The ArcGIS Map visual for Power BI enables report authors to develop map visualizations far beyond the capabilities of the bubble and filled map visuals described in Chapter 11, Creating and Formatting Power BI Reports. Created by Esri, a market leader in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the ArcGIS Map supports all standard map types (for example, bubble and heatmap), but also provides many additional features including a clustering map theme for grouping individual geographic points and the ability to filter a map by the points within a geographical area. The ArcGIS Map also enables deep control over the logic of the size and color formatting, such as the number of distinct sizes (classes) to display and the algorithm used to associate locations to these classes. Additionally, reference layers and cards of demographic and economic information can be embedded into visuals to provide greater context.

The ArcGIS Map visual is included in the standard visualizations pane and enabled by default in Power BI Desktop. However, as noted in Chapter 16, Deploying the Power BI Report Server, the ArcGIS Map visual is not currently supported for the Power BI Report Server and thus is not available in the Power Desktop application optimized for the Power BI Report Server. Additionally, an option is available in the Tenant settings page of the Power BI admin portal to enable or disable the use of the ArcGIS Maps visual. Details on utilizing the Power BI admin portal to configure tenant settings and other options are included in Chapter 18, Administering Power BI for an Organization.

In the following example, customer addresses in the state of Washington have been plotted as diamonds of different sizes and colors based on the Internet Sales measure and the Customer History Segment column, respectively:

ArcGIS Map visual for Power BI

For the most visually engaging ArcGIS Map, use the Dark Gray Canvas basemap and bright, saturated colors for the data points plotted. The Light Gray Canvas basemap, however, avoids the risk of overwhelming the user with colors, as described in the previous chapter. The Streets and OpenStreetMap basemap types are practical choices whenever transportation between the data points or pinned locations is expected. In the preceding example, the Streets basemap supports the sales team that may drive from the pinned office location on 11th street in Bremerton, Washington to the plotted customer addresses.

The visual has been zoomed into the Bremerton, Washington area near several large customers and a fictional sales office location denoted by a red pin icon on 11th street near downtown Bremerton. Pin locations are often used in conjunction with the Drive Time feature to plot an area relative to specific locations such as the group of customers who are within a 20-minute drive of an office.

To configure these options and all other layout and formatting settings, click the ellipsis in the top right corner and select Edit. The following image displays the edit mode of an ArcGIS visual with the Pins menu selected:

ArcGIS Map for Power BI toolbar options

For this visual, the Streets basemap type has been selected and the Map theme is set to Size & Color. The reference layer USA Median Age is used to distinguish areas based on age (via color intensity). Finally, two infographic cards have been selected—population and age by gender—to display these specific metrics as the user selects and hovers over the map.

A column named Customer Full Address has been applied to the Location input field. This column includes the street address, city, state, and postal code such as the following example: 1097 Kulani Lane, Kirkland, WA, 98033.

The Data Category for this column has been set to Address in Power BI Desktop to further improve the accuracy of the geocoding process in which the location input value (the address) is converted to a latitude and longitude. Latitude and longitude fields are available as well, and these inputs are recommended over street addresses for greater performance and scale. A max of 1,500 street addresses can be geocoded without a plus subscription and up to 5,000 addresses can be geocoded with a monthly plus subscription.

The Customer History Segment column, described in Chapter 8, Connecting to Sources and Transforming Data with M, evaluates to one of four values based on the relationship between the Current Date and the Customer First Purchase date column. In this example, first year, second year, and third year customers are assigned the colors purple, green, and blue, respectively. Legacy customers have been formatted as orange. The size and color formatting can be customized via the Symbol Style menu, and these options alone make it relatively easy for users to gain insights from the visual such as identifying the location of first year customers.

To provide greater analytical flexibility and to support presentations, the Date column from the Date dimension table has been applied to the Time input field, thus creating the timeline scrollbar. Similar to the play axis of the scatter chart described later in this chapter, the timeline for the ArcGIS Map supports both animation via the play and pause buttons and slider controls to define a specific time frame.

The left and right end points of the timeline can be used in combination with the animated playback. For example, a time frame of three months can be defined at the beginning of the timeline, and each frame of the animation will represent a distinct three month time frame. At each frame, the user can optionally pause the animation to call attention to specific points on the visual. These intervals can be set for 3, 6, 9, and 12 months.

The timeline and two measures are further supplemented with two date intelligence measures in the Tooltips field input. In the following example, the user has hovered over the address location of a First Year Customer (a purple diamond) and the two date intelligence measures (year-to-date and prior year-to-date), as well as the Date column from the timeline, which leads to them being exposed:

ArcGIS visual with Tooltips

To avoid the limit of addresses geocoded (1,500, or 5,000 with a Plus subscription), and to focus the visual on more meaningful data points, a visual level filter can be applied to a measure. In this example, a visual level filter has been applied to the Internet Net Sales measure to only include data points (customer addresses) with over $100. By removing the small customers, this filter reduced the count of addresses from 1,799 to 921 and retained over 97 percent of the Internet Sales.

Selections of ArcGIS Map locations also impact other visuals on the report page. For example, the selection of one address location on the map could cause a bar chart visual to filter or highlight the specific product subcategories associated with that location. Additionally, rather than selecting one location at a time, areas of locations can be selected via the Select Multiple Locations option and the areas of a reference layer can also be used to select locations. The multi-select options under the cursor icon and the cross-filtering of other related Power BI visuals provide powerful self-service geospatial analysis capabilities.

The Use ArcGIS Maps for Power BI option should be checked in the Global Security options of Power BI Desktop. An equivalent option is exposed in the Power BI service via the Settings menu (Gear icon | Settings | ArcGIS Maps for Power BI), and this should be checked as well to render ArcGIS Maps in the online service.

Additionally, a Use ArcGIS Maps for Power BI setting is available in the Tenant settings page of the Power BI admin portal. Power BI service administrators can optionally disable this feature to prevent all users from using ArcGIS Maps for Power BI. The configuration of Tenant settings in the Power BI admin portal is described in Chapter 18, Administering Power BI for an Organization. The ArcGIS Map visual is the only standard Power BI visual not currently supported by the Power BI Report Server.