Track your social and governance data (preview)

2025-03-21

Important

Some or all of this functionality is available as part of a preview release. The content and the functionality are subject to change.

Microsoft Sustainability Manager now includes tracking and reporting capabilities for social and governance data alongside existing environmental metrics. This functionality enables organizations to gain a comprehensive view of their sustainability efforts by integrating key quantitative social and governance metrics across several ESRS areas into the existing external reporting framework.

This article goes over several schema and functional changes that allow you to quickly begin ingesting and tracking your organization’s social and governance data within Microsoft Sustainability Manager.

Important

If you’re using the External ESG Reporting solution, the social and governance data model can be found under the Concepts tab. If you’re using Microsoft Sustainability Manager, the data model can be found under Data > Social data (preview) and Data > Governance data (preview).

Data Schema

The following section discusses several data schema changes pertaining to the social and governance data model. For more information on the external reporting data schema, see External reporting in Sustainability Manager.

Concept group

A concept group is a collection of concepts that belong to the same reporting topic. As part of the social and governance data model, there are 16 concept groups representing topics such as Characteristics of employees and Governance body composition.

Group type

A group type allows you to categorize a concept group as one of the following types:

Environment
Social
Governance

When you select Social or Governance as the group type, that concept group shows up under the respective Social or Governance data tab. Additionally, it enables the underlying concepts and their facts for viewing within the Social and governance PBI report under Analytics.

Concept

A concept represents a reporting metric for which data needs to be collected and reported on, such as Number of employees by gender.

Dimension

A dimension can represent either an attribute of the metric or the granularity at which the data is being collected. For the purposes of the social and governance data model, we defined these dimensions as either Required or Optional.

Concept	Dimension	Dimension Type
Number of employees by gender	Gender	Required
Number of employees by gender	Country/region	Optional

In the shown example, Gender is considered the required dimension as it’s an attribute of the metric itself. Country/region is then considered an optional dimension as that is the level at which we'll collect the metric data prior to aggregating it back up to the level necessary for reporting.

Note

Each concept can have a maximum of two Required dimensions and four Optional dimensions.

Source

Source is a system-defined field that allows you to differentiate between the following concept types:

Default: Concepts default to the system that can't be modified. These concepts can still be extended.
Custom: Concepts created by a user on that environment.
Demo: Concepts intended for demo purposes only.
Required for Copilot: Concepts required for finding facts with Copilot. For more information, see Find facts with Copilot in Microsoft Sustainability Manager.

Unit group

Unit group is an optional field that allows you to restrict the underlying facts to a specific unit group. For the social and governance concepts, we recommend defining a unit group at the concept level in order to avoid ingestion and PBI report errors on the underlying facts.

Facts

Facts contain qualitative or quantitative data that corresponds to a particular concept. For example, if the concept is Number of employees by gender, the associated facts could be:

Number of employees – Male
Number of employees – Female
Number of employees – Other
Number of employees – Not reported

While each concept can have multiple associated facts, the fact itself can only ever be associated with a single concept.

Extend the data model

While the core concepts, as defined by their Default concept type, can't be modified, there are several ways to customize or extend the data model to support your organization’s unique needs. The following section covers few examples to help get you started.

Add additional dimension(s) to a default concept

Default concepts can be extended to support additional Required or Optional dimensions, depending on your organization’s needs.

Select the concept that you’d like to add additional dimension(s) to.
Select New Dimension Reference.
Name your dimension reference and select the dimension that you’d like to link to.
Select Save & Close.

Add a new concept to an existing concept group

In addition to the default concepts, you can add additional new or existing concepts to any of the concept groups.

Select the concept group you’d like to add concept(s) to.
To create a new concept, select New concept and fill out these fields:
- Name (required)
- Display name (optional)
- Concept data type
Alternatively, to link an existing concept:
- Select Add Existing Concept.
- Choose the desired concept from the list.
Select Save & Close.

Add a new concept group

You can create additional concept groups beyond the default ones to organize your Environmental, Social, or Governance data:

Go to the Concept groups tab under one of these locations:
- Concepts
- Social data (preview)
- Governance data (preview)
Select New Concept Group.
Configure the new group:
- Enter a name for the concept group.
- Choose a Group Type: Environmental, Social, or Governance.
Note

Environmental concept groups are only visible under Concept groups in External reporting -> Concepts.
Select Save & Close. After creating the group, you can begin adding concepts to organize your sustainability data.

Create and collect multiple facts for a concept

After you complete customizing your concepts as needed, you can use the Create multiple facts flow to generate facts in an empty draft state for seamless template export and import.

Navigate to a concept’s Associated facts tab and select Create multiple facts.
Confirm your Required and Optional dimensions, and select a reporting period for the facts.
Select Create facts.

Note

This automation can currently retrieve a maximum of 1,000 members per dimension. If your concept has a dimension whose members surpass this amount, the automation fails.

Collect data for your facts

After generating facts, follow these steps to collect and import your data:

Export facts template

Go to the Associated facts page for your concept.
Select the vertical ellipsis (⋮) menu in the table.
Choose Export facts to download an Excel template.

Note

The template contains all facts for the concept in an empty draft state.

Import completed data

Fill in the values in your Excel template.
Navigate to External reporting > Facts.
Select Import from Excel to upload your completed data.

The imported facts are available for reporting and analysis in Microsoft Sustainability Manager.

Important

The social and governance Power BI dashboard is only available with Essentials and Premium licenses.

After collecting facts for your social and governance metrics, analyze your data using the embedded Power BI dashboard:

Navigate to Analytics > Social and governance (preview)
Select the concept you want to analyze
Filter your data using the dropdown menus for:
- Specific dimensions
- Time periods
- Other relevant parameters