Join non-spatial data in power BI to spatial reference data from ArcGIS Online and publish

[Rickles_OGA]

In our example, our users have a polygon reference layer of well areas in ArcGIS Online. In Power BI, they have a non-spatial dataset which contains info about well locations. They would like to be able to join this non-spatial dataset to the reference dataset and then publish the results. This isn’t currently possible as to publish a Power BI report with a map to the web, any datasets coming from power BI must have XY data attached. (https://doc.arcgis.com/en/power-bi/design/publish-to-web.htm)

Currently, the users are working around this by adding XY data to their well locations dataset and simply making that layer completely transparent on the map. However, they feel the there would be a huge benefit to being able to join non-spatial datasets to spatial datasets and publish the results.

[KevinDunlop]

I agree with this.  One our use cases is for our administrative boundary polygons.  We have them stored in our Portal as a feature service.  Since Power BI doesn't support geometry data types, we would like to bring them as a reference layer in Power BI and the join the non-spatial data Power BI data to it.  This way we could symbolize the polygons based off data used in the rest of the reports.  If cross filtering was enable too, it would be awesome.