Recently, we got the task to recreate a Superstore Power BI dashboard, and one of the visuals on it was a Shape Map of the US, which wasn't really as easy as it sounds.
At first, I tried to do it with the standard map visuals that Power BI offers:
- Azure Map Visual – modern, interactive, and great for plotting data points or heatmaps, but it doesn’t support custom region shapes.
- Map Visual – works with latitude/longitude or standard geographic names, but it’s pin-based, not region-based.
- Filled Map – shades areas based on data, but is limited to predefined geographic regions and can be inconsistent if your data doesn’t match exactly.
None of these gave me the US region-shaded view I needed.
After trying multiple times and failing, I finally ended up asking my good friend, Gemini. And here’s what I learned about how to enable and build a proper Shape Map in Power BI:
- Enable Shape Map
- Go to File > Options and settings > Options.
- Under Preview features, enable Shape map visual
- Restart Power BI.
- Add the Shape Map Visual
- In the Visualizations pane, select the Shape Map icon.
- Place it on your report canvas.
- Bind Data to the Map
- Drag your region field into the Location well.
- Drag your value field into Color saturation to shade the regions.
Result:
And that’s how you build a shape map in Power BI 🙂 You can add legends, tooltips, change colors, and tweak the look all depending on your use case.
Here is a simple breakdown I've created about pros and cons of these maps in Power BI:
In short: Shape Maps are great for simple, region-based data stories, but if you need a more detailed, interactive map, you’re probably better off with another option like Azure Maps.