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.

[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.

[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.