How to Create Interactive Power BI Map Visuals for Data Analysis & Business Insights

Maps are one of the most important data visualizations for businesses today. With the rise of globalization, companies are expanding beyond borders, making it essential to track and analyze data on a geographic level. 🌎

But how do you create highly engaging and insightful Power BI map visuals without deep expertise in cartography? In this guide, we’ll explore different types of map visualizations and how to design & customize interactive Power BI maps!

Power BI Map Visualization Types

What types of maps can you create in Power BI? With Drill Down Map PRO, you can build a variety of interactive map visualizations. Here are just a few Power BI map examples.

🔶 Shape Map

The shape map is a very basic map you can create in Power BI. The main purpose of a shape map is to compare regions by assigning different colors. Regions with higher values would show a more saturated color. This is one of the simplest map types in Power BI, ideal when users only need high-level regional comparisons without additional geographic details.

🔥 Heat Map

You’re probably familiar with the type of heat map you see during weather forecasts. Since Drill Down Map PRO keeps the focus mainly on business data, you can create a Power BI heat map that’s similar in concept using color saturation. By adjusting node opacity, you can create a heat map that highlights high-density data areas, visually representing regional data concentrations. As the nodes overlay, you can gauge hot spots through the intensity of their respective color. The result is a simple heat map provides an immediate visual summary of information.

🚩 Choropleth map

A choropleth map also uses color intensity to differentiate data values across geographic regions. However, unlike the heat map, a Power BI choropleth map uses shapes, letting you stick strictly to regions. By removing the base layer and minimizing the node shapes, you can use diverging colors to gauge out intensity between certain areas.

📍 Bubble map

Bubble maps are also called node-based maps. These maps use bubble size to display differences in data. Drill Down Map PRO lets you change the shape of the nodes, so you can choose between circles, diamonds, or droplets, depending on the preference of your end users.

How to Design & Customize Map Visual in Power BI

This custom Power BI visual makes the report creator’s job easier by letting them simply fine-tune the interactive data visualization experience of their Power BI map, instead of heading into full-on cartography. This is made possible through various customization options.

Base Layer Settings

After you’ve dragged and dropped in the custom visual, you’ll find a useful setting called ‘Base Layer Settings’.  Simply go under formatting options, look at Base Layer Settings, and you’ll find four settings.

Type 1: "None" Base Layer 🚫

This could be considered the most confusing option - why would you want to have a Power BI map without a map? If you’re only in need of high-level information, using shape layers would be enough. Just a basic outline of countries, states, and cities will do – you don’t need to know about districts or other areas that deviate from the defined standard. In this case, you would end up with a Power BI shape map.

Power BI shape maps also come with the benefit of taking less time to load, as opposed to loading in a fully fleshed out map into Power BI. Get PBIX visual example HERE.

Type 2: Image Map 🖼️

With this option, you can import any image to use as the base layer - not just a traditional map - allowing for creative use cases such as floor plans or facility layouts.

You can also add nodes to display certain metrics. To filter and drill down, the lasso tool can draw shapes directly on the visual and save those for later. Get PBIX visual example HERE.

Type 3 and 4: Azure maps and Custom maps 🗺️

You can also use maps from other providers, such as Google maps, Azure maps, CartoDB maps, Open Street maps and more. If you plan to use Azure maps, you will need to define the sub-domains and API keys.

For using any other custom map, you will need to provide the link to the tile server for the map by the provider of your choice.

Node Shapes Customization🔶🔵🟩

You can choose from multiple node shapes. You can add auras, assign a different color for each node category, and adjust node sizes, fonts, and labels. Get PBIX visual example HERE.

How to Navigate in Map Chart? 🧭

The basic controls for navigating a Power BI map chart are quite simple: left-click on the Power BI map and drag to navigate in any direction. This allows you to quickly move between different areas of the map itself that you are using in your base layer.

🔄 Cross-chart filtering

You can left click on nodes and donut charts to apply filters. To clear any selections, simply click outside on a part of the Power BI map chart where there are no active elements.  

ℹ️ Tooltips

Right click, on the other hand, calls out a tooltip when you're using single nodes. Keep in mind that when you are using clusters, you're calling out a multi-page tooltip.

🔎 Zoom

Zoom-in and zoom-out are also important interactions when it comes to analyzing a Power BI map chart. To perform a zoom action, simply scroll the wheel of your mouse. You can also use the zoom buttons which are in the upper left corner or simply double click as another way to zoom in. Click here try Zoom.

𓍯 Lasso tool

With Drill Down Map PRO, you can create additional custom filters with the lasso tool by drawing directly on the Power BI map visual. The lasso tool comes in handy when you need to quickly check something that isn’t already a standard shape within the Power BI map. If your end users wish to perform ad hoc analysis and answer a question on the fly using your report, the lasso tool will let them do exactly that.

See the Map Visual in Action: Sales Report Example

In this real-life use case example of "Sales Overview Report'', the map visual fulfills a more illustrative role, quickly giving the user an overview of sales in relation to their respective locations. You can also check out this report here.

3 Map Visual Versions: Which One to Select?

ZoomCharts offers three versions of Drill Down Map PRO to give Power BI users the flexibility they need for different mapping scenarios. Each version is designed with unique features to match specific use cases:

✔ Drill Down Shape Map PRO – Power BI Certified, ensuring strict security compliance with no external data access. Ideal for simple, shape-based maps using built-in region layers.

✔ Drill Down Map PRO (Filter) – Supports KML/GeoJSON and external map providers like OpenStreetMap, Azure Maps, and Google Maps. Perfect for custom geographic regions and interactive filtering.

✔ Drill Down Map PRO (Pin) – Supports Pin to Dashboard, making it a powerful tool for Power BI Service dashboards, allowing users to pin and interact with location data seamlessly.

By offering these three versions, we ensure that every Power BI user: from those needing a fully certified solution to those requiring advanced map visual customization, everyone has the right data visualization tool. 🚀

Now that you know how to create powerful interactive maps in Power BI, it's time to try them out! Which map type would benefit your business the most? Let us know in the comments!