Images and icons

The Images / Icons layer places a marker at each longitude and latitude. The marker is either an image held in your data, as a data URI or SVG text, or a short piece of text or an emoji drawn on a badge.

What you need

These fields must be empty on an image's rows: Circle Size, Destination Longitude, Destination Latitude, Feature Reference, Heatmap Weight and Cell (H3/S2/A5/Geohash) Weight.

Add images to the map

1. Add fields to * ID (required), Longitude (X) and Latitude (Y). Set the coordinates to Average.
2. If your data holds an image for each row, as a data URI or SVG text, add that field to Image / WKT / GeoJSON. If you want text or emoji markers, leave that field well empty.
3. If the panel What kind of map are you making? is showing, select the Images & icons tile. Otherwise, in the Format pane expand Data Layers and switch on Images / Icons.
4. Expand Images - Configuration and choose an Image Source: Image from data or Text or emoji.
5. Set the size: Image Width and Image Height for images, or Icon Size for text and emoji.

Where the image comes from

Image Source has two options.

Image from data

Each row carries its own image in the Image / WKT / GeoJSON field. The value must be one of these:

The value must start with data:image, <svg, <?xml or be exactly pin, with nothing before it. A row whose value is anything else, including a link, is not drawn at all. Because the row has coordinates, it is not a shape either, so it reaches no layer.

Getting images into your data:

• SVG text in a column or measure. SVG is plain text, so you can store it in a column, or build it in a DAX measure. Include xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" in the <svg> tag. A measure can change the SVG per row, for example to color an icon by status:

  Status Icon =
  "<svg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' width='24' height='24' viewBox='0 0 24 24'>"
      & "<circle cx='12' cy='12' r='10' fill='" & [Status Color] & "'/></svg>"
  

• Data URIs. Convert each image file to a data URI with any image-to-data-URI tool, then store the result in a column. Keep the images small: Power BI holds at most 32,766 characters in one text value, and a longer data URI is cut short and cannot be drawn.

Text or emoji

Set Image Source to Text or emoji and type the text, a symbol or an emoji in the Text or emoji setting. Every location gets that text, drawn on a rounded badge. The default is ▲. Rows need nothing in Image / WKT / GeoJSON.

To show different text for each row, select the fx button next to Text or emoji, choose Field value and pick a column that holds the text or emoji for each row. See Conditional formatting.

• The badge is as tall as Icon Size and as wide as the text needs.
• Icon / Background Color and Icon Background Transparency set the badge.
• Icon Text Color sets the text.

You can also set the text color in the value itself with a prefix:

The named colors are white, black, red, amber, orange, yellow, green, blue and gray.

If you keep a field in Image / WKT / GeoJSON while using Text or emoji, leave it blank on the image rows. A row whose value there is not an image is not drawn.

Settings

All of these are in Format pane > Data Layers > Images - Configuration, shown when the Images / Icons switch is on.

Offset overlapping images

When several rows share a location, for example three assets at one site, their markers sit exactly on top of each other. Turn on Offset Overlapping Images to lay them out in a horizontal row centered on the location, Offset Gap (pixels) apart. Raise Offset Tolerance (meters) to treat markers within that distance as being at the same place. Offsets apply to markers that are not in a cluster.

Selection, tooltips and labels

• Selection. Select a marker to filter the other visuals on the report page, as a slicer does. Hold Ctrl or Shift to select several. Markers you did not select fade, using Format pane > Selection > Formatting > Unselected Items Transparency. See Select and filter with the map.
• Tooltips. With no fields in Tooltips, the tooltip shows the ID. Add fields to Tooltips to show those instead. See Tooltips.
• Labels. Markers can carry data labels. See Data labels.
• Legend. Images appear in the legend as Icons. See Legend.

Tips and limits

• Nothing appears? Check the first characters of a value in Image / WKT / GeoJSON. A link, a file name or text with a space before <svg is not drawn. Also check that Circle Size is empty on those rows.
• An image is anchored at its center. For a pin whose tip should touch the location, use an image with empty space below the tip so that the tip is at the center.
• Markers never hide each other. Where they overlap, all of them are drawn.
• Images and circles share one position in the drawing order, set by the Circles Z Index.
• Text badges and images that repeat are drawn once and reused, so a few distinct values across many rows stay fast. Thousands of different images are slower: prefer a few small images, or text badges colored with fx.

Related

• Circles
• Clusters
• Conditional formatting
• Combine several layers in one map
• Data layers overview