Highlighting of country states on a BING MAP

Question

Good afternoon,
Would anyone have a list of country states (regions) within France, Germany, Poland, Netherlands and Belgium?
We have a Sharepoint list with standard country states names for these countries. We want these states to be highlighted on BING MAP in a POWER BI report. Unfortunately, the following states don‘t get highlighted on the map. I believe that it is because I used different names than are required/recognized in BING MAPs, however, I can't find anywhere the right names required by BING. Would anyone of you know how to change the names of the following states so they would finally get highlighted on the BING MAP in POWER BI?

Poland:
1 Opole
2 Łódź
3 Holy Cross
4 Lublin
5 Masovian
6 Kuyavian-Pomeranian

Belgium
1 Antwerp
2 Luxembourg
3 Namur
4 Luxemburg
5 Liege

Netherlands
1 Limburg
2 Utrecht
3 Groningen

France
1 Lower Normandy
2 Pays De La Loire

Germany
1 Baden Wurttemberg
2 Saxony Anhalt
3 Schleswig Holstein

Thank you

Roman

Answer 1

Hi Roman,

It is normally a context issue rather than a naming one. Your Power BI Map sends a request to Bing Maps with information and "Lublin" vs "Lublin, Poland" could offer very different results from that Bing Maps call. In looking at your data, is there an opportunity to make it more explicit?

For example, with the context set to EN_US, I can confirm the Bing Maps search for "Kuyavian-Pomeranian" returns a US location "Pomeranian Drive, Dayton, OH 45424" while "Kuyavian-Pomeranian, Poland" does return what you expect with the added context that you mean Poland, despite the culture code "EN_US" giving
"adminDistrict1": "Kuiavia-Pomerania",
"adminDistrict2": "Toruński",
"countryRegion": "Poland"

Sincerely,
IoTGirl

Answer 2

Hi IoTGirl,
thank you for your answer. I have a separate SharePoint list for REGION, COUNTRY and DISTRICT. Please see attached list for Polish DISTRICTS.

Could you advise me where/how did you get this?

"adminDistrict1": "Kuiavia-Pomerania",
"adminDistrict2": "Toruński",
"countryRegion": "Poland"

Thank you

Roman

Answer 3

Hi Roman,

Behind the scene, Power BI calls a Bing Maps API (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/maps), in this case a location API that can return either JSON or XML depending on your preference.

My calls were:
http://dev.virtualearth.net/rest/v1/locations/?q=Kuyavian-Pomeranian%2c+Poland&culture=en-us&key=<BMKey> -> Gives the correct answer

http://dev.virtualearth.net/rest/v1/locations/?q=Kuyavian-Pomeranian&culture=en-us&key=<BMKey> -> Gives the Ohio answer

        "addressLine": "Pomeranian Drive",  
        "adminDistrict": "OH",  
        "adminDistrict2": "Montgomery",  
        "countryRegion": "United States",  

To get your own Bing Maps key, if you don't have one already, you can create a developer account at https://www.bingmapsportal.com/

Lastly, for Bing Maps in Power BI, all of the information they need is actually available in the documentation at: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/visuals/power-bi-map-tips-and-tricks. Specifically the “What is sent to Bing Maps?” section clarifies that you are in complete control of what is placed in the unstructured query that is used.

Sincerely,
IoTGirl