Points — circles and icons
The most common way to put data on a map is as points. Icon Map offers two point layer types.
Circles
The Circles layer plots each row as a styled circle. You can:
- Set circle size by a numeric value, so bigger values draw bigger circles.
- Set fill and outline color by a value, a category, or a color gradient.
- Add labels and tooltip fields.
Circles are a good default for showing magnitude — for example, sales by store, population by city, or readings by sensor.
Icons
The Icons layer plots each row as an icon or marker. You can use:
- Text or emoji as the marker.
- An image — including images stored in your OneLake.
- Per-category icons, so each category draws a different symbol.
- Rotation, driven by a data field (useful for headings or bearings).
Clustering
When a points layer is dense, nearby points can be clustered — as you zoom out, points collapse together into a chart glyph that summarizes the group. Glyph styles include pie, donut, bar, teardrop, box, and treemap, and they can encode a category breakdown so a cluster shows the mix of what's inside it. Configure this in the Cluster section of a Circles or Icons layer.
Clustering keeps busy maps readable and gives an at-a-glance summary before a viewer zooms in to the individual points.
Styling by data
Both layer types support styling by:
- Value — a continuous number mapped to size or a color gradient.
- Category — distinct colors or icons per category.
- Rules — conditional styling based on thresholds you define.
Next steps
- Lines & routes — connect your points.
- Interactivity — tooltips and cross-filtering.