Right now it seems like the progress bar is bugged. At least when fishing, it only shows up about 50% of the time, and I've heard it does this with other skills too.
Another addition I would love to see is to make walking away cancel batching. As in, when you're fishing and you get a full inv, you can just walk away and it will stop fishing automatically. Right now you have to hit cancel action before you can walk away, and when the progress bar doesn't show up there is no way to cancel before you finish all the batches. This would just make life a lot easier and increase efficiency.