Custom dimensions
A common requirement for Organizations that report their Sustainability efforts is to associate their activity or emissions data with other contextual data, such as emissions intensity per number of employees. This extended information can produce insightful analysis to further track against an organization’s sustainability goals.
In Microsoft Sustainability Manager, the custom dimensions feature allows you to associate different properties of sustainability data for each activity record. This sustainability data typically consists of operational attributes, such as asset or product attributes. You can ingest custom dimensions from the data sources, just like you can for activity or emissions data.
Custom dimensions are useful when you design calculation models. It also helps when you need to analyze data with more customer specific granularity without the need to extend the solution with customizations.
The following are examples that apply custom dimensions:
- Tracking the emissions caused by machinery: You can create a custom dimension to track the originating machinery of the emissions, such as the condenser, boiler, or printing machine. Then, you can use this information to create reports that show how emissions vary by different machines.
- Relating assets to activity records: You can create a custom dimension to associate an activity record and its related emissions to an organization’s asset. Then, you can use this information to track how emissions vary at an asset level.
- Relating to business data: You can create a custom dimension to represent the emissions produced by a specific product type as part of the business.
- Affect the calculations: You can use custom dimensions to build custom calculation models. You can also use custom calculation models for calculations and conditional logics using the PowerFx expressions.
Design considerations for custom dimensions
The following are some of the design considerations for using custom dimensions:
Custom dimensions are extra properties that you can add to Sustainability Manager entities, such as carbon activities and emissions. The custom dimensions feature allows you to track and analyze your organization's emissions data in more detail.
Ingesting custom dimensions data into appropriate data tables isn't supported in Excel template import.
You can configure custom dimensions for activity and emissions data only.
The data source should provide other, specific columns with custom dimensions.
You can manage custom dimensions metadata by name, data type, and the description of custom dimensions.
Custom dimensions have a defined data type, which means they need to be string, number, or boolean.
- String: Used to direct conditional calculation statements and reporting by pivoting and aggregating by text value.
- Number: Best used in computation during calculations, and reporting by intensity calculations and aggregations.
- Boolean: Best used for conditional calculations during calculations and aggregate reporting by text value.
For reporting, you can use the Custom dimensions dashboard to drill into each custom dimension, view a time chart, and view a tree view of the CO2E emission intensity.
During the design of calculation models, validation of custom dimensions data types isn't done in PowerFx expressions, and calculations fail if incompatible types, such as a string field, are used in numerical expressions.
Data model extension versus custom dimensions
Custom dimensions are one option that you can use to enrich activity and emissions data. Another option is to extend the data model with custom columns and custom tables. The following table includes considerations related to the two options.
| Description | Custom dimensions | Data model extension |
|---|---|---|
| Reporting and visualization | You can use the built-in Custom dimensions dashboard to analyze data. | To use data model extensions for analysis and reporting, you need to build your own Power BI reports and dashboards. |
| Flow from activity data to calculated data | Custom dimensions applied to activity data get copied automatically to the Emissions table during calculations. This action simplifies analysis and reporting. | Custom values from activity data to Emissions require traversing or Power Automate flow for copying. |
| Master data and attributes | You can use custom dimensions to dynamically assign text, numeric, and boolean values to activity data rows. However, these values can't reference external tables. For example, an Asset custom dimension can track assets linked to activity data, but it doesn't have a direct link to another table. | You can establish structured master data with attributes and connect it to activity data. For example, to track assets linked to activity data, you can create a custom Assets table and add a lookup table to an existing activity data table, referencing the Asset table. This Asset table might include attributes like Serial Number or Location. You can use these attributes further in calculation models. |
| Dynamic values | Custom dimensions' dynamic nature allows you to ingest or enter new values without predefining master data. For example, a food retailer can directly ingest data for Purchased Goods and Services with "Food category = Vegan" without prior categorization in a reference table. This flexibility eases ingestion, but could result in data duplication and inconsistency based on source data quality. | You can expand activity data tables by adding different data type columns, offering a choice between dynamic and structured approaches. The latter requires ensuring dimension values exist in master tables before data ingestion, promoting consistency and structure but reducing simplicity and flexibility. |
| Use in calculation models | Can be used in calculation models to determine the correct emission factor or as variables in formulas. Data type validations need to be taken care of by the users. | Can be used in calculation models to determine the correct emission factor or as variables in formulas. Data type validations are taken care of by the PowerFx expressions editor. |
Summary
You can use custom dimensions to prioritize meaningful insights and avoid excessive customization.
Data model extensions are best used if the following criteria apply:
- You want to prioritize data consistency and structure
- You want to link activity data to master data with attributes
- You have the necessary skills to extend the data model in Dataverse and create custom Power BI reports
Configuring the custom dimensions is available for activity data (including carbon, water, and waste) and emissions data.
Configure custom dimensions in the Sustainability Manager App settings only instead of creating them from the activity or emission record forms.