Use location field in publish to web?

Question

Hi,

I have some quantitative county data that I want to visualize in Power BI using color symbology (choropleth map). It is exactly the way I want it in Desktop, but this is all public data and I need to publish to web to make it useful, but cannot publish to web with data in the Location field well. a) Why the limitation? and b) is ESRI already working to enable that functionality in the near future? (Should I make an Idea?)

And then c), are there any workarounds I could use to achieve this? I know I can publish using dots rather than filled polygons, but it is not nearly as powerful of a visualization as I'd like. (I know I can also use a reference layer of counties from my arcGIS Online account, but I don't think there is a way to shade those based on my quantitative data, which defeats the purpose.)

Jon Emch · Answer

Hey there Kate,

Just wanted to post something here so that folks are aware that there is an existing enhancements in our system to allow non coordinate location fields into the publish to web workflow: ENH-000137246.

I would highly recommend folks log a case with Esri Support to be added to this ENH. Also please update Kate's idea in the PowerBI Ideas board!

Kate447 · Answer

Hi @BenCoubrough ,

Thanks for the reply! I do have a column of County, State for my data, and dragging that into the Location well works wonderfully in Desktop - it is exactly what I need. However, I cannot publish this to web in order to embed it on my website (fails publish to web validation check because it wants Location to be empty).

The documentation states: "Power BI data used to create the ArcGIS for Power BI map must use latitude and longitude coordinates for locations. If the Location field well contains addresses or standard boundaries, publishing to the web will not work." (source)

So I am wondering if there is some other way to achieve the same goal (choropleth map of counties published to web), or at least if someone from ESRI could explain the reasoning to me of why this is allowed in Desktop, but disabled for publishing to web. A dot density map is not as useful of a visualization of this type of data. (Again, it is all publicly available data!) I'd also love to know if ESRI is currently working to enable this for Publish to Web and I should just hang tight a few months.

Thanks!

BenCoubrough · Answer

Hi @Kate447,

I talked about how we can do this in my answer here - How to import GIS data into Power BI

You can use the Location field well to display geospatial data in ArcGIS Power BI, however it requires a little bit of preparation beforehand - ArcGIS Power BI Location Types

* What is the locational data from your quantitative data? Perhaps you could show a screenshot of your attribute table & how it's displayed in ArcGIS Desktop?

Choropleth maps can be really quickly set up if your polygons have a locational attribute such as County or Suburb.

Regards,

Ben