ArcGIS Shape File Creation

Question

Looking for community help. I am new to ArcGIS and am attempting to use it in Power BI. I have a dataset with shape coordinates. I do not know how to get this to work with ArcGIS. Do I need to create a JSON type file?

Has anyone worked with the ArcGIS through PBI beore?

Any help would be very appreciated.

Jayson

SeanKMcGinnis · Answer

To extend @LeslieUK's comment - if you have it available as an ArcGIS hosted feature layer, you can leverage the ArcGIS Connector for Power Automate to read all of the features and package it up as a Power BI dataset, including geometry. This will allow you to have it be more interactive with the other visualizations than if you were using it as a reference layer. Here is a post on using the ArcGIS Connectors for Power Automate to get Custom Geometry in Power BI.

AndrewLaux · Answer

If you aren't able to use AGOL and the PowerBI connectors, you can use an arcpy script to copy the layer and add a text column to hold the geometry as JSON. eg/

arcpy.AddField_management(featureclass, "Geometry_JSON", field_type="TEXT", field_length="2147483647")

Then use a update cursor to populate the JSON. eg/

with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor(featureclass, ['SHAPE@JSON', "Geometry_JSON"]) as cursor:
    for row in cursor:
        if (row[0] is not None‌‌:
            row[1] = row[0]
            cursor.updateRow(row)

Use the Geometry_JSON field to populate the Location well in PowerBI.

LeslieUK · Answer

You won't be able to use shapefiles directly into ArcGIS for Power BI. You will need to convert it into a format that Power BI accepts. You can also add it into ArcGIS Online and have it as a referenced layer.