Day #4 – Countries Visited Map

As part of my Power BI 12 Days of Dashboards series, the 4th day of dashboards brings you a super simple way to display the countries you’ve visited on a map in an easy format that you can share with others. You can quickly embed the interactive map into a blog/webpage as I’ve done below.

Here is an example showing countries I’ve visited. This report uses the Power BI Filled Map visual, but you can also use the Esri ArcGIS map control with this data set for a slightly different look and interaction.

The first step to creating this simple dashboard is to create your own “Countries Visited” list. Keep in mind that you could also use states/territories/counties, etc. to view the data at a different geographic granularity.

1. Create an Excel spreadsheet (.xlsx) with a single column titled Country
2. Add the country names into the list that you want to display on the map
3. Save the .xlsx file. This is the file that is used as the input for this Power BI Dashboard.

Next, download the Power BI Template from here and continue with the following steps:

1. Download and open the attached CountriesVisitedTemplate.pbit file and open it in Power BI Desktop
2. A popup box appears asking for the full path of the .xlsx file created in the above steps. Provide the full path to the file on your computer and click the “Load” button in the bottom right. (TIP: Make sure the file is closed or you’ll hit an error here. If so, close the file and relaunch the Power BI template)

Thanks,
Sam Lester (MSFT)