Is Tableau Really Better Than Power BI?
By: Jenna Eagleson
Tags: Data Visualization, Tableau, Business Intelligence, Power Bi, Tools

Reactions to using Tableau for the first time; from a Power BI user.

When getting started in data visualization, one of the first major decisions you need to make is what Business Intelligence (BI) tool you want to learn (or at least, learn first). There are approximately 5,678,234,987 BI tools out there, but the two heavyweights are Tableau and Microsoft’s Power BI.

Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash. Owie

Now, not to overdramatize (but I’m going to overdramatize), but the Tableau vs. Power BI debate is a strongly divided camp. Like the Yankees vs. the Red Sox or Voldemort vs. Potter. There are some dataviz folks, mostly freelancers, who are well versed in both, but everyone has their favorite.

True confessions: when I first started learning about BI tools, I wanted to learn Tableau.

Tableau is cool. Tableau is what everyone is always talking about. Tableau has an Iron Viz competition, for goodness’ sake. I mean that name alone makes it sound badass. To me, Power BI seemed like the lame little brother who was desperately trying to follow in his hero’s footsteps. Power BI could maybe get you what you needed, but it wasn’t going to be pretty.

As fate would have it, because of a series of constraints (namely, budget, and Microsoft-embeddedness in my organization) I got “stuck” with Power BI.

Fast forward just over a year later, and, through some McGivering, Power BI has been able to do everything we have needed. But a part of me still felt left out of the cool kids’ table because the more you get involved in dataviz, the more you hear about Tableau. So, I decided to give it a whirl and see what all the fuss is about.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Trying out Tableau

First, I downloaded Tableau Public (you can download it for free here, which might seem counterintuitive to the above conversation with my manager, but Tableau Public would not be suitable for my work because, as the name suggests, you have to make everything you do and all of your data public). Then, I headed over to Makeover Monday to get a dataset with which to work. If you haven’t heard of Makeover Monday, it is an awesome project with a weekly challenge to makeover a published data visualization with an openly available dataset. Write thank-you notes to Eva Murray and Andy Kriebel at your earliest convenience.

As I was making my way through the challenge using Tableau, here were my reactions:

1. How in the heck do I clean my data?!

When you load a dataset into Power BI, you immediately go into Power Query where you can do all sorts of data cleaning (either by point-and-click or by using the M language — more on that here). Apparently, you need Tableau Prep for this in Tableau, which is an additional cost. Not today, Satan. Luckily, this week’s Makeover Monday dataset is already formatted nicely so I don't need to do much.

Good luck Charlie reaction GIF from Giphy.

2. Only ONE visual per sheet?!

Tableau seems to force you to create only one visualization per sheet. As in one chart. As in one metric. Once you have created 237 sheets, you can then combine them into a dashboard. As someone who likes to do side-by-side comparisons of different versions of a visual all at once, this is a real pain in the keister.

Having to make allll the sheets

I have become immensely grateful for the ability to create multiple visuals in a sheet at all once. Instead of having to create multiple sheets with multiple visuals to then make a dashboard, in Power BI, you essentially just start building the dashboard itself from the ground up.

3. When I create a calculated field it is added as a column to my data?!

In Power BI, you create measures or calculated columns (more on that here). The two options have very different implications for the performance of your dashboards. If I create a calculated field in Tableau and then go back to my data view, it shows up as another column! For most of my calculated fields, this doesn’t even make sense…For example, if I create a calculated field “2020 Exports,” it is added as a column with a bunch of nulls — Tableau, explain yourself!

Why would I want Total 2020 Exports as a column, Tableau?!

Aside from the nonsensical-ness of this, I’m not sure what the performance implications are, but they can’t be good.

That being said, I can appreciate the added simplicity of having only one option in Tableau: a “calculated field.” When first starting in Power BI, it took me a while to get a handle on the circumstances when I would want to create a “calculated column” or a “measure.” If I didn’t have to weed through those differences in Power BI, I might not have even noticed that this handling of calculated fields in Tableau seems strange.

4. I have to create a DUPLICATE FIELD if I want to display it as a different color?!

I will give it to Tableau that it can be nice that, once you add your 237 sheets into a dashboard, you can change some of the formatting to all visuals at once. This can be super handy!

However, if I want to display a certain field, let’s stick with 2020 Exports, as black in a table but gray in a bar chart, I have to create a DUPLICATE 2020 Exports field. Two. Of the exact same field. So that they can be two different colors in two different visuals.

This is completely foreign to a Power BI user who can customize the color and other characteristics of each field per each visual. The way field is displayed in one visual (e.g., a bar chart) is completely independent of how that same field is displayed in another visual (e.g., a table).

Photo by Rajshri Bharath KS on Unsplash

I feel like this was probably intended to be some kind of stop-gap for those newer to dataviz, because, in most cases, it is a good practice to have the same field be the same color across visualizations. But, there are plenty of situations where it makes all the sense in the world to have the same field be different colors in different visualizations and it’s my dashboard and I should be able to do what I want.

5. Tableau Community is great… and so is Power BI Community.

Both Tableau and Power BI have a “Community” portal where users can post questions or issues that they are having and other users can respond. The two communities are similar and, when you search for Tableau and/or Power BI and the name of your issue, the first couple of results are almost always postings in the respective community page.

Unsurprisingly, Tableau Community is active and robust with all the resources you can imagine. I had to do much Googling as I was working my way through this Makeover Monday (which I also had to do when I was first learning Power BI, and still do) and I was able to find the information that I needed to accomplish my goals. But, I also realized that I am able to do the same thing when I run into an issue with Power BI. Considering that Power BI is far lesser known than Tableau, this is all the more impressive.

Sidebar: Because I’m like that, I tested loading the landing page of each community: Power BI: 3.24 seconds and Tableau: 7.5 seconds. Time is money, people!

Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash

However, beyond the general support/troubleshooting community, the community at large is much stronger for Tableau. Tableau users have a dedicated conference, community challenges, and other fun activities and events with which Power BI just cannot compete.

IMHO, this is an area where Power BI really falls flat. When you see a super-cool-out-of-this-world-gorgeous data visualization, it is almost always in Tableau, and if it isn’t in Tableau, it is much more likely to be made in a data visualization tool other than Power BI. This makes it much more difficult to inspire new users because it can be harder to get Power Bi specific inspiration.

Conclusion

I learned three things from this experience:

1. It was painful, but also really fun to work with a new tool.

2. I want to keep experimenting in Tableau outside of work.

3. I haven’t been giving Power BI enough credit.

It is hard not to be wooed by Tableau. There is no denying it, it is really pretty. And because more design-centric people tend to gravitate towards Tableau, the dashboards that you see are beautiful.

But that doesn’t mean that you can’t also create beautiful things in Power BI and Tableau certainly has its cons.

If you are first starting out, I would encourage you to pick just one to start with. Trying to learn both at once will be all kinds of confusing and once you learn one, it will be much easier to learn the other. As you are learning and testing and want to at least start with a free solution I would pick:

Tableau if:

- Straightforward data

- Limited data cleaning required

- Want to go bowling with bumpers/have guide rails in place

Power BI if:

- More complex data

- Data cleaning required

- Want more direct control and customization

Regardless of which tool you end up using primarily, I encourage you to play in both. Keep banging your head against the wall, it gets so much better!

***I reserve the right to completely reverse everything I just said a year (or week) from now when I’ve learned more about Tableau.***

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

I’m a People Analyst who loves data viz. Usually, I work in Power BI, but on days like today, I venture over to the dark side. I would love to hear more about your tool of choice and why. Where do you get inspiration for your next Power BI dashboard? How do you organize your sheets for creating a dashboard in Tableau? Find me on Linkedin or Twitter or leave comments below. Let’s get this party started!