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tessahurr
Employee
Employee

Share your thoughts on the new ribbon (Preview feature)

Hit Reply to tell us what you think about the new ribbon so we can continue to improve.

 

Don't forget to try out the simplified ribbon too!

 

More information about the ribbon can be found in our blog post.

 

-Power BI ribbon team

88 REPLIES 88
Heather_R
Advocate I
Advocate I

As with so many others, I miss the QAT (and yes, I've voted and commented on that thread).  
But after working with the new ribbon I find some other naggins issues

1. Lag, there seems to be a much more noticable lag in anything I want to do - format change on a measure, adding a button, creating a measure are all affected.

2. Button location, I'm sure I'll get used to it in time, but when I want to format my measure - I don't think of "Measure Tools", but I'll get there.  I also don't really understand why the "Table Tools" tab appears when I have a measure selected - other than it is contained in a 'table' (which for me is an empty table for measures only)

3. The "Insert" tab could include the new measure button - but that's just how I think (and part of why I'd like to be able to customize this ribbon)

The update itself looks nice, with the icons looking more like other MS Office products, but the lagging issue and missing QAT make me not want to upgrade.  

yoav_lubo
Helper I
Helper I

Not having the Quick Access Toolbar is a no go for me 🙂

Anonymous
Not applicable

I presumed this was a new UI that contained all the available options that the "current" UI contains, but I cannot find some options which makes it difficult to use.

 

Such as Query Editor and Sort Columns in Modelling view (e.g. to achieve this https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49685042/powerbi-sort-columns-in-matrix-visual).

 

Am I mistaken - is this ribbon UI intended for less-savvy users or something?

I come from the experience of someone not too innately familiar with Power BI Desktop.

I personally like the new Insert tab. It took me some adjusting to understand the new layout and organization, but it's not bad (for me).

I find it a bit repetitive/confusing to have "Excel", "Power BI Datasets", and "SQL Server" listed both in the Home tab and under the "Get data" menu when you're using the Simplified Ribbon. Since the group titles aren't there, it doesn't immediately make it clear if those buttons launch those programs or allow you to select data sources or what they particularly do. Having the tooltip on mouse hover is helpful, and once you learn the functions of the buttons everything is fine, but I just don't like the initial confusion. I think that in the Simplified Ribbon, you can get away with keeping these within the "Get data" menu.

I think there's a lot of UI that isn't in the Ribbon that hypothetically could be, such as: the "Format" section of the "Visualizations" pane, the functionality for renaming, deleting, and hiding pages, and some of the various commands from the context menus like "Spotlight" and "See records". I'm the type of person that likes to have all of my commands available in one place, and so this interface feels confusing and inconsistent as you have to search through context menus, sidebars, or the Ribbon to reach certain functions. This is less a complaint of the new Ribbon and just an overall UI design complaint, so take it as you may.

The black outlines around the Ribbon items is kind of weird and takes some adjusting, but honestly is a good move for accessibility. However, on the opposite token, I think the golden color chosen for the "Format" and "Data/Drill" contextual tabs don't contrast enough against the grey background. I'd suggest finding a different color to use. Another important element for accessibility is being able to access the Ribbon via the Alt key, although I understand that functionality is forthcoming.

I really dislike having the Undo and Redo buttons on the Home tab; the Office Online apps have done this, and it's frustrating. Even worse, under the simplified ribbon, the Redo button is hidden underneath the Undo button in a menu. It takes twice as many clicks to redo an action as it does to undo under the simplified ribbon. I found it an odd omission to not have the Quick Access Toolbar present, and I come to realize here that the Quick Access Toolbar was removed with this new preview design. I added my vote to the UserVoice request, but I also agree that Save, Undo, and Redo should be always present as part of a Quick Access Toolbar. Customization and other functionality don't particularly matter to me as much, but I think having those three buttons always present in all modes is.

Due to my issues with the simplified ribbon I mentioned above, I won't be continuing to use it. I'll stick with the new design though, because I do like it.

@AnonymousThey're still there, but lots of items have been renamed/shifted. So Query Editor is now Transform data, as shown (the window it opens in is still called the Power Query Editor though):

 

Capture1.PNG

 

 

 

 

To your other question, by Modelling view do you mean Data view? If so, again the same option is there, but in this case is now initially hidden under Column tools, if you click on that tab in the ribbon though, you should see it, as shown:
Capture2.PNG

You've probably solved this yourself by now though, but just in case this might help someone with the same query.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Thanks @Abraxus ,

 

I always forget the "ribbon" is dynamic in what it shows.  I always found it more intuitive to see all options (even if grayed out) rather than hiding them altogether.

I will try the new UI again at some point, but I'm getting so much frustration with trying to "order" Matrix columns that'll I'll give it a break for now!

 

Thanks for the reply.

No problem @Anonymous , and I agree. I'm trying to get used to it to avoid delaying the adjustment into next year, but completely understand sticking with the old interface for now. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I 'get' what they're trying to do, but would rather they keep some things consistent with the previous iteration, will have to wait and see if that gets any traction though ahead of the official GA/default rollout.

mnahmany
Frequent Visitor

WHERE IS THE "SAVE" BUTTON?


@mnahmany wrote:

WHERE IS THE "SAVE" BUTTON?


Missing. CTRL-S works, and it still auto-saves. Go here to vote to bring it back.



Did I answer your question? Mark my post as a solution!
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DAX is for Analysis. Power Query is for Data Modeling


Proud to be a Super User!

MCSA: BI Reporting
tstewart
Regular Visitor

Quick Access Toolbar is essential, have disabled the new Ribbon until thats in place

I've also found the Ribbon to be 'laggy' particularly with things like New Measure - what used to be a click and .. 1s later new Measure is now a click... a wait... a freeze ... wait a little longer ... click it again ... new Measure. 

The overall way it works, the context specific highlighted yellow areas are all better. The ability to collapse to compact version... also good.

But for day to day use response time and lack of QAT means its not as good as current workflow for me

msommerf
Helper III
Helper III

Using the new Ribbon, can you advise where the Formatting and Properties functions are under Modelling?

@msommerf 

 

It is not under modelling.  Moved to a separate tab based on column/measure.

Connect on LinkedIn

Thank You.

Found it

Anonymous
Not applicable

Really liking the direction in which this is headed, but I am really hoping the absence of the Quick Access Toolbar is just a temporary thing and NOT the default. That is one of the BEST features in Office for productivity, and it is invaluable in Power BI for speeding up everyone's workflow.

marcoselias
Advocate V
Advocate V

I'll join the others: I miss the Quick Access Toolbar!

Anonymous
Not applicable

I love that I'm now able to pin more than 9 items in the OPEN dialog box.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Quick access toolbar disappeared after turning on new ribbon preview.

saraMissBI
Resolver I
Resolver I

Hello @tessahurr ,

 

Thank you for creating the new ribbon in Power BI. I turned it on, and I can see how much it will make working on my Power BI Desktop fun! One thing I like most in this new ribbon is having the "Recent Sources" available....with the old ribbon, I had to click "Get Data" and go through all the steps required to connect to a dataset/database that I have already connected to before....so now I will just click on "Recent Sources", and connect to the dataset I need in just one click. Thank you!!!

emarshall
Advocate I
Advocate I

The new ribbon looks good so far.

 

Could we please have the ability to customise the ribbon (similar to the big list we have available in Excel under File/Options)?

 

If we could customise the data source icons that currently appear under Home/Data to quickly jump to data sources we frequently use that would be very helpful.

Abraxus
Advocate II
Advocate II

@tessahurr 

First of all, thanks for all the work put into this.

 

First impressions 

The new 'simplified' ribbon seems clunky versus the old one (where the buttons remained the same, but were only visible/accessible after clicking on a ribbon tab title). Ironically, the 'old' behaviour is actually more in line with Microsoft apps such as PowerPoint etc. anyway, so it would be preferable to match/retain that behaviour if we're going that route design wise (also, more selfishly I guess, many colleagues in my organisation often have to use smaller screens, so screen real estate is very precious).

 

Dark theme (again, I know!)

Speaking of design, I actually think the 'original' Power BI interface (i.e. the one that was in place before the introduction of the 'new', lighter theme, which itself will be deprecated in 2020 for the new ribbon being discussed) is still among the best interfaces I've seen Microsoft create, and I still prefer that look for Power BI, but at the very least, in terms of 'dark themes' going forward (and apologies if this is more of a general interface comment rather than being specific to the ribbon though related), can we please stick to the original Power BI colours, versus the standard Office dark theme? (There is a very good reason people still refer to/request it so much, you guys really nailed it design wise.)
I understand the need/desire for consistency across Microsoft products, but I also think there's a case for Power BI having some unique qualities to it's interface, as not everything has to (or should) look exactly the same.

Unnecessary ribbon tabs?

I'm not sure why the 'Insert' tab has been added? There was (and still is) ample space for all of the relevant items in the Home menu, and you can't really get very far in terms of creating a usable Power BI report etc. without some physical page content? It just seems a bit superfluous interface wise to shift some of those items into their own tab, where they all functioned perfectly well as part of the Home tab (and again, I don't think consistency with other Microsoft products justifies this change if that was the methodology).

The new file menu...

Is excellent, for the most part, though some of the omissions/changes seem strange, in particular:

 

No Exit button? But Sign out remains? I half expected Sign out to also close the window/file in question (hence why Exit was removed), but no? So in the new interface, I can only close the file using the top right-hand cross button? Not a deal breaker of course, though a better change would be to keep the Exit button in place, but change the name to Close instead (and again ironically, this would match standard Office apps)?

It would also be nice to have recent items appear even without hovering over the 'Open' tab on the left rail, mimicking how it works with the old/current ribbon interface, though this is a minor detail.

 

Other than that, the typeface changes, colours, layout and other changes (both aesthetic and functional) are very well implemented. It would have been nice to throw in some yellow accents to the design of this area, but again, works really well as is.

 

Going forward/requests

Others have alluded to this, but specifically in terms of fonts, it would be nice to have the same kinds of controls as per regular Office apps, and more importantly, to make them consistent within Power BI itself (and make these controllable in the JSON theme file/code). At the moment, there's a lot of necessary options for text in regular text boxes that don't apply to visualizations, for example. In particular, even something simple like Arial Bold (i.e. regular Arial with bold applied) is not possible in, say, a visualization title. Instead, the only [current] options are: Arial, Arial Black, and Arial Unicode MS. Alternatively (i.e. outside of the ribbon), just having the option to apply a Bold to fonts in the Visualization formatting pane would go a long way to fixing this.

 

Regarding the themes menu, would it be possible to have a currently applied custom theme's name appear as rollover text once that theme is implemented and/or explicitly state it in the menu, like so (in this rough example the theme is called 'Customized theme 1'):
Mockup.png

Also in relation to the themes menu, is there some way for Power BI's default theme icon/name to be dynamic, so as to respect/represent an already applied custom theme (within the themes menu) upon reopening an existing file? Currently all reference to any applied custom themes (and even any chosen from the default set of alternatives) disappear from the themes menu once the file has been saved, closed, then opened again, implying that a different [default] theme is currently applied.

QAT
Just to buttress everyone's comments that this is/was a very useful item to have, and if anything could have been further leveraged/customizable for those using smaller screens, versus removing it completely.

Welp, I figure this post is long enough already, thanks for your consideration.

miguel
Community Admin
Community Admin

In the "Recent sources" menu, only a few connector icons appear. Is this a bug or by design for the preview? 

I'm not seeing a connector icon for something like a json that I recently connected to or any of my Custom Connectors

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