By default, Power BI does not assign columns to any of the 13 available data categories. Assigning geographic categories, such as City, to columns helps Power BI determine how to display these values on map visualizations. For example, certain city names, such as Washington, are also associated with state or province names and without an assigned data category, map visuals would have to guess whether to plot the city or the state.

Currently 10 of the 13 column data categories are related to geography, including County, Country/Region, Continent, City, Latitude, Longitude, Postal Code, Address, Place, and State or Province.

The Web URL Data Category can be used to enable the initiation of emails from Power BI report visuals. In the following table visual, the Employee Email Link column contains mailto values (that is, mailto://John@adworks.com) and the URL icon property under Values has been set to On:

Web URL Data Category for Mailto Link column

Without specifying the Web URL Data Category of the Employee Email Link column, the values will appear as normal text. With the Web URL Data Category specified, the full mailto link will be displayed in the table visual by default; this can also be used to initiate an email. Both the Web URL Data Category specification and the URL icon property (set to On) are required to display the email icon.

The Image URL Data Category can be used to expose images in report visualizations, such as the following example with the custom Chiclet slicer:

Image URL Data Category used for Chiclet slicer visual

See Chapter 12, Applying Custom Visuals, Animation, and Analytics for additional details on the Chiclet slicer.

The Barcode Data Category, the only other non-geographic category beyond Web URL and Image URL, can be used by the Power BI mobile applications to scan individual items from mobile devices.