How to Use MAP in Power BI

A map visual can transform rows of city, state, and country data into an immediate, powerful story about your business. Instead of scanning a table for geographic trends, a map shows you exactly where your top markets are, where performance is lagging, and where your opportunities lie. This guide will walk you through how to create and customize maps in Power BI, step-by-step.

Why Use a Map in Your Power BI Report?

While tables and bar charts are great for many things, geographical data comes alive when placed on a map. It’s one of the quickest ways to answer questions that have a "where" component.

• Spot Geographic Trends Instantly: Are all your high-value sales coming from the West Coast? Is a new marketing campaign only resonating in a specific region? A map reveals these patterns at a glance.
• Analyze Regional Performance: Visualize which sales territories are hitting their targets, which stores are underperforming, or which states have the highest customer concentration.
• Communicate Location-Based Insights: A map is far more intuitive for your audience than a long list of locations. Showing a map of customer hotspots is more compelling than presenting a spreadsheet with their addresses.

Think about tracking web traffic by country, sales by state, or shipping container locations across the globe. For any of these scenarios, a map is the most effective way to communicate your findings.

Getting Your Data Ready for Mapping

Before you can build a great map, Power BI needs well-structured geographical data. If your map is blank or dots are appearing in the wrong ocean, your data preparation is likely the culprit. The good news is, getting it right is straightforward.

Required Data Fields

Your dataset must contain at least one column with location information. Power BI is quite flexible and can recognize several types:

• Place names: City, State/Province, County, Country/Region.
• Address details: Full street address.
• Codes: Zip or Postal Code.
• Coordinates: Latitude and Longitude. (This is the most precise method).

For best results, use separate columns for each location element (e.g., one column for "City," one for "State," one for "Country"). This helps Power BI resolve ambiguity. For example, without a "State" and "Country" column, it wouldn't know if "Paris" refers to Paris, France or Paris, Texas.

The Most Important Step: Set Your Data Categories

To help Power BI correctly interpret your geographic data, you need to tell it what each column represents. This is done by setting the "Data Category."

Here’s how to do it:

1. Navigate to the Data view in Power BI Desktop (the little table icon on the left-hand side).
2. Select the table that contains your location data.
3. Click on the header of the column you want to categorize (e.g., the column named "State").
4. Go to the Column tools tab that appears in the top ribbon.
5. Click the Data category dropdown menu.
6. Select the appropriate category for your column, like State or Province, City, or Postal Code.

Repeat this for all your location-based columns. If you're using latitude and longitude, categorize those columns accordingly. This small step prevents the most common mapping errors and ensures your data points appear exactly where they should.

Creating Your First Map Visual (Step-by-Step)

Once your data is cleaned and categorized, you’re ready to build your map. We'll use a basic "Bubble Map" for this example, which plots points on a map where the size of each point (or bubble) represents a value.

Let's imagine you have a simple dataset with columns for City, State, and Sales Revenue.

1. Go to the Report View: Click the bar chart icon on the left navigation pane to return to your report canvas.
2. Select the Map Visual: In the Visualizations pane on the right, find and click on the Map icon (it looks like a globe). A blank map template will appear on your canvas.
3. Add Your Location Data: From the Data pane, drag your primary location field (e.g., State) into the Location field within the Visualizations pane. You should see dots start to appear on the map. To add more detail, you can drag City into the same location bucket.
4. Add Your Measure: Now, let's give the dots meaning. Drag your numerical field (e.g., Sales Revenue) into the Bubble size field. The dots on your map will instantly resize based on their corresponding sales value - larger bubbles mean higher revenue.
5. Add a Legend (Optional): If you want to segment your data further, you can use the Legend field. For example, if you have a column for Product Category, dragging it into the Legend field will color-code each bubble based on the category.

That's it! In just a few drag-and-drop actions, you've created a dynamic, insightful map that visualizes your sales performance across the country.

Choosing the Right Power BI Map Visual for Your Needs

Power BI offers several types of maps. The two most common built-in visuals are the standard Map (Bubble Map) and the Filled Map.

Map (Bubble Map)

This is the map we just created. It's excellent for pinpointing values at specific geographic points. The size of the bubble represents a numeric value, making it easy to compare locations like cities or individual store addresses.

Best for:

• Visualizing sales figures by city or store.
• Showing the specific location of shipping ports or warehouses.
• Representing precise coordinates using latitude and longitude.

Filled Map (Choropleth)

A Filled Map colors entire regions, like countries, states, or counties, based on a value. The intensity of the color represents the magnitude of the measure - for instance, states with higher sales might be colored dark blue, while states with lower sales are light blue.

Best for:

• Comparing a metric across clearly defined boundaries (e.g., states or countries).
• Showing population density, election results, or tax rates by state.
• Displaying broad regional patterns rather than single-point data.

To create a Filled Map, you simply select the Filled Map icon from the Visualizations pane instead of the standard Map icon and follow the same steps.

Azure Map

For more advanced needs, the Azure Map visual offers more functionality. It provides different background map layers (like road, satellite, and hybrid views), heat maps, and the ability to plot multiple layers of data, like showing bubble sizes for revenue and bar charts for profit at the same location.

Customizing Your Map for Better Storytelling

A default map gets the job done, but a little customization can make your insights clearer and your report more professional. To start customizing, select your map visual and click the painter's brush icon (Format your visual) in the Visualizations pane.

Here are a few key options to explore:

• Map settings: Under the "Style" dropdown, you can change the visual theme of the map itself. Options include Road, Aerial, Dark, and Grayscale. Choose the one that provides the best contrast for your data.
• Bubbles: Here, you can change the size and colors of your bubbles. Instead of using a single color, go to the Colors section and click the fx button to apply conditional formatting. For example, you can set a rule to automatically color bubbles with high sales green and low sales red.
• Category labels: Toggle these on to display the names of the locations (e.g., "California," "New York") directly on the map.
• Map controls: Enable the Zoom buttons to allow users to easily zoom in and out of the map.

Bonus Tips for Effective Mapping

• Keep It Simple: Avoid cramming too many data points or categories onto a single map. If a map looks too cluttered, it loses its "at-a-glance" value.
• Use Slicers for Interactivity: Add a slicer to your report page that filters by a field like Date, Product, or Sales Rep. This lets your users explore the map data for themselves.
• Leverage Tooltips: By default, hovering over a bubble shows location and size data. You can enhance this by dragging additional data fields into the Tooltips field box. For example, add the Profit Margin or Number of Customers fields so that a user gets richer context when they hover over a state.

Final Thoughts

Visualizing your data on a map in Power BI is a fantastic way to uncover geographic insights that would otherwise stay hidden in your spreadsheets. By correctly preparing your data, choosing the right map type, and applying a few key customizations, you can build compelling reports that clearly communicate the "where" behind your business performance.

And while mastering Power BI is a valuable skill, much of the reporting headache comes from manually gathering and cleaning data from your different tools before you even start building visuals. At our company, we experienced this friction firsthand, which is why we created Graphed. We connect directly to your marketing and sales sources like Shopify, Google Analytics, and Facebook Ads, so your data is always live and in one place. You can generate a map visualizing your cross-platform performance just by asking for it in plain English, getting back hours of your week previously spent on manual reporting.