You build a map in Power BI by adding a map visual from the Visualizations pane, putting a geographic field in its Location well and a measure in Values, then formatting the result. Power BI offers several distinct map visuals, and which one you pick matters: two of the older ones are being phased out in favor of a newer one.

The Map Visuals Power BI Offers

• Azure Maps is Microsoft's enterprise mapping visual. It supports bubble, 3D column, heat map, filled, marker, path, and reference layers, plus pie chart overlays and point clustering, in both Power BI Desktop and the service. An admin has to turn it on first, under Power BI Admin Portal > Integration settings.

• Basic Map and Filled Map, the classic map visuals, are both built on Bing Maps. Microsoft has stated the Bing Maps visual is scheduled for deprecation, though it hasn't set a firm date, and maps already built with it will keep working. Microsoft recommends upgrading existing Basic Map and Filled Map visuals to Azure Maps now, unless your report is viewed by people in China or Korea, or on a government cloud, where Azure Maps isn't yet supported.

• Shape Map is a separate, preview-status visual for color-coding regions rather than plotting exact points. It works with built-in geography or with your own uploaded TopoJSON or GeoJSON file, which makes it useful for things Azure Maps can't do, like coloring a floor plan or a set of custom sales territories.

• ArcGIS Maps for Power BI, built by Esri, is a separate product from Microsoft's own map visuals and isn't part of the Bing Maps deprecation. It adds GIS-specific features: demographic layers, drive-time analysis, and reference layers, with feature availability depending on your Esri license.

How to Build a Map

1. In Power BI Desktop, get your data (Home > Get Data) from a source that includes geographic fields: place names, postal or country codes, or latitude and longitude.

2. Select the map visual you want from the Visualizations pane. Confirm with your admin that Azure Maps is enabled if you don't see it.

3. Drag the geographic field into the Location field well.

4. Drag a measure, such as sales or population, into Size or Values to control bubble size or fill color.

5. Format the visual: pick a layer type if you're using Azure Maps (bubble, filled, heat map, and so on), set colors, and add a legend if readers need to interpret categories at a glance.

Clean, unambiguous geographic data matters more than any formatting choice. A place name that could match more than one location, or a coordinate pasted into the wrong column, produces a map that looks fine and shows the wrong thing.

Customizing the Map

Once data is plotted, a few settings are worth checking on every map:

• Bubble size and color should map to the measure that matters, not be left at the default.

• Tooltips can show extra fields on hover without adding clutter to the map itself. See our guide to Power BI tooltips for building a custom one.

• Labels put the numeric value directly on the map, which is useful for a small number of regions and unreadable for a large one.

• Legends are worth adding whenever the color or size encoding isn't self-explanatory.

Keeping a Map Fast

A map with thousands of individual points is the most common way a Power BI report slows down. Two things help:

• Aggregate or filter before plotting, so the map shows regions or clusters instead of every individual row.

• Use a summary map as an entry point and let readers drill into detail rather than plotting everything at once. A drillthrough page works well here: a country-level map that drills through to a filtered, row-level view for the country a reader clicks.

FAQs

What data do I need to create a map in Power BI?

A column Power BI can recognize as a location: city, state, country, or postal code, or a pair of latitude and longitude columns for exact points. Power BI tries to categorize geographic fields automatically, but it's worth checking the category is correct if a plotted point looks wrong.

What is the ArcGIS Map in Power BI and when should I use it?

ArcGIS Maps for Power BI is a separate visual built by Esri, offering GIS-specific features like demographic layers, drive-time analysis, and reference layers on top of what Azure Maps or Shape Map provide. It's suited to detailed spatial analysis, such as territory planning or site selection, where you need real GIS tooling rather than a general-purpose map visual.

Sources

• Overview of map visualizations in Power BI - Microsoft Learn

• Get started with Azure Maps Power BI visual - Microsoft Learn