Azure Maps won't recognize shape files

[pborah]

I have some custom polygons by our GIS analyst that I'm supposed to overlay on top of Azure maps. I'm following this guide and trying to do it on service itself -

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-maps/power-bi-visual-add-reference-layer?tabs=upload

This article is dates July 10th 2024 which is fairly recent. 

But when I go to upload the shape (.shp) file for a reference layer, it only recognizes geojson files. What is going on? Can someone please explain?

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Hi @pborah ,

I tried accordingly and indeed there is no .shp file format in the default options. Maybe you can import it via all file, if not available, please consider converting it to geojson format for use.

Hope it helps!

Best regards,
Community Support Team_ Scott Chang

If this post helps then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[pborah]

@Anonymous all files doesn't work, tried it. I used QGIS to convert it into kml and geoJSON both of which have been problematic. 

The official documentation is incorrect and misleading. Either that or PowerBI/Azure maps itself isn't robust enough to handle these file types in the many different flavours that they may come in. Every single format can have slight variations in the underlying data structure, with some optional elements not included.

With kml, the boundaries show up but the reference layer formatting options don't do anything at all - border color, fill color, etc. Additionally as mentioned in the document, I can have the fill color to a gradient based on some numerical value but that setting isn't even there for reference layer. 

With geoJSON, the polygon borders aren't even visible. And once again changing the border and fill settings don't do anything.

What I found to be the most absurd is PowerBI desktop - after adding a reference layer to Azure maps, there are no formatting settings for it in the formatting pane as opposed to Power BI service.

In all this I made sure that my shape to KML or geoJSON converted layer had the same CRS as Azure Maps which is EPSG:3857

Any clues as to what might be going on?