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.

[AdamOrtega]

Manipulating the data elements in tables takes much longer than before. Slowing my workflow on ad hoc reports. I like the interaction for quickly changing titles/chart elements etc.. but, we should not take away functionality and workflow in one area to add to another. 

Great to see innovation here though. Keep up the good work!

Thanks

[DarrenW]

I thought it sounded like a good idea but in practice I'm not so sure. 

Pros:

Editing titles by clicking on the thing you want to edit

Currently selected visual doesn't change when you accidentally click a new visual in the panel

Less screen 'real estate' used for panel, means more left over for displaying visuals

Cons:

New habits to learn (change is the only constant!)

Occasional crashes

Not ready to give up on it just yet!

[wtdpon]

I don't hate it, but it definitely takes longer to work with it than with the classic view: either more clicks are required or you need to drag the field longer than before. I also think it's less intuitive than before, altought this may just be because I need more usage.

i haven't had any crashes as reported above.

[Rudz]

I crashed again using On-Object (April 2023 release) and lost a lot of work. I'm done with it until the code is more stable. Same issue as before. Adding the field twice so that I could get a count of field values. Infinite crash loop.

[RosieL]

Hi Rudz - apologies you ran into this! We have added a fix for this for May release. 

[JohnF1966]

Another frustrating part of this On-Obect feature is when a visual is selected and I go to edit a measure or create a new measure the 'Build a visual' dialog box is always in the way as shown in the below attached image. I am wasting too much time closing that box every time I go from visual to measure creation.

[Pfisterbi]

Although I think the idea is very good, I disabled the functionality.
Finding the format options I am looking for takes too long and I have the impression that when I want to drag a new field into a visualization, it takes longer than before because more mouse clicks are required.
Some format options I have to search for awkwardly or are in non-intuitive places. For example, it took me a long time to find the drill-through options.
The old design meant that mouse movements were longer, but the items were intuitive to find, which is no longer the case.
Collapsing the various panels is also a good idea, but has also not been programmed intuitively.
I hope you will continue to work on the good idea and increase the usability.

[Unifydata]

I've turned off the preview feature.  I find myself having to move my mouse back and forth when needing to format, drag and drop measure/fields etc, perhaps overtime i will get it, but at the moment, it just doesn't feel efficient now that they aren't in the same area.  Having the format over to the side (for most things) and the add/build on object just seems crazy when you  predominantly to both together.  I constantly toggle between the two, i can't do that with the new feature.

And the charts in the top ribbon, don't change existing charts like the chart clicking did to the side .... need consistentcy please for an old guy like myself! It makes my brain hurt

[RosieL]

Thank you for this feedback. We just updated the ribbon gallery behavior for May release to be dual purpose as you described. When no visual is selected, the ribbon will insert a new visual of that type. When a visual is selected, you can use the ribbon to change the visual type of the current selection.

Could you give us more details on what sorts of formatting you are not finding on-object? Reminder that double clicking the visual or right click > format should allow you to enter "format mode" to see subselections to click on parts of the visual and use the mini-toolbars for formatting. We'd like to better understand what formatting options might be missing from the mini-toolbars that you still visit the format pane for.

[GaryC]

On-object intraction... While I don't mind having right-click options available (the on-object portion), I detest the new "stacked" panels view (not sure why that is lumped in with "on-object" interactions). Maybe one-off tasks aren't too much of an issue, but when working on editing and updating a lot of pages, bookmarks, object selections, I find myself having to click many more times to get to the items I need. The new view is much more cumbersome, requiring additional and previously uneccessary clicks to select a panel, scroll to the option, make a selection, select the other panel, scroll... wash, rinse, repeat... as when updating views in bookmarks. I tried my best to adapt to it, but I finally had to disable it just to accomplish the edits I wanted to complete on several multi-page reports without losing my temper in frustration. I would prefer to have the two functions (right-click options vs. stacked panels) split into two separate selectable options? That would give us greater flexibility in how we want to display/access our working content within the desktop. Otherwise, I dread the day when the current preview becomes the standard!

[owend]

Overall, this feature requires significant improvements to be an enhancement over the previous workflow, though it certainly has the potential to provide a more efficient and updated UX. Unfortunately the current implementation requires additional clicks or actions in a number of places, which results in a negative user experience.

• "Build a Visual" Popup:

  • An adjustable or dynamic width is necessary to effectively manage long field names.
  • "Add data" button and "Select data" popup:
    • Adjustable or dynamic width is needed to accommodate long field names.
    • The search bar should be selected by default to save users a click when typing a field name.
    • Pressing tab, down, or enter should move the selection to the list of fields, allowing users to navigate with arrow keys and enter/space.
    • It would be beneficial if the full right-click menu was available for fields in this view.
    • Some users might prefer disabling the "Suggest a Visual" feature and having all options visible by default.
  • A visual indication is necessary when one or more fields are invalid.
  • In the previous workflow, a single click was needed to view or edit the fields of a visual, whereas now it takes an additional click on a small button. This issue can be resolved by implementing a shortcut (double-click, keystroke, or a show-by-default toggle in settings).
  • Reordering or rearranging the field list of a visual should allow for more lenient cursor placement for improved ease of use.

• Pane View on the Far Right:

  • As is standard with other applications, ctrl+click should enable users to toggle or display multiple panes, as using the right-click menu is unintuitive and adds unnecessary clicks.
  • The ability to swap between panes using keyboard shortcuts would be a valuable addition.

• "Add to your visual" Popup:

  • Linking an element's checkbox to its specific section in the formatting pane on the far right would be convenient, potentially through a right-click menu.

[PBIandME]

I had to turn off the feature, On paper it looks better and I thought it would be much easier to use. However, once I began using it I found myself spedning more time looking for the basic things, such as formating a visual. It looks good but in terms of usability I dont think its very useful. I get it, it looks more like excel now but, when I have a large data model and I am looking for a specific column it takes way longer to find the column I'm looking for. Or if I need to format the visual I have to do 3 clicks rather than the 1 click as before. On top of all that Its a bit slow. Not sure why the PowerBI team decide to change things that already work just fine rather than working on improving other issues. 2-3 months ago out of the blue the powerBI colors changed. With no option to change it back to yellow. Its ok If you dont do a major update once a month, bug fixes I think are much more important than new features that arent fully though of. Im turning the fetaure off, perhaps in the future it will be more optimized for productivity rather than looks. 

[EwanT]

Hi PBIandMe,

Please stay tuned for our June and July releases. These should contains some options that will help with some of the issues you are finding now. We are trying to make Power BI easier to get started with for inexperienced users. Our plans to implement the features necessary for this change while addressing the needs of our current users is coming out in stages. For this reason we are releasing in preview and not straight to GA. 

It sounds like the change from yellow to teal wasn't a smooth transistion for you. That was not our intention. Unfortunately for the color update this was done so Power BI would be an accessible product, so the option to keep yellow wasn't added

If you do try the June and/or the July releases please let us know if they helped with your productivity

[dbauchan]

I had to remove the feature. It may have to do with the fact that after using it for so long with the visuals on the left, that hovering over each visual to modify proertis felt obtuse. Many times, tring to switch the visual or modify settings would dynamically resize the editor and cover up the visual underneath. this prevents seeing how the visual could be affected and discourages expirimentation. It was pretty frustrating.

[EwanT]

Hi dbauchan,

Thanks for the feedback. Please stay tuned for our June and July releases. They should give you more options around positioning of the menus so you won't have obstructed views

[crir13]

Hi, I love the idea.  I seem to have run into a bug and also unexpected behavior, though.

I had formatted a measure meticulously in a graph.  Then I copied the entire workbook tab, and copied that measure's code and created a new measure.  Now I want to use the same graph, and the same formatting, but with the new measure in the new tab.

When I click on-visual editing and the arrow to replace the old measure with the new measure for the new tab, it doesn't use the same formatting.  A user would expect the same formatting (I did) otherwise it's not really replacing and just creating more unnecessary design work.

Further, when I went to update the design manually, it wouldn't allow me to change the color for that measure.  See the below image; the dropdown for Future Riverview should not be the editable color, but instead New Wales, the measure I just updated in the graph.

[kahnailee]

That's due to it being a new measure/field, and not limited to the On-Object Interaction. Try replicating in the previous version, you should get the same result.

[crir13]

No, I think you misunderstand what I'm saying. I understand for the first part of my post that it's behaving the same, but I'm saying that for better UX, especially for on-object editing, it appears to be buggy.  When I replace the measure using the arrow, I expect the new measure to retain the same design.  That would be an expected UX. 

Further, for the second part of my post, the actual bug, where it's not allowing me to edit the color for the measure I selected in "Apply settings to" it works fine when I revert back:

So, clearly it is a bug for the second part.  Try what I said and you'll see, please.

[EwanT]

Hi crir13,

Thanks for the feedback. I noticed that some formatting options will be retained when swapping and some others get wiped out. I'll share this with the team that handles formatting.

I'll share the color bug that you found as well

[bhuwan]

There is no way, I can change the value to Min, Max or %. I had to switch back.

[kahnailee]

Right-clicking will bring up the aggregation options, similiar to the field dropdown from previous versions. The  ">" next to the field is a bit misleading as the aggregations should be found within that area versus an additional (hidden) step.