Pedro Innecco on 26 Aug 2016 04:56:10
The custom visual tlimeline slicer that Microsoft made available at https://app.powerbi.com/visuals/show/Timeline1447991079100 is an abomination.
It is clunky, has poor customisation options, bad CSS, and overall poor UX experience.
Microsoft needs to include a decent timeline slicer, like the one found in Excel, built into Power BI desktop by default (a custom visual extension is simply not acceptable). As per the feedback found here: https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Timeline-visual/m-p/22226#M6151
* The visual is quite clunky as a filter selection resets to default after clicking on more than one chart. For example I select year 2015 then click on a bar of a chart. So far so good. If I click on another bar of this or another chart, the timeline slicer resets to default. I understand this is by design due to the way that Power BI visuals work, but it is quite inconvenient for users.
* The slicer is way to big (in height). I compare it with the slicer in Excel and I see no reason as to why there is so much fixed blank space at the top of it.
We should be able to configure the position of the hierarchy dropdown (select for Y,Q,M,D), header, etc.
* Not being able to use custom date hierarchies is also a big downer. I might want to add Week Number into my date slicer and remove Quarters, for example.
* We should be able to specify the default start date. I would be great if we could specify the current data for example, or some sort of dax calculation to specify the current year, month, etc.
* Drill-down is clunky. When we select a period (e.g. a year) and then drills down to quarter or month, it the visual should zoom into the start of the period, but it shows the begining of the time dimension instead. For example I have a time dimension that goes from 2012 to 2030. If I select year 2017 and then drill down to quarters, the view starts from quarters in year 2012. I have to actually scroll to 2017 in order to see the selection.
* The slicer is quite slow to respond, particularly when dealing with days. It also says that it does not show all the data due to "too many values". Quite unfortunate since this works fine with Excel slicers. As a workaround, we should be allowed to add a filter into the slicer (e.g. only 10 years).