Power BI – Format Filled Map

Filled Maps are the visualizations that display dataset values on the basis of location with the area allocated for that region. The difference between a map and a filled map is that a map only shows the data points for the selected location, but a filled map selects the area portion of that location on the map. The location can be state, country, city, pin code, etc.  We have various options to format maps. We can apply different styles to map, add legends, customize the colors of the bubbles, etc. In this article, we will learn how to format a filled map in Power BI and explore its various options.

Formatting a Filled Map In Power BI

After the successful, creation of a filled map in Power BI. We have multiple options to format it. For example, adding the title to the map, changing the color, and position of the map, and adding tooltips, and legend colors, to the filled map. We have been given a dataset, name, Employee, and we have created the map, by adding Home State in the Location, and Department in the legends. We will explore every option to format the filled map in Power BI. There are two types of Formatting in visualizations i.e. visual formatting and general formatting.

Visual Formatting

Visual formatting comprises 3 options i.e. Map settings, Legends, and Filled colors. 

Map Settings

The map settings help customize the entire filled map, with different styles, and zoom settings.

The following are the steps:

Step 1: Click on the Map Settings option. A drop-down appears. We have multiple options available here i.e. Style and Controls. Click on the Style option, and a drop-down appears. We have multiple styles, for example, Aerial, Dark, Light, etc.

Step 2: Similarly, click on the Controls option. We have three sliders available i.e. Auto zoom, Zoom buttons, and Lasso buttons. Auto zoom is the default slider that helps us to auto-focus the data points. Click on the zoom buttons option, we will see that two buttons appear on the map of + and –, we can use these buttons to zoom in and zoom out the map.  Also, click on the Lasso button option, and a new option with a rectangle icon will appear, this option helps us to select any portion of the data set values, in a specific region of the selected map.

Legends

Legends are the property that is used to sub-categorize the data for better analytics. It divides the data into different sub-groups. Click on the Legend option. A drop-down appears. We have multiple options available here i.e. Options, Text, and Title.

The following are the steps:

Step 1: Click on the Options property, we can change the position of the legends in the map. For example, Top Left, Top Center, etc.

Step 2: Using the Text property, we can change the color and font size of the legends i.e. Department. Click on the Title, to customize the title i.e. Department.

Step 3: Click on the Title property. We can customize the title of the legends. By default, it is the name of the column which is dragged inside the Legends section.

Fill Colors 

Click on the colors option. A drop-down appears. The colors have been divided on the basis of the legend’s property. For example, IT is shown in orange color.

General Formatting

There are multiple options in general formatting. For maps, we have options like Title, tooltip, effects, alt text, etc. We will look at each of the options in detail.

Property

The property option is generally present in every visualization. It contains three options, Size, position, and Advance options. We, generally do not use these properties, because all are easily accessible with mouse clicks. The size property helps to resize the visualization created. The position property changes the position of the visualization, in the report. The Advance option comprises adding a layer order, which is rarely used.

Title

The title formatting is present in every visualization. As the name suggests, it adds a heading to the visualization. Click on the slider to enable the title.

The following are the steps:

Step 1: Click on the Title option. A drop-down list appears. Add the title, under the Text section. For example, Home State and Department. We can view in the image a title is added to the map. As done previously we can customize the size, font type of the title, etc.

Step 2: We can also change the color of the title. Under the text color, select the required color. For example, yellow in this case. The title color changes to yellow.

Effects

The effects section comprises three features i.e. Background, Visual Border, and Shadow. All works according to their names. The background adds a background color to the visualization, the Visual border adds a border around the visualization, and the shadow option creates a shadow on the outskirts of the visualization.

The following are the steps:

Step 1: Click on the Background option. Select the color of the background accordingly. For example, Black. We can view in the below image that the background of the map changed to black.

Header Icons

Header-icons are the options, present on the top of the visualization. For the map, there are two options, filter on visuals and more options. Click on the header-icons option, we will get various options, like Background, Border, and Icons. One can set its colors as per choice.

Tooltips

Consider a situation, where we want to display the fields added by hovering over the map, then this task can be achieved by the Tooltips option. Tooltips have three properties i.e. Options, Text, and Background. Click on the tooltips option. Now, for example, we hover over the Noida data point, then we can view Location as Noida, Department IT, and Salary 90K(Sum of salary of Arushi and Gautam). We can set text and background color according to our needs.

Alt Text

Alt text is a property present in each visualization. People generally misinterpret, alt text by its name, they think that alt text will be displayed when they hover over the visualization. Alt text is for the persons, who cannot see the visuals, images, etc. This option is only available if you are using a narrator in your system. When your narrator is active, then this alt text will be spoken by the system. Click on the Alt text, and type the required text.