Use your organizational data in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Viva

Organizational data is employee data that describes the users in your organization - their name, location, and job role. You can import this information into Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Viva through a feature called Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service.

Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service is a reliable and scalable online service that:

  • Enables rapid ingestion of organizational/HR data through connectors from multiple HRIS systems using a single unified ingestion point

  • Provides organizational data for use across Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft 365 apps to power various features

  • Delivers a robust data quality framework that detects, communicates, and provides solutions for data quality issues before data is used

Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service supports the ingestion of public, confidential, and custom data through multiple connector options.

  • Public attributes (such as work email, name, job title, department) – Well-known attributes that are allowed to be seen by all users in the tenant. The attributes uploaded by the tenant are made available to the Microsoft 365 profile and can be accessed by all of the tenant's users and any Microsoft 365 apps.

  • Confidential attributes (such as hourly rate and supervisor indicator) – Well-known attributes that contain data that's more sensitive and that you can choose which apps to share this data with.

  • Custom attributes (like badge-in count) – Attributes that have special meaning to the tenant but aren't uniformly known or used across different organizations. You'll get similar controls to those available for Confidential attributes on how to choose which apps can access this data.

This data adds to and updates existing information in Microsoft 365 and Viva apps and services to refresh and extend your data with additional information that currently resides in an external system, like your HR system.

Use the following information to understand, import, and manage your organizational data:

Note

If you have Microsoft Copilot, check out Use organizational data in the Microsoft Copilot dashboard for important information about configuring and accessing the organizational data.

Where and how you can use organizational data

Microsoft 365 User Profile

The Microsoft 365 User Profile is a collection of attributes that describe each user, referred to as Microsoft 365 User Profile Data (the data stored in the Microsoft 365 User Profile). This information includes the email address, phone number, job title, and other descriptive information.

Note

Three name-related attributes (Microsoft_FirstName, Microsoft_LastName, and Microsoft_DisplayName) are treated as a group in the Microsoft 365 User Profile, so if any one of them has a value in the uploaded file, the other two also need to have values. Otherwise, the specified value isn't stored in the Microsoft 365 User Profile.

Microsoft Copilot Dashboard and Viva Insights

Copilot Dashboard is a leader and admin experience to prepare for Copilot, drive adoption, and measure the impact of AI across Microsoft 365--bringing readiness, usage, benchmarks, and impact views into one place. Viva Insights, meanwhile, provides behavioral and manager and leader insights through advanced analysis in the Viva Insights web app and analyst workbench to answer deeper organization questions.

High-quality HR data using Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service powers the ability of Copilot Dashboard and Viva Insights to:

  • Segment and visualize trends across teams and departments
  • Map relationships dynamically for accurate reporting and governance
  • Deliver contextual recommendations that align with organizational goals

Learn more about how to prepare organizational data for Viva Insights.

Learn more about Viva Insights.

Workforce Insights

The Workforce Insights agent helps leaders and authorized delegates understand organizational composition, identify skills gaps, and guide workforce planning based on key attributes and best practices. It leverages organizational data, custom attributes, and People Skills information to provide actionable insights. Leaders can filter by attributes such as level, location, and title to answer precise questions about their teams.

Workforce Insights relies on clean, governed data ingested through Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service. This data ensures leaders have a trusted view of organizational relationships and composition, enabling confident decisions on workforce planning.

People Skills

People Skills is an AI-driven service that uses AI to generate personalized skill profiles for your users mapped to a customizable, built-in taxonomy. This service provides a data layer that fuels the Skills agent, and enhances Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft 365, and Viva services with contextualized data and skills-driven experiences.

Skills data ingested through Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service:

  • Appears as suggested skills on a user's profile card for confirmation
  • Surfaces as "skills the user may have" to refine profiles
  • Can be imported from third-party HCM systems like Workday or SAP SuccessFactors using connectors in the Microsoft 365 admin center

Admins maintain control over what skills data is shared. Learn more.

How to access Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center with an account that has the required administrative permissions (Microsoft 365 Global Administrator or Organizational Data Source Administrator).

  2. In the left navigation menu, select Setup.

  3. On the Setup page, select Migration and Imports.

  4. Under Migration and Imports, select Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service.

Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service requirements

There's one required attribute for Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service: Microsoft_PersonEmail, which associates the organizational data with a specific person.

Name in Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service Microsoft 365 Profile Viva Insights Workforce Insights People Skills
Microsoft_PersonEmail Yes Yes Yes Yes
Microsoft_ManagerEmail N/A Yes Yes N/A
Microsoft_Organization N/A Yes N/A N/A
Microsoft_UserSkillNames N/A N/A N/A Yes

Important

If you upload organizational data through the Microsoft 365 admin center, that data is also accessible to and used across Microsoft 365 and Viva apps and services.

Now that you understand what organizational data is and where it comes from, you're ready to import your organizational data into Microsoft 365.

Data precedence

In the Microsoft 365 User Profile, by default, Microsoft Entra data takes precedence over Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service. This means that when a service queries a Microsoft 365 User Profile, if there's both organizational data and Microsoft Entra data for a single attribute, the Microsoft Entra value is used.

If you prefer to use the value from your organizational data in the Microsoft 365 User Profile, you can override the default precedence. Learn how.

Roles and permissions

Role Assigned by Role grants access to the Microsoft 365 admin center to manage Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service (Y/N) Role grants access to the Microsoft 365 admin center to submit support requests (Y/N)
Microsoft 365 Global Administrator Entra organization signup (automatic) Yes Yes
Organizational Data Source Administrator Microsoft 365 Global Administrator Yes Yes

Organizational Data Source Administrator details

Users with this role have permissions to manage settings related to ingesting and managing Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service.

Note

Organizational data is employee data that describes the users in your organization and can be ingested manually or using the supported HRIS systems.

They can do the following tasks:

  • Data upload and management: Permissions to upload, update, and delete organizational data for the specified applications
  • Data export: Permissions to export organizational data from the authorized applications

This admin can also connect to HCM systems such as Workday and SAP SuccessFactors, manually ingest HCM data using secure file uploads, and manage which applications can access uploaded data.

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