Share your thoughts on the new On-Object Interaction feature (preview)

[RosieL]

Hit Reply to tell us what you think about the new On-Object Interaction feature so we can continue to improve.

For example:

• What changes would you like to see?
• If you turned off the preview switch, why?
• Any suggestions for addititional settings or capabilities?

Thanks,

-Power BI team

To read more about the feature, see the announcement in the Power BI Product Blog or our documentation on how to Use on-object interaction

FAQs:

• Q: How can I open multiple panes at once?
  • A: You can CTRL + click or right click on the unselected pane you wish to open and choose "Open in new pane"
• Q: Where did aggregations move to?
  • A: It's still on right click of a field, or you can use the new flyout aggregations dropdown while choosing or swapping a field.
• Q: Where did drillthrough and tooltip page setup move to?
  • A: Drillthrough is now in the page settings of the format pane under Page Information > Page type > Drillthrough or Tooltip.

[TrevorC]

Very interesting.

I really like that I can edit the formatting of items in a visual while on the visual. Very convenient.

Not sure if these were mentioned but I would like to see the following:

• A quicker way to minimize the panes. Currently, I have to right click then select a choice. I think that the icons similar to those used on an application would work well for this.
• When a visual is selected on the canvas then the type should be highlighted in the ribbon.

Thank you for all the cool features that you folks keep adding.

[TrevorC]

One thing I just noticed is that it is more difficult to compare the configurations of differrent visuals with. I think the best aproach is to have the panes similar to the way they were and have the object editing functionality. 

I find the previous layout mor eintuitive. 

[gcn]

I have the same feeling. Maybe it will be a better idea to store user preferences on show/hide panes and to have a behavior similar to the slicers where you don't need ctrl for multiple selection. It was frustrating when selecting one pane knocked down another pane.  

[Zx2000]

After a week with this feature - i dont like it. Can't see longer names when adding to fields. Nope! I wish an option for a 2nd screen and darkmode. This feature looks and feels like made by a person who has no experience with Power BI and UI design

[jlimon]

I have disabled it after testing it. I don't think "on-object interaction" should be a mandatory option and the user should be allowed to choose the current form or this new one.

[WilliamHF]

There's been a lot of negativity about this feature, and I don't disagree that yes, we need to be able to view simultaneous panes on the side just like before if we want to.

HOWEVER, let's not throw everything out the window. Much has been said about needing extra mouse clicks, needing to move the mouse further, etc. But some things are more efficient and intuitive with this feature.

Some examples:

• You are working on a graph and want to change the title. Without moving the mouse across the page, you click on the title and change it. Bingo! Intuitive and fast.
• You have the format pane open, and are working on various parts of a graph. As you click the section on the graph you want to work on (axis, labels, colors) the format pane zips right to that section. This works as you move to other graphs as well.
• You have a graph and want to turn on data labels. Without leaving the graph, you hit the paintbrush and turn them on. While you're at it you can turn off the Y-axis as well. No scrolling on the format pane to find the on/off toggles. Just a few fast checkboxes. Sweet!

So, while I agree with the need to return the panes, allowing us to drag and drop measures as before if we wish to, I would be sad to see some of these design elements go. PowerBI is notoriously less customizable than Excel, and part of that involves not being able to select individual objects on the graph. While this still doesn't allow us to, say, format a single data label in a specific color like you can in Excel, it's at least a step in the right direction.

I think On-Object has it's flaws and will need further tweaking, but that's the point of beta. The PowerBI team may not have hit a homer on the first swing, but neither have they struck out.

William

[kahnailee]

Check out Guy in a Cube on YouTube, he runs through how to get the panes back to the former layout while still utlizing the new feature.

https://youtu.be/xL6DvHYjBVs

[Janos]

Doesn't seem to work for the data pane. At least I can't make it show my measures already selected, or drop new ones in

[TrevorC]

THANK YOU!!!! Right click on the icon for a pane that you are NOT on and select "Open in new pane". 

[WilliamHF]

Thanks, that was super helpful! I didn't know about the right-click option either while in edit mode. Excellent.

[Dom-Perthyn]

One major issue with the "open in new pane" to show multiple panes is when you want to use a new pane from the menu it is a pain!  It then replaces all the mutiple open panes with the new one.  Not tested enough really

[BiDevelopers]

I run a BI development team with about fifteen developers, and they all agree that the new feature makes Power Bi feel more amateur and less geared towards professionals.
Pro devs use muscle memory of the eye and the hand/mouse to gain efficiency.  
Previously all work was done in the menus on the right, and after a learning curve, the menus item locations could be memorized and hand and eye movement was minimized. This applied to all visuals, so no matter where the visual is, the developer knew where to find the format options. 

Now the visual menu can be anywhere on the screen, and some of the options are still in the legacy many on the right.

Devs now have to search the screen with their eyes and mouse to find the tiny icon that could be anywhere on the screen and is in a different location for every visual. My team absolutely hates having to click all over the screen to accomplish what used to be in one menu on the right. 
Not only that, we tested dozens of workflows, and every single one required more clicks. Sometimes up to triple the clicks for the same action. 
There are a plethora of ideas from the community about improving Power Bi, but no one from the community was asking for half baked, partially developed on object interaction features. Really don't understand the motivation here - it breaks all previous training materials, makes the format feature far less efficient, and eliminated the ability to memorize where a feature will show up on the screen. 

[cassidy]

Perfect assessment.  There seems to be a lack of consideration for the volume of report building being done, we don't need to get "cutesy" with it this far into the programs development.  Keep it predictable and logical.

[jimbob2285]

Hi

I've turned this feature on about 10 minutes ago and I've litterally just tunred it off again... I think it's a great feature and I fully support enhancing the report creation/editing experience in the Power BI desktop, but with the fetaure turned on some of the older functionality has dissapeared, the new Format tab, used to becalled Visualizations and you could flick between Format and Build... it looks like the build features are now all on-object

You're giving but also taking away... i thought the Microsoft model was to offer mutiple ways to acheive the same thing!

If you're goign to make some changes, then add more formatting options to visuals, allow drill through from multi-row cards, add stacked and clustered charts... there's lots of improvements needed to the actual functionality of the visuals before you start changing where we make changes

Thanks

Jim

[TheoC]

@RosieL 

Although I appreciate that the Design team is trying to make Power BI more interactive at the granular level, it does nothing more than impact the efficiency by which we can actually do our work.  The time it takes to go through multiple clicks and find multiple tables every single time just to add data to a visual is beyond anything I have seen.  For example:

Previously Creating a Visual:

1. Click on Visual which is situated right next to Data pane.

2. Drag fields into Visual which is an "inch" movement of my mouse.

3. Right click to select option (i.e. Count / Distinct Count / etc).

New Approach of Creating a Visual:

1. Click on Home tab in the vertical ribbon.

2. Click on Visual which is approx three to four inches of mouse movement.

3. Move mouse to top corner of visual to make a visual change

4. Click on "Add Data"

5. Click on the "Table"

6. Click on the field from the Table.

7. Right click to select option.

8. Go through the exact same process for the "next" column.

With all the respect in the world, this is by far the worst feature to date.  I highly recommend never making this a permanent change.  The level of inefficiency this creates is extreme.  What took 2-4 seconds to do now takes 10-12 seconds.

The above strictly focuses on the Visual pane and does not include any other impacts that arise where you need to adjust filters associated with visuals.  For example, I cannot just drag and drop a field into the Filters pane without now having to leave the Visual Format pane and clicking the tiny little cylinder, first.  If I am working on a visual on the far left of the canvas, that is approx 30-40 inches of screen movement (dependent on screen size).

(Note - data set is just randomly generated data and is not PII).

Again, I appreciate that the Design team wants to upgrade BI's looks and feel, but making these changes is NOT beneficial and all it does is cause significant inefficiencies and complexities that previously did not exist.  

All the best,

Theo.

[gtmoten]

I am with you there. Changes to the UX just seem designed to add to the click-burden of the application. I absolutely love what I can achive with PBI, but it would be so much more productive with some thoughtful keyboard shortcuts or even just remembering UI settings between sessions! There are so many things in the do list for PBI desktop I can't help but think the team is under resourced.....

[cassidy]

I turned off the preview feature as it was immediately more complex to edit reports than before.  I've spent thousands of hours editing Power BI reports at this point and there is a flow to it.  Each time these type of changes come out, it breaks the known flow and almost always results in more clicks and time than before.

It often seems that decisions are made as if Power BI report creators are doing simple tasks, when reports can be very detailed and having on-object is not needed and in the way.

An example of this thinking was the forced default of "Auto-Create Report" in Power BI Service.  This move suggest Power BI developers think our Datasets are as simple as 3 tables with 4 columns each, when in reality we are managing massive Datasets and there is no possible way to "Auto-Create" anything.  It just becomes a hassle to explain to Users why they shouldn't use it.

[nml123456789]

Really love these udpates. Overall very userfriendly.

@RosieL have noticed though that now in the matrix visual you cannot move the subtotals to the bottom of the visual. The subotal position is grayed out. the only way is to turned the stepped layered feature off. It would be great to go back to the old way and allow the stepped feature to be on  and still allow the selection of the subtotal position to go to the bottom

Thanks!!

[XeinaBarmotska]

I cannot edit a measure, because there is no panel. it disappeared

[XeinaBarmotska]

I found how to switch on the panels, maybe the feature is ok

[p0955274]

I've been using the new interaction and find it confusing, the fields/options related to drillthrough https://learn.microsoft.com/fr-fr/power-bi/create-reports/desktop-drillthrough  have just disapeared. I had to switch back to the old style. As mentionned before, leave both options: interaction+the ability to show the old right hand pane.