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.

[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.

[EwanT]

Hi CJSquibb,

Please check out the June release. There will be updates to give you more flexibility with the placement of the Build a visual menu and ways to persist the strip on the right with the tools that you choose.

If you turn off "Suggest a visual type by default" in the options dialog you will be able to see all of the field wells each time you open the Desktop

In regards to the mid-gray dropdown arrow on a teal button, you may be running into a bug. The icons, like arrows and text should all be white on the new teal. I'll log this for someone to look into

Thank you for your detailed feedback. I appreciate the time you took to write all of that out and I can take your suggestions to the team for consideration.

[ereg0002]

Yeah no this is not good at all. I have tried to use it for a while now but it makes no sense and it is very wasteful.

The nail in the box is that I'm not able to use "aggregations" on my measures, they are greyed out, and for the reports that used "Show value as" and I try to do any changes Power BI pops up an error message which says cancel or report this issue. Every time I close that box it reopens it and I had to force shut down Power BI.

Please do not implement this in any near future.

[EwanT]

Hi ereg0002,

Thank you for reporting this about aggregations. Though I may not be following. This feature didn't change how aggregations work. It only exposes aggregations in the flyout if they were available before. 

I'm not able to repro this behavior, but I would like to look into it further with you. Could you let me know which visualizations type you are trying this out with and could you supply a screenshot of the menus that are showing the issue? PLEASE REMEMBER TO MASK YOUR SENSITIVE DATA

When you says "any changes Power BI pops up an error" could you let me know what are the changes you tried to make before the error dialog appeared and wouldn't go away? This will help us target the portions of the UI that could be causing this so we can look into it.

[Pfisterbi]

@RosieL 
I gave it one more try after the new desktop has been released.

And... had to turn it off again. 

When use it and change to the definition of a calculated table, I get this:

The two shapes do not disappear, no matter, what I do.

If you want to push that really to production, then we need an option to turn it off, because, as it is developped now, it just unusable.

Sorry for the harsh statement, but that's my opinion about this feature.

Great idea, but needs an overwork.

[EwanT]

Hi Pfisterbi,

This is a known bug that is currently being worked on. When the fix for this comes in a later update, I believe July, I hope you will give it another try. We won't be pushing this to production while we have known bug like this. Thank you for the feedback.

[danextian]

Tried this today but had to disable it. I can't rearrange the fields. Is it just me or everyone else?

[EwanT]

Hi danextian,

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

As a workaround you could also try this solution that @duncfair shared Re: Share your thoughts on the new On-Object Inter... - Microsoft Fabric Community

[Letzternacht]

This particular feature seems to be useless and even wasted more time. I often find myself spending excessive amounts of time trying to accomplish my tasks using this feature. Specifically, the "Suggest a type" function is truly annoying, and the "on object" feature is even more frustrating. It becomes particularly difficult when the field name is excessively long, as it becomes harder to view it. Although I am aware that the side panel can be reopened by clicking on the icon in the view tab, I fail to comprehend the purpose of this action.

[EwanT]

Hi Letzternacht,

Thank you for the feedback. You are able to turn the "Suggest a type" functionality off by default by going to the Options dialog and looking under global report settings. 

Would you be able to let me know more about why you find the "Suggest a type" function annoying. Also what is frustrating you about the "on object" feature. If we had more detailed information we can try and address it.

Long field names is an issue right now. This is something on our backlog for a future update to fix

[ddk]

Daily user and PBI-enthusiast

I have been testing this for over 2 months now and it still feels confusing, unproductive and counterintuitive. 

Main points:

- drag and drop fields in visual fields was a lot easier in the standard version

- the "Suggest a type" is really annoying, and sometimes you have to turn it off to change the visual.

- visual Format Pane should always be visible (now you have to re-activate it every time after restarting PBI)

- actually, I find myself never using the "on object" feature (double click in visual => blue lines)

- ...

Please, seriously reconsider this...

[EwanT]

Hi ddk,

Thanks for this feedback and for testing out the feature for a long period.

-Please stay tuned for our June update. If you prefer to drag and drop fields like before, you'll be able to move the Build a visual menu closer to where you are used to working

-The "Suggest a type" should turn off when selecting another chart type. If you could share your repro steps I can have someone look into this. Also if you go to the Options dialog under Global Report settings you can uncheck "Suggest a visual type by default" Then you won't have to use it. If you could let me know what about it you find annoying I can take that feedback back to the team

-Please stay tuned for our July update. We are adding functionality that will allow you to have the same tools in the pane switcher each time you come back to Power BI Desktop

[ddk]

Thanks Ewan,

I was not aware of the ability to turn of the "Suggest a type" 👍.

Looks like the next updates might try to fix some of the issues many people are facing.

We look forward to it with our critical eye.... 🤔

[DataSaurus]

This is confusing with and awkward and cramped interface. I specifically went looking how to turn it off because the current production way of building visuals is far better.  I have no idea why this would have time wasted on it when Power BI still doesn't have dark mode?!

[EwanT]

Hi DataSaurus

Cool name BTW. Thanks for sharing your feedback. We have some positioning and sizing issue at the moment so I understand the awkward and cramped interface part. Though could you let me know more about what you mean by confusing. That way the team can trying to address the confusion

Please stay tuned for the June and July updates as they may give you the options you need to work more efficiently with the feature. As we trying and make Power BI more accessible for new users we will release early editions to collect feedback and telemetry. Please don't think that we are trying to make things more difficult for our users that have been with us for a long time. We actively plan for the reaction of our current users to make sure that Power BI is something you would want to stick with. Though features in preview may not have all that you need from the first release.

Apologies on dark mode. Power BI hasn't forgotten about it. I want it as well