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]

I agree. Put the filter pane option with the other options and ALSO include it in the 'Pane switcher' so that we can easily show/hide it.

[andrewpirie]

Hey @RosieL is there any chance you could make the visuals not enter authoring mode via double-click when I'm clicking the up/down arrows on a visual legend?

When there's too many items to display, I press the legend up/down arrow to move up and down the list of legend items, and when there is a lot, I press this quickly to move up/down faster, however double-clicking the legend arrow puts the visual into authoring mode and stops the arrow from working.

Legend navigation hampered by authoring mode.

[Quiny_Harl]

The "build visual" pane has disappeared.

[edchuy]

I found this "annoying" issue when trying to reach the three dots options of a visual:

In the focus mode of a visual, this issue doesn't exist.

[LRM_TruStage]

I was trying to format a Line Chart so the lines would have different colors than default. Only the first color can be changed regardless of which series I select.

[iBusinessBI]

I feel I need to write again. Jan 2024.

And after some improvements in Dec 2023 version I gave this feature a whole month of try without turning off.

For a whole month I've worked with it. I thought maybe I'll get used to it, maybe I am missing something....

But no! It is just an awful experience, the panes keep disappearing / reappearing in other order.

I build lots of reports, dashboards. I have developed a MUSCLE MEMORY - my hand knows where to find each property without thinking. And it is not just because of the habit. The old experience was great because the Panes were STATIC!!! They were always there, IN THE SAME ORDER!!! For MUSCLE MEMORY!!!

The New experience makes me each time to THINK and LOOK FOR a certain feature. Not becase of the habit, but because EVERYTHING MOVES AROUND, there is NO FIXED ORDER.

It is sooo hard on my brains.

Please hire different UX/UI experts. Talk to us, the developers, watch us work.
I am turning this off again.

[stharen]

I came here to say exactly this.  I didn't even last 3 days with this turned on.  I hate having to go over and click a button every time I want to get to a new menu, and remember where that button is, and as noted above, I have a muscle memory for where everything is.  I can see how it's nice to have the screen real estate, but I lost HOURS on Friday to not being able to find the thing I needed in that moment.  I had a sense of visceral relief when I turned this feature off.

[elimcd79]

I'm not sure if this is a "me" thing, but I used to be able to pick multiple visuals of the same visual type (e.g., three matrix visuals) and edit them all at once (e.g., to turn off the title or to give them all the same height). This ability to edit more than one visual at a time seems to have disappeared, despite me having the new on-object UI turned off. Because I spend 90% of my day doing Power BI visualizations, this has a big impact on me and makes an already click-click-click experience even more laborious.

[QC]

I have the same issue. In the past I can select multiple slicers for example, edit format at once (font, size, etc.). With the latest version of PBI Desktop, when multiple are selected, the format pane became blank.

This is a huge drag of productivity: if I have 10 slicers, I am forced to edit them 1 by 1, and that's just for 1 page of 1 report 😡

[tvav]

Hi there

This was reported as a bug: ?   https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Desktop/Formatting-Options-are-unavailable/m-p/3641874#M11... 

and it was fixed in the latest December update released 2 days ago - Version: 2.124.1805.0 

[elimcd79]

Thank you so much for referencing the ticket! I can confirm that when I downloaded the update, I could edit multiple visuals again at the same time.

[D_M]

I can confirm this is a localized issue. Currently using the latest version (released 20th Jan): 2.124.1805.0, and PBI appears to behave the same as usual when selecting multiple objects of the exact same type, albeit with the 'OOI' switched off. 

That said, I have observed a weird, semi-persistent glitch recently where PBI will stop properly rendering the formatting values for certain objects (both data visuals and shapes/buttons etc.)
When this happens, I've found that making the visual hidden then making it visible again seems to restore the full formatting functionality. Not sure if this is related or not to your issue but worth a try perhaps?

[Rudz]

Micorosft, you keep trying and falling short. We'll keep telling you until you hear it:

• Take this into private preview with experienced developers.
• Use UX/UI experts.
• Panes were not the problem. They were done right before and you broke it. Finding things in the panes was a problem. Focus your efforts on just that part. You are really close.
• Quit pushing alpha code to your users. That's not what public previews are for!

[D_M]

Thank you for making the effort to test it so thoroughly, I myself have only tested it for a few hours at a time at most due to how inefficient it is, even after the latest updates, so I really appreciate the time taken. Reading your review/commentary, I'm reminded of everything I (and many others) have said so far, and again, I think the biggest gap in consideration of the 'OOI' concept is 'scale'.

Like yourself I work on a large volume of different reports and for those that do, such missteps in the UX/UI are provably inefficient and counter-intuitive, and lead to unavoidable frustration and time lost. And just to reinforce an important point you made, It's not a case of 'getting used to' the new interface, it's that it simply doesn't work as well for those of us who work in high volume in a way that heavily relies on continuous comparison and editing of the same fields across different objects and pages etc. In such a situation, consistency is key, and the new interface is simply too inconsistent. If you only occasionally dabble in physical report building and layout, then sure, the new interface might not be so problematic, but for those of us who work in such a way that we FEEL every extra click or moment lost because we have to hesitate on the next click, such issues are rather painful. 

So again, the latest updates are appreciated, but we really do just need the option to make the panes on the right-hand side behave EXACTLY as they currently do. The current/legacy behaviour works, and it works REALLY well, and the new behaviour is not an improvement for those that rely on it.

[Severofm]

I completely agree with your comments. Despite all the improvements with the December update, bugs don't allow you to use it for long without losing patience.

[LewisCoghlan]

Have tried it again since hearing about the updates over the past few months - still feels so much less intuitive, and I really struggled to get into a workflow. Everything felt like more effort and harder to find what I needed. 

The standard interface is just better. 

[jayaxe]

Yes totally totally totally agree! 

It's really a 'pane' in the butt switching between 'Data' and visual build because I need to see which tables I'm pulling the data from and there is no option to keep all panes open (correct me if I'm wrong). 

Microsoft developers, please for goodness of humanity, listen to feedback and refine this if it's to be made compulsory. Thanks!

[JohnF1966]

@jayaxe

Go to the 'View' menu and in the 'Pane switcher' dropdown make sure you have a check mark next to 'Always open in a new pane' (see image below).

[jayaxe]

Ok thanks for this. But in any case, it's still a pain seeing so many interface changes when it's not making any revolutionary impact and only serves to irritate us users. 

[adegrno]

agree. Hard to understand why MS wants to annoy the majority of its professional PBI userbase.

[GaryC]

Seems that their focus is on making the UI as similar to Excel as possible in order to make it easier for new users. However, their efforts have continued to make work harder to accomplish for those who do more than dabble in report development and maintenance. To me, the focus on new customer familiarity is misplaced when the changes negatively impact older customers who often have so much more invested in the product.