And to frame this for you—the new Properties panel is really geared towards a new user who is trying to figure out InDesign on their own. A new installation of InDesign will open up with a very limited set of panels including the new Properties panel. The commands that appear in there are the ones that a new user would most likely be looking for first. This approach is designed to not overwhelm a new user who could potentially give up without trying if they were initially faced with all (or even a lot) of InDesign's myriad features.
While I certainly explain how to use the new Properties panel in class, I don't use it at all when I'm working on my own. I rely on the Control Panel that has always appeared along the top of InDesign along with the other panels that support my workflow.
~Barb