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.

[EwanT]

Hi SteveMS,

Thanks for the feedback. We have planned releases to address most of what you are mentioning about the use of the panes. The June release will let you dock the Build a visual menu to the side so you can use drag and drop with less distance. Future releases will be handling the small menu systems at the bottom of the screen making you scroll. This work required more time, so we released to get feedback without it. We plan to give you multiple ways to do things as our releases happen throughout the year

I'll share your feedback with the team. Please check out the June and July releases so you can work using panes with less scrolling as we further develop the project

[Severofm]

The experience has been very bad, the current method is much better and faster. The checkbox could be added as an extra to the current method but never as a replacement.

[EwanT]

Hi Severofm,

Thanks for the feedback.

We will be adding options in our June and July releases that will allow to work more using panes on the side. I'm taking a guess here, but are the checkboxes you are mentioning these ones?

If so, these aren't intended to replace the previous way of working. This is mostly a shortcut to quick visibility options in the visual. If you are a fan of having the Format available each time you come to Power BI, that option should be available as part of the July release.

If my assumptions are wrong, could you let me know? Then we can continue the conversation so I could record your feedback accurately for the team

[iBusinessBI]

Very bad experience. Too many clicks.

Please allow us to keep the current layout that shows fields of a visual as a right-side pane.

We've developed a muscle memory that allows us to drag and drop fields from the model to the visual without extra clicks and without thinking about the location to drop them.

[EwanT]

Hi iBusinessBI,

Thanks for the feedback.

Please stay tuned for our June and July releases. You will be able to move the Build a visual menu to the side and persist the panes you would like to have in the pane switcher each time you come back to Power BI.

If you'll give this another chance then, please let us know if this issue has been solved for you

[BuckyKat37]

I don't care for how this works as it now takes an extra click each time I want to get to the fields used in the visual.

[EwanT]

HI BuckyKat37,

Thanks for the feedback.

Please check out our June and July releases. We will be giving you options to keep the Build a visual menu on the side as a pane. Please let us know if these updates help you with this issue

[trevrobwhite]

If you dock it then you loose the ability to drag and drop fields from the data tab because they are on different tabs.

If you want to add several fields from one table the new layout makes it very hard work.

At least put a pin on the data flyout so it stays there between sections or include a checkbox so you can select multiple fields at once.

Personally, I'm not sure of the goal of this feature, it doesn't seem like time well spent but maybe that's just my opinion.

[LewisCoghlan]

Agreed - not sure of what problem this is solving and believe there are many other features that are far more valuable and useful that could have had time invested into them.

[gordoncurl]

Please do NOT make this a required layout.  I need to be able to see the Selections and Bookmarks and or Selections and Properties at the same time.  I don’t want to have to redo the layout each time I open Power BI.  I’m not a fan.

[abhayrnjn]

This option is not working for me. Whenever I check this option and clicked the OK button, nothing is happening even after I left it for half an hour. Also restarted the PBI desktop but I am unable to find any changes in PBI desktop.

[QC]

I had the same issue, reported bug to MS: https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Issues/Serious-BUG-of-PBI-Desktop-May-2023-release/idi-p/3...

Eventually I reinstalled PBI from website download, it is working now. My previous installation was app from Store, maybe that was the issue

[vanessafvg]

I love this new feature but finding it rather painful in certain circumstances

1. if the data view isn't showing and you try to create a measure, it does nothing. it wont open a new measure dialogue box

2. often the on object get stucka nd blocks the view of other objects even if you try to get it to go away.  very annoying.

[crockcw]

I have gotten mostly used to this, but I have a really hard time dragging and dropping fields to get them in the order I want.  It never wants to "grab" the field and the hover pop-up that shows the detail of the field prevents me from seeing where I'm putting the item.  I never had this much of an issue with the previous formatting view.  Having to right click and "move up" individually gets tedious when there are a lof of fields.

I think it would be nice to still see the fields in the formatting side panel so you can select where to edit.  The on object pop up also covers up other items and sometimes I want to see the entire page without obstruction while formatting.  

My main issue is the bugginess of selecting fields though.  If that could be looked at for future updates I would be grateful 😊

[thcook86]

I dont mind the addition of the on object interaction but I strongly dislike the removal of the 'old' stationary pane along the right side of the canvas where I can drag and drop data into visuals. There are too many clicks to see what I want to do and every time I add a field or make a selection, the size or configuration of the Build a Visual popup changes. I feel like I'm shooting at a moving target which is endlessly frustrating and its difficult to get into a rythm of cross referencing info from different points on the screen. PLEASE make it so we can do the 'Open in New Pane' for the Build a Visual so we can keep it in one place if we want. Without that option, this feature would be a major step back in user friendliness within the UI.

[EwanT]

Hi thcook86,

Thanks for the feedback. The menus aren't predictable enough at the moment due to a technical restraint. We are working to make the menus have a more predictable nature with less shifting due to changes you make as you are working.

Please stay tuned for our June release. The options for Build a visual menu to be added to the pane switcher should be shipping then.

Thanks,

Ewan

[pacofq]

I didn't find the way to reorder the fields

[EwanT]

Hi pacofq,

Two things could be happening.

1. If you have the Suggest a type toggle on, you can't reorder fields. Turning it off will give you the ability to reorder
2. There is a bug where the drop zones have been reduced to the area between fields. This is making it look like you can't reorder since you have a very small drop zone to work with. This is being looked at to get a fix in place

[duncfair]

right-click on the column and near the top of the context menu is 'move' with 'move' options to go up, down, to top, or to bottom of column list.

[EwanT]

Hi duncfair,

Thanks for helping out in the community. If re-ordering is available this is a good workaround until we can fix these bugs for y'all.

[CJSquibb]

This actually has one or two useful features, but it is absolutlely not fit for purpose as it stands.

PROS: (Yes, there are a couple!)

I quite like the Format button that lets me add/remove elements such as slicer headers, data labels etc. I also like the "More options" button at the bottom that displays the Format pane on the right.  So far, so Excel, familiar and (at least marginally) useful. 

The double-click makes it easy to remove components such as axis titles that are not in the Add/Remove list (please add a "Title on/off button beside the X and Y axis in the selector...).   Again, quite nice (though it doesn't always "pick up" the object I want to delete easily).

CONS:

The main problem is with the Data button.  This is just ghastly.  I'm not going to go into all the issues, as other people have done so at length and I agree with everything I have read on this topic.  Just No.

It seems to be pretty buggy still.  I placed a ribbon chart and, although it worked OK, I kept getting pop-up messages saying that there was a fault and did I want to report it to Microsoft.  I did so a couple of times.

SUGGESTIONS:

Either remove the Data button altogether or add a button at the bottom (like you do with Formatting) to allow the display of the old-style fields pane as one of the options for the pane you are currently using for Data and Formatting etc.  You could have an icon for it in the strip on the extreme right and it could show all the field wells/buckets and their contents, and work as it used to (I was running a training course using this today and had to really go looking for Drillthrough!).  In fact, as you wouldn't need to show the visuals, you would have even more space than in the previous Visuals/Fields pane, which would please a lot of us.

Make sure the options in the strip on the right are all turned ON by default at startup (at least Data, formatting and - I hope eventually - Fields).

Off-topic, but while I'm here...

While I'm moaning, let me say that I also hate the Teal colour, especially when you have a mid-grey drop-down arrow on a teal button (as in Power Query Combine when getting data from a Folder).  Why not a white chevron?  Your "Accessibility" feature has actually made things harder to see for everybody - including those with colour vision differences: you still need contrast!  Whoever did the UI design on this needs a dressing down.  And I miss my happy Power BI Yellow.