Azure Maps – Reference Layer Fails to Render Without Field Swap

[darrylit]

In Power BI Desktop, when using Azure Maps with both a reference layer (uploaded as a zipped shape file) and a bubble layer (latitude/longitude), 3 major issues occur:

Issue 1: Reference Layer Requires Manual Field Swap to Render
When setting the Location field in the bubble layer to Store Name (with valid latitude/longitude), the reference layer does not render. The only way to make it appear is to:

Temporarily set the Location field to match the reference layer key (MESH250MID)

Then manually switch it back to Store Name

After doing this, everything works as expected — the reference layer loads, and bubbles display properly.

However, this manual swap must be redone each time the page loads or the file is reopened, and users in the Power BI Service (who cannot edit visuals) are unable to perform this step. So once published, the report appears broken. 

This is when it works correctly.

Issue 2: Only One Bubble Renders per Mesh with Legend
If we try to work around the above by keeping MESH250MID as the Location field and using Store Name as the Legend, only one bubble per mesh grid is displayed, even if there are multiple stores in that mesh. This suggests Power BI is collapsing bubbles by the mesh ID and ignoring the legend distinction.

Issue 3: Reference Layer Conditional Formatting Limitation:
The reference layer (GeoJSON) cannot dynamically change color formatting based on the selected measure or slicer. This severely limits interactivity — for example, if different population or sales metrics are selected via a slicer, the fill color of the map polygons does not respond accordingly.

[v-pgoloju]

Hi @darrylit,

Just following up to see if the solution provided was helpful in resolving your issue. Please feel free to let us know if you need any further assistance.

Best regards,

Prasanna Kumar

[v-pgoloju · Accepted solution]

Hi @darrylit,

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric Forum Community.

This behavior is a bug in how Power BI links the visual fields to the underlying rendering engine. The reference layer seems to require the Location field to match its key (e.g., MESH250MID) at load time, even if it should be independent of the bubble layer.

Power BI is grouping bubbles by the Location field first (MESH ID), and then only retaining one per group ignoring the legend unless Location is more granular.

Azure Maps reference layers (shapefiles or GeoJSON) support only static formatting. Dynamic formatting is not supported for uploaded shape files even if tied to a slicer or measure.

You may find this related community discussion helpful:

https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Desktop/Azure-Maps-reference-layer-conditional-formatting-... 

https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Desktop/Azure-Maps-GeoJSON-Reference-Layer-Stopped-Working... 

Kind regards,
Prasanna Kumar