Icon Map Catalog

The Icon Map Catalog gives Power BI users a curated library of ready-to-use map layers - boundaries, infrastructure, places and reference data - right inside Icon Map Pro and Icon Map Slicer. No shapefiles to download, no GIS expertise needed.

What is the catalog?

The catalog is a searchable collection of thousands of map layers hosted by Icon Map. Each one is prepared and optimized, so you can find it, preview it, style it and add it to your Power BI report in a few clicks.

Catalog layers draw as vector tiles, so even large datasets display smoothly at any zoom level. Everything streams on demand: there are no files to download.

Key features

• Keyword and AI search - find datasets by name, place or subject, or describe what you need in plain English. Narrow the results by region and tier.
• Live preview - see every dataset on a map before you add it, then watch your styling on the map as you change it.
• Flexible styling - fill, outline, labels, 3D extrusion, lines and points, with gradient, single-color and rule-based coloring.
• Data binding - join a catalog layer to your Power BI data and drive it with conditional formatting. The catalog checks your data and suggests the property to join on.
• Ready-made styles - some datasets come with designed looks to choose from (for example OpenRailwayMap).
• Layer groups - datasets made of variants, for example coarse boundaries when zoomed out and detailed ones when zoomed in, switching automatically.
• Many layers - add up to 20 catalog layers to a visual and set which draws on top.
• Keyboard and screen reader friendly - every control, including the drawn sliders, works from the keyboard.

How it works

1. Open the catalog, from the Layer Manager or from the Format pane (Catalog > Configure Layers).
2. Find a dataset with keyword or AI search.
3. Preview it on the map.
4. Configure its styling: colors, outlines, labels, 3D extrusion and more.
5. Join it to your data (optional) - match a property of the layer to a field of your report.
6. Filter it (optional) - filters can be driven by conditional formatting too.
7. Add it to your map, then Apply changes.

The layer's settings are saved in your Power BI report: no external files are needed.

Availability

The catalog is available in:

• Icon Map Pro - from the Layer Manager and the Format pane.
• Icon Map Slicer - from the Layer Manager and the Format pane.

You can also browse the catalog on the Icon Map website.

Access tiers

Catalog datasets are organized into four access tiers:

See Access Tiers for the details.