topic ArcGIS Maps for PowerBI - Postcode locations not recognised correctly in ArcGIS for Power BI Questions

ArcGIS Maps for PowerBI - Postcode locations not recognised correctly

ChristianMercer — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 11:59:55 GMT

I'm attempting to create a visual for a Power BI Dashboard using the ArcGIS Maps for Power BI - this will aim to show the number of attendances based on postcodes. I am running into an issue however, whereby the visual seems to recognise a number of UK based postcodes as being in different countries, or just plots them in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean for some reason. Is this a known bug, or are there any solutions for this?

For additional context, the postcodes used are limited to the Postcode sector - the first part of the postcode (known as the outcode) and then the first value of the second part of the postcode (known as the incode). Please see an example attached which illustrates the issue that I'm experiencing.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!

Re: ArcGIS Maps for PowerBI - Postcode locations not recognised correctly

dcallaghan — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 14:07:43 GMT

Hi @ChristianMercer ,

I'm afraid I can't help but I can empathise....!

I've just tried with partial postcodes myself after reading your posts and get the same result you do:

Bottom is a table of random partial postcodes, left is an ArcGIS map and right is a regular "map" visual.
ArcGIS doesn't seem to like partial postcodes so places some of them somewhere along 0 degrees longitude, whereas "Map" appears to handle them fine.

I don't know enough about geocoding in ArcGIS or in Microsoft to be able to tell you if either is right, or "map" just looks more right than ArcGIS but is still incorrect.

Possibly one to raise with ESRI technical support, if you are an authorised caller with your organisation?

Re: ArcGIS Maps for PowerBI - Postcode locations not recognised correctly

LeslieUK — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 13:17:25 GMT

Hi @ChristianMercer

I think this issue is caused by the whitespace in the postcode, particularly with partial postcodes with just the first value of the incode. We have found a workaround of putting an underscore to replace the whitespace that would resolve this, for example, S18_8. This should locate properly.

Hopefully that will resolve your issue!

Re: ArcGIS Maps for PowerBI - Postcode locations not recognised correctly

ChristianMercer — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 08:24:30 GMT

Thanks for taking a look into this for me, and for confirming that it isn't just a local issue on my end! It looks like the white space in-between the outcode and incode was causing the issues as per LeslieUK's solution on this thread. Replacing those with underscores has seemed to have solve the problem