Tableau
Tableau is Salesforce's business intelligence platform, licensed by role — Creator, Explorer, Viewer — and deployable either as the hosted Tableau Cloud or as Tableau Server on the customer's own Windows or Linux machines.
LicenseCommercial
DeploymentSelf-hostedManaged
PricingSubscription
Operational complexityMedium
WorkloadInteractive
Use it when
- Skilled analysts should think in charts at speed: the product rewards visual-analysis expertise rather than hiding it.
- Both hosting models must be first-class: Tableau Cloud, or Tableau Server on your own Windows or Linux machines.
- Connector breadth matters: hundreds of native connectors plus ODBC, JDBC, and a connector SDK.
- Role-based licensing fits the organisation: Creators author, Explorers drill, Viewers consume, so the bill scales with how many people build.
Think twice when
- Every viewer costs money: roughly $15 a seat on Cloud Standard, with no capacity tier that removes it, unlike Power BI above F64.
- Metric governance in code is the priority: published data sources are authored in the UI, not written in a modelling language under git.
- The roadmap matters to you: Salesforce is steering toward Tableau Next and Agentforce, and its own docs nudge self-hosters toward Cloud.
How it runs
Tableau Desktop authors workbooks published to Cloud or Server; connections are live or Hyper extracts on refresh schedules. Row-level security through virtual connection data policies needs a Data Management licence; embedding runs through the v3 web components with JWT-based trust.
Details
CompareHow Tableau answers the questions Business Intelligence turns on.
Business Intelligence
| How it works | |
| Authoring model | Drag-and-drop shelves in Tableau Desktop or web authoring |
| Semantic layer | Published data sources carrying relationships and calculated fields, authored in the UI; Pulse adds metric definitions above them |
| Query execution | Live connection to the source, or a Hyper extract Tableau stores and refreshes |
| Chart library | VizQL's built-in chart grammar, plus viz extensions adding custom chart types on the worksheet and dashboard extensions adding objects to a dashboard, both from the Tableau Exchange |
| Definitions in | Workbook files (.twb, .twbx) published into the Server or Cloud repository |
| Alerts and delivery | Data-driven alerts and scheduled subscriptions mail a view; Tableau Pulse pushes metric digests and off-cycle alerts to email and Slack with AI-written summaries |
| Connections | |
| Connectors | Hundreds of native connectors across files, databases, warehouses and SaaS, with ODBC, JDBC and a connector SDK for anything unlisted |
| Embedding | Embedding API v3 as web components, authenticated by connected apps, direct trust with a JWT, or OAuth 2.0 trust through your own identity provider |
| Access | |
| Access control | Content permissions, plus virtual connections whose data policies apply row-level security wherever that connection is used, though those need a Data Management licence |
| Cost | |
| Billing unit | Per named user by role, Viewer, Explorer and Creator at roughly $15, $42 and $75 a month on Cloud Standard and about double on Enterprise, billed annually; no capacity tier removes the viewer seat |
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