableau online. On this platforms users can interactively use whichever service that suits them well
Tableau online (server) allows access on files on mobile devices This is depicted on the below image
Source: created by user.
Tableau online: This is a software as a service(SaaS) enterprise it is hosted on their servers but offers as an on premises setting.
Tableau Public: It’s a free platform in which anyone can access for publishing visualisations that can be in turn accessed by the public for analysis or shared online
Tableau mobile: This exists as an app on either android or apple platforms as well as mobile browsers, allowing users view an edit dashboard on the go.
5. Critique the analytical capabilities of the software
Tableau allows creation of information from data such as graphs forecasts and calculations that improve analytical skills however if your main goal is creation of data for instance coming up with project costs it becomes less effective as compared to other tools such as excel
Despite been one of the best analytical tools due to its flexibility and user friendly dashboards it becomes a rather challenging task for business oriented or other users that may not be well skilled in IT on performing back end tasks such as Data integration into servers that require well versed SQL technician.
Cost repressive. Tableau offers a handful of licensing options with the free limited version as well. For instance, tableau desktop will cost you around 2000$ per year while Tableau server might even cost you a whopping $240000 per year which will turn away most start-up companies or organisations that might try to adopt the software model. This depicts how Tableau can go from an ideal to solution to turn off for small enterprises.
Despite various security mechanisms put in place Tableau fails to provide a centralised data level security. It instead provides a row level security at the data level where each user has a user account hence a lot of user accounts in which it becomes easy for hackers as it ideally increases chances.
It offers great data visualisation techniques, however lacks proper reporting
Tools that leverage BI needs such as creating tables. It also lacks a proper notification functionality for end users.
Screen shot depicting forecating in tableau.
Screen shot depicting Highlighting in Tableau.
Screenshot depicting data visualisations in Tableau.
Screen shot depicting highliting in Tableau.
Reference
Tableau Reviews: Overview, Pricing and Features. (n.d.). Retrieved October 18, 2017, from
https://reviews.financesonline.com/p/tableau-software/
Josang, A. (2014). Local user-centric identity management. Journal of Trust Management, 1-5. Retrieved October 18, 2017, from https://journaloftrustmanagement.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40493-014-0009-6.
Active Directory. (n.d.). Retrieved October 18, 2017, from https://techterms.com/definition/active_directory
Hoque, E., & Dykman, I. (october 2017). Applying Pragmatics Principles for Interaction with Visual Analytics. Retrieved October 18, 2017, from https://research.tableau.com/paper/applying-pragmatics-principles-interaction-visual-analytics.
Nair, L. R., & Shetty, S. D. (2016). Interactive visual analytics on Big Data: Tableau vs D3.js. Journal of e-learning and knowledge Society, 12(2016), 6th ser., 1-1. Retrieved October 18, 2017, from https://www.je-lks.org/ojs/index.php/Je-LKS_EN/article/view/1128
Love, C. (2014, June 11). Understanding Tableau Permissions. Retrieved October 18, 2017, from
https://www.theinformationlab.co.uk/2014/06/11/understanding-tableau-server-permissions/
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