One of the most exciting ways to visualize data in Power BI is through the various map options that we have. All the maps serve the same purpose to illustrate data in relation to locations around the world, but there are some small differences between each of them. All of the maps, except the Shape Map, have the option to provide the latitude and longitude coordinates, which will be the best way to ensure the appropriate location is being displayed. The reason for this is because the information that we provide the visual will be sent to Bing Maps to verify the positioning on the map. If we do not provide enough detail, then Bing may not return the desired results. For example, if we were to provide the map visual with a field that contains only the city name, that could result in some confusion because there may be multiple cities in the US with that name. In these scenarios, we will either want to supply some sort of geo-hierarchy to give better definition, or we can create new columns with more detailed information. Power BI also has a built-in feature when dealing with geographic data that allows users to help identify the type of data that is being provided: this is called Data Category. Let's go ahead and take advantage of this for our data set to make the map visuals more accurate.

Let's look at, setting up the example:

1. Within the Fields Pane, expand the Geography table.
2. The first field that we will categorize will be the City field. Highlight this field and then navigate to the Modeling ribbon. Once here, you will see the Data Category option.
3. Inside of the drop-down menu, we will select the City option. Upon accomplishing this, you will see that there is now a globe icon next to the City field.

4. Repeat the steps above for the StateProvinceName field, but choose the State or Province option for the data category dropdown.
5. The final field that we need to perform these steps for is EnglishCountryRegionName; select the Country/Region option from the dropdown.

Now that we have given a better description of our geographical data, we can proceed with using the various map visuals. One thing of note is that using any of these visuals does require internet access because we are going to be sending data to Bing Maps. Before we begin, create a new Report Page called Geographical Data.