How to Use ArcGIS Maps for Power BI
While Power BI's built-in map visuals are handy for plotting basic location data, they barely scratch the surface of what’s possible with geographic analysis. To take your reporting from simple pins on a map to a rich, interactive analytical experience, you need to use the ArcGIS Maps visual. This guide will show you exactly how to enable, use, and get the most out of ArcGIS Maps directly within your Power BI reports.
Why Use ArcGIS Maps over Power BI's Standard Maps?
Switching to the ArcGIS visual isn’t just about making your maps look better, it’s about unlocking a suite of professional-grade geographic information system (GIS) tools. The standard Power BI map is great for showing sales by state or plotting office locations, but it quickly hits a ceiling. ArcGIS for Power BI bridges that gap, giving you capabilities that were previously only available to GIS professionals.
With ArcGIS, you can:
Use Better Geocoding: Accurately plot specific street addresses, not just cities or zip codes.
Change Basemaps: Switch from a basic street map to satellite imagery, topographic maps, or minimalist dark and light gray canvases to help your data stand out.
Add Demographic Data: Overlay your data with valuable context from the U.S. Census, such as median household income, age distribution, or population density.
Utilize Advanced Styling: Go beyond simple bubbles and represent your data as heat maps to show density or use smart clustering to manage maps with thousands of points.
Perform Spatial Analysis: Create drive-time buffers (e.g., "See all customers within a 15-minute drive of our store") and generate rich infographic cards on the fly.
In short, it allows you to see the "where" and "why" behind your data in a far more meaningful way.
Step 1: Enabling the ArcGIS Maps for Power BI Visual
ArcGIS Maps is pre-installed as a default visual in Power BI Desktop, but for security reasons, you may need to manually enable it in your settings before it becomes active. If you don’t see the visual working, this is the first place to check.
Here’s how to make sure it’s turned on:
Open Power BI Desktop.
Navigate to File > Options and settings > Options.
In the Options window, select the Security tab from the global list on the left.
Scroll down to the "Report Visuals" section and find the option for ArcGIS Maps for Power BI.
Make sure the checkbox is ticked to enable it.
Click OK and restart Power BI Desktop for the changes to take effect.
Once you restart, you’ll find the ArcGIS Maps visual, represented by a globe icon, ready to use in your Visualizations pane.
Step 2: Adding the Map to Your Report and Adding Data
With the visual enabled, you're ready to create your first map. The process begins similarly to adding any other chart in Power BI.
Placing the Map
First, find the ArcGIS Maps for Power BI logo in the Visualizations pane and click it. This will add an empty map placeholder to your report canvas. Resize it as needed.
Adding Your Location Data
Next, you’ll need to feed it your data. Click on your new map visual to see the available field wells in the Visualizations pane. The most important one is the Location well. This is where you will drag your geographic data.
For example, let's say you have a dataset with customer addresses. You could drag any of the following fields into the Location well:
A column with full addresses (e.g., "123 Main St, Anytown, CA 12345")
A column with City names
A column with States or Provinces
A column with Zip Codes or Postal Codes
ArcGIS is smart enough to interpret these and place them on the map. For greater accuracy, especially with international locations, you can use the Latitude and Longitude fields if you have pre-existing coordinates.
Adding Measurement and Category Data
Of course, just plotting points isn't enough. You want to visualize data tied to those locations. Here’s what the other fields are for:
Size: Use this to change the size of the bubble based on a number. Dragging a 'Sales Total' or 'Order Quantity' field here is perfect. Larger bubbles will represent larger values.
Color: Use this to categorize your data points. If you have a 'Store Type' or 'Region' field, dragging it here will assign a different color to each category.
Tooltips: Drag any extra information you want to appear when you hover over a data point – like 'Customer Name', 'Last Purchase Date', or 'Account Manager'.
Step 3: Customizing and Styling Your Map
This is where ArcGIS really shines. Once your data is on the map, you can begin to customize its appearance and add rich analytical layers. Click on the map visual, then click the "Format your visual" icon (the paintbrush).
Choosing Your Basemap
The basemap is the foundational layer your data sits on. The default is a simple road map. To change it, go to Format visual > Map tools > Basemap. Here you can switch to:
Dark Gray Canvas: A minimalist, dark map that makes bright data colors pop. Excellent for presentations.
Light Gray Canvas: A clean, neutral map for a professional feel.
Streets: The default map with road and place-name details.
Imagery: A satellite view of the world, providing real-world context. Great for analyzing physical locations like stores or warehouses.
Topographic: A map showing elevation and landforms, useful for specialized industries.
Styling Your Data Points (Layer Options)
In the Format pane, navigate to Layers and click on the layer representing your dataset. This opens up the styling options. Under Symbology, you can change the representation of your data:
Counts and Amounts (Size): This is the default. It uses proportional symbols to represent magnitude, like scaling dots based on revenue.
Counts and Amounts (Color): This applies a color ramp to your points. It’s ideal for visualizing metrics that aren't counts, like customer satisfaction scores or profit margins, where a location with a low score might get a light yellow color and a high-score location gets dark blue.
Heat Map: Forget individual dots and visualize density. A heat map shows concentrations of points, which is invaluable for identifying "hotspots" of activity like areas with high order frequency or frequent service calls.
Clustering: Is your map too crowded with points? Clustering groups nearby points into a single symbol with a count on it. As you zoom in, the clusters break apart, revealing the individual data points. This keeps your maps decluttered and readable at any scale.
Adding Reference Layers and Demographics
One of the most powerful features is adding contextual data. Within the Map tools section of the formatting pane, you’ll find Reference layer. This lets you overlay valuable public data from ArcGIS.
You can add data like US Census layers for average household income, poverty levels, population by age bracket, and more.
Example: Imagine you're a retail company planning a new store. You can plot your existing locations, and then add a reference layer showing "2023 USA Median Household Income." By coloring the map by income blocks, you can instantly see if your stores are located in affluent areas and identify promising new territories.
Creating Drive-Time Areas
Under the Map tools tab, you'll also find a Drive time analysis tool. Click a location on your map, and you can calculate a radius based on travel time rather than just distance.
Example: Select one of your store locations, set a 15-minute drive time, and ArcGIS will draw a polygonal shape on the map representing everywhere a customer could reach within that time. You can even filter your dataset to see only the customers who live within that drive-time zone - a fantastic tool for local marketing campaigns.
Tips for Best Performance
The richness of ArcGIS Maps comes with a performance cost, especially with large datasets or complex layers. Here are a few tips to keep your reports running smoothly:
Filter Your Data: Don't try to plot 100,000 individual customer points at once. Use Power BI slicers and filters to narrow down the dataset being sent to the map visual.
Aggregate Where Possible: If you don't need to see every single address, aggregate your data to a zip code or city level before plotting it. This dramatically reduces the number of points.
Understand Account Limits: The free version of ArcGIS for Power BI has limits on map renderings (geocodes). For heavy use, you may need a premium ArcGIS account for your organization.
Build Incrementally: Start your map with just your base data. Once that is working, add a demographic layer. If that's good, try adding a drive-time analysis. Adding everything at once can make it hard to troubleshoot performance issues.
Final Thoughts
Moving from the standard Power BI map visual to ArcGIS for Power BI is like an upgrade from a basic point-and-shoot camera to a professional DSLR. It unlocks a whole new dimension of analysis, allowing you to incorporate demographic context, understand spatial relationships, and present your findings with clarity and professional polish.
While mastering tools like Power BI and powerful integrations like ArcGIS is incredibly rewarding, it often demands a significant time investment to get everything just right. For those times you need immediate business insights without the deep learning curve, we created Graphed. We connect directly to your marketing and sales data, so instead of manually configuring complex visuals, you can just ask questions in plain English - like "make a dashboard showing new leads from Google Ads vs. Facebook Ads" or "what are my top-selling Shopify products by state?" It’s all about getting you straight to the insights, so you can spend less time wrangling data and more time acting on it.