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.

[JohnF1966]

@RosieL

The December 2023 update did not address the above mentioned issue of the search bar being off-screen. Is this being looked at? And will it be fixed in the next update?

[RosieL]

Hi @JohnF1966 the fix will be in the next release, which is the February build. Apologies for the delay

[Severofm]

The November update has more bugs than the previous ones and is impossible to work with. Deactivating, again.

[appsac]

This feature is terrible.  I keep closing the data and visualizations panes and have to go to View menu to make visible again.  You can only add a column to an existing table/matrix visual at the end and then move it up to where you want it.  Please don't make this feature permanent.

[AUaero]

Personally I hate it.  This "improvement" is completely unintuitive, breaks existing functionality, requires more clicks to accomplish the same tasks, and breaks existing workflow practices.  Please kill this "feature" before making it required for all users.

[cwollett]

I can definitely see use cases where this on-object interaction would be beneficial. However, for those whose jobs center around creating reports & dashboards that have numerous visuals, the consistency of the pinned panes on the right (turning on-object preview off) is superior in my opinon.

Having the visual formatting pane visible at all times is a huge help. I can click between objects to quickly see if stylings match. This is a cumbersome task with on-object formatting.

Having the panes disappear when you click off an object is also surprising and unintuitive. I would want things like bookmarks/selection/data to persist until I close it.

All that is to say, I'm not opposed to keeping the on-object menus for those that find them useful. But if that comes out of preview/into production, I would hope there is a way for users to configure whether they want pinned panes.

[AMcg19]

Collapse a Pane. 

Some of the panes I use more than others.  When I collapse a pane I frequently use to make more room on my screen or when I am not immediately using it - the pane disappears over to the pane switcher.  Then I have to go back over and find it again by searching at the icons.   The behaviour of collapse is much better when it actually collpases - like the filter pane - just one click to collapse and one click to open and I can read the title of the pane I have just collpased.    It would be a much better experience if can choose to have the panes I am using frequently to simply collpase and we can still see the heading, just like the filter pane.  This way it is easier to find, quicker to use and much more slick.  I think that we could also have the choice to 'park' the panes we dont frequently use over on the pane switcher but still have the option to collapse - like the filter pane.

[hemamaleni]

Will there be options to change the default grey color of the rule/line when the mouse is hovered over the visual in tooltip?

[hemamaleni]

Hello Rosie, everytime I click on anything in selection pane, it collapses and I have to reopen again. What is the solution to keep the selection pane, bookmark pane, format pane, etc from not closing. Also I would like to know if these panes can come out of the current window and have it seen in a separate window? Right now when all panes are open it occupies most of the space and the report size becomes less readable. Having a separate window for these pane would allow users with multiple screen to use them conventiently wihout have to open, collapse or close. 

[Severofm]

You have all my support. I completely agree.

[JohnF1966]

The 'Build a Visual' icon dissapears (deactivates) whenever I click on a shape (like a line for example). I have to either go into the View menu or thePane SwitcherPane to reactivate. Please take a look at this issue. Sometimes the 'Data' icon dissapears too, but not as often.

[ctappan]

The October 2023 Power BI Updates YouTube video had comments turned on and MS staff were responding to some. But apparently the number of negative comments about on-object interactions grew enough that there that they turned off commenting... (sigh) MS could save the time and effort of their developers and their PR teams if they would just abandon this terrible, terrible, UX.

[gtmoten]

I just went back to the video - comments are back on, and this was pinned. It is the first direct acknowledgement (I have seen) since this whole "journey" started...... 

"@MohammadAli-pm6vt Just to respond to everyone, we have read all your feedback, and we really appreciate the hard truth and will make the necessary adjustments to not degrade the experience. We will follow up in the coming month. Thanks (Mo, Product owner for PBI Desktop)"

[Severofm]

I hope they really listen to the community.

[ctappan]

Also, though, it was just a week ago that they published a video on guy in a cube called "Why On-Object Editing in Power BI?" with a similar comment from Mohammad at Microsoft. But the video said it would eventually become the default experience. Don't be fooled by his seemingly genuine comment. It just means they're going to try to fix more bugs before they make it the default experience.

[gtmoten]

if it is default but not mandatory, that may be a positive. Thing is there are some comparatively simple enhancements to the current UI that would benefit us all enourmously. OOE has (likely) sucked all resources away from that. 

[GaryC]

It may not be mandatory now, but how long do you think MS will continue to pour development resources into an older feature that they want to depreciate? It will only be a matter of time before such development of the older UI becomes a cost that can/"needs" to be cut. There is plenty of history of MS doing just that with their products.

[ctappan]

as I've noted before though, that's false optimism. No one builds and maintains parallel solutions. "Default" = "Mandatory" sooner or later.

[gtmoten]

sadly, you are right. one a new manager will say "this is technical debt" only 30% of users have this turned on, depreciate it. the fact that 80% of the work is being done by that 30% will be irrelevant 😞

[TomGee702]

I just downloaded the latest version and though it is better, I still HATE it.

If you force me to relearn things, then I may as well learn a different product!
I'm already in a debate with others about which platform to use, and if the advantage of already knowing MS/PBI is undermined, then there goes my argument for sticking with it.  If you mandate the use of On Object, I will be extremely pissed and will likely no longer advocate against switching platforms. It is not just this change, but what else am I going to have to relearn in the future??

If you were just adding options, that's fine, but stop taking things away and forcing us to relearn things we already know.

Sorry, I don't mean to be rude but I think this really, really sucks. And what bothers me the most is the arrogance of MS to be ignoring the users that are saying that we do NOT want this and saying that it will become mandated/default.

Additionally, I think this was introduced into public preview waaay prematurely. End user feedback is one thing, although the feedback doesn't seem to mean much to MS. But I'm not your QC team. I have better things to do then waste my team hunting around trying to figure out how to do things I already used to know, especially when there were glaringly obvious deficiencies that should have been addressed before this was ever put out to the public. If this version were the first preview, maybe end users wouldn't be so oppossed to it. But it isn't. And I know I speak for many others when I say that we are.

[germo]

I completely agree. Especially: we are the opinion maker, and decision makers often (even most time) follow our opinion. And this feature and especially the communication from MS (not listening us, and just broadcasting: this is the future, we don't care about your opinion) is destroying a lot of trust. I think, it is a mega communication disaster. 

It took a long time before I became a "Power BI advocate". My opinion really counts. And I am also very effective in avoiding products. MS is playing a risky game with us.

And it's not only about the unusable GUI "improvements". For me the most important feature of Power BI is the modeling. If the GUI can't be promoted by me, then I can't use the Tabular engine build into Power BI. But if Microsoft promotes ways from SSAS into Power BI Services, then how I can use this technology, if the GUI can't be used anymore? Can I still trust MS and still use this technology? I use MS since the very beginning, because I trusted.

I lost a lot of trust when I saw how quickly and easily Microsoft betrayed entire markets, like Russia. And I ask myself, are the old Power BI veterans being betrayed here?