The current state of on-object interaction in Power BI

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The current state of on-object interaction in Power BI
On-object interaction remains stubbornly in preview in Power BI, but it's been steadily updated since we last blogged about it, so we felt it was time for this catch-up.

Posted by Andy Brown on 04 April 2024

In this blog

Panes
Setting Data Fields
Formatting has changed radically
A summary of the changes
Other small changes

This blog shows the effect at the time of writing of enabling on-object interaction (OOI) in Power BI Desktop:

This option isn't enabled by default - at least, not yet.

Panes

With OOI on you can use the Pane Manager to move between different tasks:

You can choose which panes the Pane Manager (shown here on the right) gives you access to - here we've chosen to include icons for the Data, Build and Formatting panes.

Compare this with the current view without OOI:

Without OOI you see this.

Setting Data Fields

Without OOI you use the traditional field well for assigning fields to visuals:

The field well is shown on the right.

With OOI you assign fields like this:

The principle is the same, but the new way of allocating fields to visuals is clearer and easier to use.

With OOI you can also interact while on the object (hence the clunky name on-obect interaction, I presume):

Another way to set fields for a visual with OOI enabled.

Formatting has changed radically

It's when you come to format a visual that you'll see most changes. With OOI enabled, you can edit some things in the object itself:

My guess is that the set of on-object formatting options supported will grow over time.

You can also double-click on part of a visual to go straight to where the formatting options can be found:

Here I've selected the chart bars, which takes me to the Bars formatting card.

Speaking of the formatting pane, this has changed too:

The new formatting pane. Some individual properties have been moved or renamed, but in general each individual card looks very much like the old one.

A summary of the changes

To summarise, there are 3 big changes which have taken place:

Change	Notes
Combined list	There is no longer a distinction between visual-specific properties and general properties (so for example the Title card above appears in the same list as the visual-specific Bars card).
Reordering and relabelling	Many (probably most) cards have been reorganised more logically, and some properties have been renamed.
No more *Analytics*	The separate items in the Analytics pane have been moved to the main list of properties.

If all this sounds like a huge change, don't despair - I found it very quick to transition from the old Power BI without OOI to the new one with it, and in most cases I found the new formatting pane easier to navigate.

Compare all of the above with how Power BI looks at the moment, without OOI enabled:

There is a separate card for Analytics properties, and formatting properties are divided between those specific to a Visual and General ones.

Each visual's formatting pane therefore contains less properties:

The properties specific to our bar chart.

Opinions will differ about all these formatting changes. I like the fact that I can see all of the formatting to do with my selected visual in one place, but I can see that this change won't be to everyone's taste. It'll be interesting to see if Microsoft keep all the changes after the exhaustive user testing that is no doubt taking place.

Other small changes

There are doubtless lots of other small changes which I haven't picked up on. Here's one example:

With OOI enabled you can go to Power BI's Settings more easily.

The big question, of course, is when OOI will be turned on by default in preview. For that, we must patiently wait (my bet was in the March update, but this has been and gone without any announcement or change).

Some other pages relevant to the above blog include:

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Panes

Setting Data Fields

Formatting has changed radically

A summary of the changes

Other small changes

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