Icon Map Slicer - What is it, and why?
Last week we released Icon Map Slicer. Knowing this would raise some questions, I thought I’d address them up front in a blog post.
What is Icon Map Slicer?
Put simply, Icon Map Pro is a display visual—just like a bar chart in Power BI is a display visual—whereas Icon Map Slicer is a slicer visual. Many of our Icon Map Pro customers (and potential customers) asked for the ability to select items on the map in ways that Icon Map Pro can’t.
For example:
- Keeping map selections active while interacting with other visuals on the page.
- Persisting selections across different report pages.
- Selecting hundreds (or even thousands) of items on the map.
- Selecting all items contained within another item.
Icon Map Slicer addresses these needs, offering powerful new ways to select data:
- Selections persist automatically.
- Works with Power BI’s Sync Slicers capability to mirror selections across pages.
- Uses a more efficient Power BI API to filter data, allowing large selections without causing Power BI to “hang.”
- Select all items within polygons from reference layers (e.g. all care providers within a council area).
- Select all items within or intersecting with other items (e.g. protected woodland intersecting a proposed railway line).
- Use a circle radius tool or a lasso to select data (e.g. all competitors within 2 km of a store).
- Filter data by the current map view—zoom or pan the map, and other visuals in the report update to reflect the visible extent.
In addition to these selection options, Icon Map Slicer can display a wide range of data items, including:
- Circles
- Images and Icons
- 3D Columns
- H3 Hexagons
- Interactive, conditionally formatted GeoJSON and Shapefiles
- Geometry stored in WKT and GeoJSON feature formats
- Lines
Some items can also be displayed in 3D by providing a height value. The background map can include 3D terrain, and the map itself can be rotated and tilted.
Why is it a different visual?
So why release a separate visual instead of adding these features into Icon Map Pro? The short answer: the Power BI visuals SDK doesn’t allow a single visual to operate as both a slicer and a display visual. When creating a visual, you must specify in the configuration whether it’s one or the other.
This is actually our third iteration at building this visual—the first two never made it into public preview. Initially, we aimed to enable slicer functionality directly within Icon Map Pro. But we quickly realised the extensive changes required (particularly in how items are identified for selection and cross-highlighting) would have created messy, unmaintainable code.
Splitting the codebase allowed us to:
- Build a cleaner, dedicated slicer visual.
- Base the visual on the MapLibre mapping library (instead of Leaflet), unlocking rotation, tilt, and 3D terrain/object support.
How else does it differ from Icon Map Pro?
Building a Power BI map visual means taking into account both technical constraints and licensing rules from third-party providers. For instance, Google Satellite imagery cannot legally be used with non-Google mapping libraries like MapLibre—a shame, because it looks stunning with 3D terrain!
As mentioned, Icon Map Slicer is built entirely on MapLibre. In contrast, Icon Map Pro uses Leaflet, with an option to piggyback MapLibre when “WebGL Rendering” is enabled. This mode offers some performance benefits but remains limited by Leaflet’s constraints (e.g. stepped zoom, no tilt/rotation). However, Leaflet’s wide ecosystem of plugins and integrations gives Icon Map Pro capabilities that aren't available in Icon Map Slicer.
Here are the current key differences:
Map Interactivity
| Feature / Capability | Icon Map Pro | Icon Map Slicer |
|---|---|---|
| Gradual Map Zoom | • | |
| Stepped Map Zoom | • | |
| Tilt and Rotate Map | • | |
| Power BI Tooltips | • | • |
| Drill-down | • | • |
| Drill-through | • | • |
Selection
| Feature / Capability | Icon Map Pro | Icon Map Slicer |
|---|---|---|
| Cross-filter other visuals | • | • |
| Cross-filtering from visuals | • | • |
| Cross-highlight other visuals | • | |
| Cross-highlighting from visuals | • | |
| Efficient selection (100s items) | • | |
| Lasso tool | • | • |
| Circle radius selection | • | |
| Select within reference polygon | • | |
| Select intersecting items | • | |
| Filter by map extent | • |
Background Mapping
| Feature / Capability | Icon Map Pro | Icon Map Slicer |
|---|---|---|
| 3D Terrain | • | |
| Tekantis Map Styles | • | • |
| Ordnance Survey Open Zoomstack | • | • |
| Google Maps Integration | • | |
| Azure Maps Integration | • | |
| ArcGIS Online Integration | • | |
| Mapbox Integration | • | |
| Mappable Integration | • | |
| MapTiler Integration | • | |
| Ordnance Survey Premium Integration | • |
Reference Layers
| Feature / Capability | Icon Map Pro | Icon Map Slicer |
|---|---|---|
| Place names (Tekantis / OS) | • | • |
| Place names (Azure / ArcGIS/ Mapbox) | • | |
| Realtime Daylight Terminator | • | • |
| DateTime field Daylight Terminator | • | |
| ArcGIS Feature Layers | • | |
| Realtime Traffic | • | |
| Realtime Weather | • | |
| WMS Support | • | |
| GeoJSON / Shapefiles | • | • |
| Raster Tiles | • | • |
| Styled Vector Tiles | • |
Data Layers
| Feature / Capability | Icon Map Pro | Icon Map Slicer |
|---|---|---|
| Circles | • | • |
| Clustering | • | |
| 3D Columns | • | |
| Images / Icons | • | • |
| Heatmaps | • | |
| H3 Hexagons | • | • |
| GeoJSON / Shape Files | • | • |
| Vector Tiles | • | • |
| Shapes in WKT / GeoJSON | • | • |
| ArcGIS Feature Layers | • | |
| Lines | • | • |
| Lines (flows) | Planned | Coming soon |
If I already have Icon Map Pro, do I have to pay more for Icon Map Slicer?
Icon Map Slicer is a separate product, so it isn’t included in your Icon Map Pro subscription. However, if you already hold an Icon Map Pro annual subscription for 25+ users, we’re pleased to offer Icon Map Slicer at a substantial discount. Please contact sales@iconmappro.com for details.
Is Icon Map Pro still being developed?
Absolutely. Both Icon Map Pro and Icon Map Slicer are being actively developed in parallel. Where possible, we’ll release features in both, though not always at the same time.
- Slicer specific features will remain unique to Icon Map Slicer.
- Icon Map Pro will eventually gain tilt, rotation, and 3D terrain.
- Some Pro features (like WMS layers and heatmaps) are planned for the Slicer.
Are you planning more visuals?
We don’t currently plan to release new visuals, but we are working on powerful, new geospatial capabilities for Power BI and Microsoft Fabric. These will benefit both Icon Map Pro and Icon Map Slicer—stay tuned for updates in the coming months!