with these instructions, you can visualize Finland’s postal code areas on a map in Power BI Desktop. The feature is fairly new in that reporting program.
Power BI Desktop is free, but works only in Windows machines.
You can try the visualization with Sample file of Finnish postal code areas.
Postal code areas of Finland with the Shape Map visualization in Power BI Desktop
Power BI’s Shape Map is available as a preview version in May 2023. So the feature is available, but in the test phase.
Open Power BI Desktop settings and enable Shape Map using these instructions . Remember to restart Power BI Dekstop.
After Shape Map shows among the widgets, click on it.
Load TopoJSON configuration file for map visualization
Click on an empty Shape Map visualization to access its settings.
The custom map configuration must be uploaded in
TopoJSON format
. It is a JSON file that contains the identifier of the postal code areas and the polygon boundaries in a specific format.
TopoJSON can contain an arbitrary number of records related to regions. However, I think it’s most clear that TopoJSON only has the boundaries of zip code areas, and the actual data in separate files or databases.
Load actual postal code data
Next, the actual data is loaded into Power BI, for example, in a CSV or xlsx file. Postal code data can be in the simplest form like this:
| postal_code | population | average_income |
|---|---|---|
| 12300 | 567 | 2810 |
| 45600 | 1254 | 3140 |
| … | … | … |
TopoJSON knows how to automatically connect the numbers related to the postal code to the correct polygon. One of the numeric columns define the color tone of the map.
Drag the field containing postal codes into the Location box and the numeric column of your choice into the Color saturation.
