How to Add Shape Map in Power BI

Creating a map in Power BI isn’t always about dropping pins on cities, sometimes you need to show how a metric compares across entire regions, like sales performance by state or user engagement by country. That's where the Shape Map visual comes in. This guide will walk you through exactly how to enable, create, and customize Power BI Shape Maps, even using your own custom territories.

What is a Power BI Shape Map?

Unlike a standard map visual that plots data as points (like circles or bubbles) on a map, a Shape Map visual colors entire geographic areas - such as countries, states, counties, or zip codes - based on a data metric. This allows you to quickly see which regions are leading or lagging.

For example, you could instantly visualize:

• Which US states generated the most revenue last quarter.
• Which European countries have the highest product adoption rates.
• Which sales territories are hitting their targets.

It’s perfect for comparing metrics across well-defined geographical or custom boundaries, providing a clear and immediate visual summary that’s hard to get from a table or a standard bar chart.

First Things First: Enabling the Shape Map Visual

Before you can start building, you need to turn the Shape Map on. It's considered a "preview feature," which means it isn’t enabled by default in Power BI Desktop. This is a common first hurdle, but it's an easy one to clear.

Here’s how to enable it:

1. Open Power BI Desktop.
2. In the top-left menu, go to File > Options and settings > Options.
3. In the Options window that appears, look for the Global section on the left-hand pane and click on Preview features.
4. Scroll through the list of features and check the box next to Shape map visual.
5. Click OK.

Heads up: You’ll need to restart Power BI Desktop for the change to take effect. Close the application completely and then re-open it. Once you do, you'll see a new globe icon with shaded regions in your Visualizations pane - that’s your Shape Map.

Creating a Basic Shape Map with Standard Maps

Let's start by creating a simple map using one of Power BI's built-in map templates, like USA states. Imagine you have a simple dataset of sales figures for different states.

It might look something like this:

State,Sales California,950000 Texas,780000 New York,750000 Florida,620000 Illinois,510000 Pennsylvania,450000

Step 1: Add the Shape Map Visual to Your Report

In the Visualizations pane on the right, click on the Shape Map icon to add it to your report canvas.

Step 2: Map Your Geographic and Metric Fields

With the new Shape Map visual selected, you’ll see fields in the Visualizations pane called Location and Color saturation.

• Drag your geographic field (in this case, "State") into the Location bucket.
• Drag your numeric data field (our metric, "Sales") into the Color saturation bucket.

Instantly, Power BI will recognize the state names and render a map of the United States. The states from your data will be colored based on their sales figures. By default, states with higher sales will have a deeper color saturation, creating a simple heat map.

Step 3: Customize the Map Settings

A basic map is great, but a little customization goes a long way. Click on your Shape Map visual, then go to the Format your visual icon (the little paintbrush) in the Visualizations pane.

Here are a few useful settings to adjust:

• Map settings: Here you can choose which of the built-in maps to use. Power BI has built-in shapes for countries around the world, as well as states/provinces for major countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, and more.
• Fill colors: Change the color scheme to match your brand or to make the data more readable. You can set the minimum and maximum colors for your metric's range and even add a diverging color to highlight a midpoint.
• Projection: Under Map settings, you can also change the map projection. This affects how the 3D globe is flattened into a 2D image. For a map of the USA, the Albers USA projection often looks better than the default Mercator.

Level Up: Using Custom Shapes with TopoJSON Files

This is where Shape Maps become incredibly powerful. What if your data doesn't align with standard states or countries? Maybe you need to visualize custom sales territories, specific counties, or unique service areas. For that, you need a custom map file.

Shape Maps in Power BI use a specific file format called TopoJSON. These files contain the vector data that draws the boundaries of your custom shapes.

Where to Find or Create TopoJSON Files

• Online Repositories: You can often find pre-made TopoJSON files for various geographic levels (like counties or zip codes for a specific country) on platforms like GitHub or from census bureau websites.
• Convert Your Own: If you have geographic data in other formats like Shapefile (.shp), KML, or GeoJSON, you can use a free online tool like Mapshaper to convert them into the TopoJSON format. This is perfect for when your company has its own defined territory boundaries.

Step-by-Step: Adding a Custom Map

Let's say you have a TopoJSON file named USSalesTerritories.json that defines four custom territories: "West Coast," "Central," "East Coast," and "South." Your data has to contain a column with values that match those territory names exactly.

Step 1: Get Your Custom Map and Data Ready

Make sure your TopoJSON file is saved somewhere you can easily access it. More importantly, check that the names of your regions in your data file match the names associated with the shapes in the TopoJSON file perfectly. A common mistake is a mismatch like "West Coast" in the data and "West-Coast" in the map file. They must be identical.

Step 2: Add the Custom Map in Power BI

1. Select your Shape Map visual on the canvas.
2. Go to the Format your visual pane.
3. Expand the Map settings section.
4. Under Map type, select Custom map from the dropdown menu.
5. In the Select a .json file field, browse to where you saved your USSalesTerritories.json file and open it.

Your map backdrop will change from a world map to just your custom shapes. It might still be blank because Power BI doesn't know how to connect your data to these new shapes yet.

Step 3: Connect Your Data to the Custom Shapes

Drag the column containing your custom region names (e.g., "Territory") into the Location field of the visual. Power BI will then match the names from your data column to the keys within the TopoJSON file and color the shapes according to the metric in the Color saturation field.

If done correctly, you'll see your custom territories light up based on your data!

Troubleshooting Common Shape Map Issues

Sometimes things don't go as planned. Here are solutions to a few common problems:

• My map is blank! This is almost always a data mismatch. Double-check that the values in your "Location" column are an exact character-for-character match with the region keys in your underlying map file (standard or custom). Typos, extra spaces, or abbreviations ("NY" instead of "New York") will cause regions not to render.
• I forgot to enable the visual. If you can't find the Shape Map icon at all, you likely haven't enabled it in the Preview features and restarted Power BI.
• The borders of my custom map look weird. TopoJSON file quality varies. You may need to find a different source file or use a tool like Mapshaper to simplify the geographic detail in your file, which can also help with performance.

Final Thoughts

Shape Maps are a fantastic way to turn regional data into a compelling and intuitive story. We've walked through enabling the visual, building a basic map with standard borders, and leveling up your analysis with custom TopoJSON files for your unique business territories.

At times, wrangling data keys and hunting for the perfect TopoJSON file can feel like a lot of setup before you get to the insights. At Graphed, we believe data analysis should be more immediate. We built an AI data analyst that allows you to connect all your marketing and sales sources - like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Salesforce - and create dashboards just by describing what you need in plain English. For those moments when you need clear answers without the complex configuration, feel free to give Graphed a try. Our goal is to turn hours of manual report building into a 30-second conversation, so you can focus on making decisions, not just building charts.