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Create your first map

Add an Icon Map item

  1. Open a Microsoft Fabric workspace where you have permission to create items.
  2. Choose New item and select Icon Map.
  3. Give the map a name. The new item opens in the map editor.

Because Icon Map is a native Fabric item, it lives in your workspace like any other Fabric artifact - you can rename it, share it, and manage its permissions using the standard Fabric controls.

The map editor

The editor is built around a central map canvas with:

  • A ribbon across the top with Save, Undo/Redo, Map controls, Environment effects, Data tables and Geospatial operations, and in the header the Embed button, the Editing / Viewing menu, Bookmarks and Tours.
  • A left Build sidebar where you connect data and add layers, charts, slicers, and other visuals.
  • A right editor pane that shows the settings for whatever you're currently editing.

The Build sidebar guides you through the authoring flow:

  1. Data - connect to Fabric to bring data onto the map.
  2. Layers - build and stack data layers over a background map.
  3. Charts / Visuals / Slicers - add in-map charts, slicers, panels, and text or image visuals.

Editing and Viewing modes

Every map can be opened in two modes. The menu at the right of the ribbon header names the current one, and opens to switch, the same way Fabric's own maps do:

  • Editing - the full authoring experience. Use this to change the map: add data, build layers, and configure visuals.
  • Viewing - explore the map without changing it. Panning, zooming, filtering with slicers, and any controls the author enabled all work, but nothing you do alters the saved map.

Whether you can edit a map depends on your Fabric permission on the item. Viewers with read-only access always get Viewing mode; contributors can switch between the two.

Viewing mode is the experience most of your audience will use. When designing a map, switch to Viewing regularly to check that it works the way your viewers will experience it.

Save your work

Use Save in the ribbon to persist your changes to the item in your workspace. Icon Map also supports Undo/Redo while you work.

Next steps