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.

[gmsamborn]

I was just watching a video on DAX Query View by Marco Russo and even he had problems with the new interface (for 30 seconds).

That speaks volumes.

[jusTodd]

Please change the navigation buttons on the pane switcher.  It is awkward at best.

The X in the pane switcher is huge pain in the neck!  

I find myself constantly opening things that I have inadvertantly closed.

The user experience would feel better if the option were to simply collapse the pane only.

What exaclty is the use case for closing a pane versus collapsing anyhow?  It is not memory hog.  Closing it does not appear to offer any benefit except enabling users to have to click twice more time to get to open again.

The current user experience for this is backwards.

Two clicks to collapse, click again to re-open; and, one click to close, with two Clicks to re-open.

I recommend one clicks to collapse, click again to re-open; and, two clicks to close, and two clicks to re-open.

That is, unless you can somehow make it so that there is ever only one click, like getting rid of close altogether.

I suspect that most would agree that collapse should be the primary action and not close.  If nothing else, give me a collapse button!  I should not have to click twice to collapse the pane out of the way.

[RosieL]

Great news - we're swapping the default behavior to be collapse instead of close with the new default configuration planned for December. Check out the November blog update that has the list of what to expect for December's new default.

[QC]

Hi Rosie, Nov. update & roadmap have some welcome changes, e.g. stacking instead of closing pane window, expand data fields wider, collapse instead of closing, etc., a step in the right direction.

However, all above are simply making new UI similiar to old experience, the question is - what value does "on-object" really add? Other preview features, such as new card visual, button slicer, calculation group, DAX query view, are all very helpful, but I still couldn't find much real world applicatin of "on-object" after 1 year of trying. 

I think the strategic direction is something your team needs to clearly lay out and communicate to users. If the function allows users to direclty intereact with visual elements, e.g. axis, grid, ticks, plotting area, error bar, legend, trendline, columns, dots, etc. with a single right-click + enriched right-click menu, I'd say it has true value, because that is one of the biggest gaps in current UI.

[iBusinessBI]

Power BI Developers that are working with Power BI many hours a day value efficiency above all.

We do have a MUSCLE MEMORY and it's very efficient!

The old interface allows us to do things FAST, without thinking. Because our muscle memory knows exactly where the Data Pane is, where the Format menu is, where to drag-and-drop field to.

No thinking, super-fast!

But in the new interface everything is JUMPING around: the panes suddenly collapse, they open in different areas, and each time any simple action that took milliseconds before, now makes me stop thinking about my analytical work, and makes me think "where did this pane go now, where should I click...." 

It is just PAINFUL.

And I am not talking about getting used to new pane locations. There are no fixed locations anymore.

The new interface BROKE our MUSCLE MEMORY and does not allow to do things WITHOUT thinking.

And I would expect from the UI specialists to know this stuff.

Too many clicks, too much time spent.

Turn off. Again.

[GaryC]

Agreed! Even though I'm getting accustomed to the new interface, it still requires more mental work to accomplish the same tasks. MS seems determined to make it what they want versus what users wish to have.

[D_M]

Thank you (and everyone in the thread doing the same) for continuing to raise this. I've been quiet on this issue for a while only because I've been too busy to risk testing this again (as I lose significant time whenever I do so, though I might have to 'bite the bullet' again) but this aspect of the 'new' experience continues to be the most troublesome.
As I've said previously, ALL panes on the right-hand side of the UI should simply behave like the Filter pane. Or at the very least, give us the ability to choose that type of behaviour. Also, make the setup persistent across pages, so if the user has several panes open, and then chooses to collapse all but one, have it remain the exact same as they navigate from one page to the next. There's so much that the 'old' interface does right, and the new one does not.

As others have said, the process of giving feedback on this and monitoring the progress feels somewhat circular, but the main ask from many (including myself) has always been to simply give us the ability to choose between the current behaviour and the 'new' behaviour on a permanent basis.

This isn't a simple case of preference or relearning 'muscle memory', for those of us affected, this is a critical issue of efficiency that has the potential to negatively impact our workflows in a significant way going forward (and I'm already losing some time to even the default pane behaviour since PBI started wanting to change the view within the pane everytime I click on a different visual).

[AMcg19]

I agree! Please have a collapse button just like the Filter Pane. We need to collapse a pane and then easily activate it again in the same place. We don't like having to search over by the pane switcher to get it docked again. This is extra clicks and too cumbersome.

[QC]

Which is exactly the same as current UI, so after 1 year of development we are circling back to the starting point 😂

What has "on-object" accompolished so far, other than editing chart titles? 

Can we now interact directly with chart elements, e.g. axis, grid, legend, plot area, data points? Or can we right-click to add a hyperlink to matrix header? Or right-click to "set as total" on a waterfall? 

If the answer is no, then well .. it is a complete waste of engineering resources

[Severofm]

I agree, if all the suggestions are followed we will return to the starting point which is still much better than the proposal.

[gtmoten]

Regardless of if  OOE ever becomes worth using, the execution and delivery of this feature will become a case study for future Info Tech students on how not to do it. 

There is excellent work being done by other teams in the group on other new features for PBI Desktop. Whoever is responsible for OOE needs to have a chat with them.

[marianadinf]

I ve been following PowerBi since 2017 literrally every single month to date in terms of feature release.

This is by far the worst feature and change brought to powerbi, i've tried to use it for some time and genuinely struggling with it, just not intuitive, doesnt save time apart from title editing and this just does not work on daily use (and slower). I understand the intent to match it to excel or other office UI tool but clearly PLEASE if anything make this optional. I barely ever put any comment on any social media but here took this effort to ensure we have the option to turn this off. Powerbi product roadmap is very smart and well thought through along all these years and this one has to be about the biggest draw back if we were forced to use it.

[johnmelbourne]

Just awful.  Please always make optional to turn off and never make generally available. 

[GaryC]

I have complained about this feature from the beginning. I've tried each version, but always finding a reason or reasons to turn it off. I have workied with the November release through the updating of three reports that I've developed. I found it to be at least tolerable, allowing me to complete updates without throwing my hands up in frustration and turning the feature off again.

However, it is still buggy. Several times when trying to perform straight forward tasks, such as changing the order/layering of items in the selection pane, all the open/"pinned" panes would suddenly close, requiring me to open them and work my way back to where I was.

I don't like having to "pin" my desired panes open for each page of my report. It would be better if I could open and "pin" panes and would remain open until I close them. I don't like that when collpsing panes, they are removed from the list of panes, requiring me to find and select them again. I would also much prefer they simply collapse, like the filter pane currently does , and remain there for me to click and retore them.

So I admit that it is getting better, but I still prefer the original interface better. I'm still holding onto hope that MS will not force this new default to be only option and allow users to make their own decision on which interface they prefer to work with.

[Severofm]

I also noticed several improvements in the November update, but there are many bugs that need to be fixed, I can't waste time on this and that's why I disabled it. I also hope this doesn't become the default, or at least that they keep the two options to choose from.

[JohnF1966]

I like that we can now resize the data flyout (second flyout), but I don't use the 'Build a Visual' pane from the build button on the object itself, I use it pinned to the Pane Switcher on the right and I'd like to see that same resizing ability applied there as well. 

[JohnF1966]

I'm liking the November 2023 update to the On-Object feature where you can now keep all your panes open. This was much needed.

[QC]

Gave it another try ... it crushed my report. Switched back to classic mode, no such issue. 

On top of being pointless click-adding-maniac, "on-object" is also far from stable. 

[RosieL]

Hi QC - Sincere apologies you ran into this crash. Could you provide the build version you ran into this issue?

[hemamaleni]

Hello Rosie, In Matrix, when a cell element is added with background fx using a measure, a grey border is added around the cell. Is there a way to remove the border line?

[JohnF1966]

When I'm in the 'Build a visual' pane and I click on the '>' in the 'Columns' section it opens up a side pane titled 'Data' where I can click on the drop down in the 'Field' section which allows me to select or search for a field.(see 'Search Bar Visible' Image below which shows what is displayed when I click on the top item in the list titled 'Column1'). This is good, however when I have a lot of tables in my model and I click on the second column titled 'Column2' the search bar is hidden and off the screen at the top (see 'Search Bar Missing' image below).

Please take a look and correct this.