The Essentials of Microsoft Sustainability Manager | Part 3: First Steps in Sustainability Manager
Hello everyone once again. In my previous article, I discussed the Sustainability Manager’s tabs (Settings, Data, Analytics) and the tasks performed within these tabs. In this article, I will delve into more detail, starting with the first of these tabs, the Settings tab. As of this article, we will continue with more concrete examples and demonstrations as soon as possible.
The reason I want to dive into the details of the that tab before than the other ones is that it is where the initial tasks that need to be performed in Sustainability Manager are carried out.
Settings tab can be divided into three main sections:
- Organization settings
- Data settings
- App settings
1. Organization Settings
This section, as the name suggests, provides the settings required for creating the organizational structure and company identity. We can divide this page into two sections: Company profile and Region mapping.
a. Company Profile
With entry of information as shown in the example below, the company profile is configured:
The next step is to establish the organizational structure. When creating the organizational structure, the organizational unit types you see below can be made use of. I also want to mention that it is possible to extend organizational unit types by editing related dataverse table in power apps. As the next step, these created units can be hierarchically structured by establishing parent-child relationships with each other.
As the next step, facilities can be created as shown below:
Once these facilities are created, and if latitude and longitude information is also provided, these facilities are positioned on the map. It’s important not to confuse facilities with the organizational units. Facilities cannot be associated with and hierarchically structured within various types of organizational units created; they are kept separately in their own category.
From the ‘Industries’ sub-tab, the market in which the company operates can be selected. Here, there are various primary markets and more detailed subcategories related to these. Industries cannot be customized yet and come as predefined in the system.
Finally, settings related to reporting years are configured under the ‘Reporting years’ sub-tab. Each reporting year consists of periods, which can be a quarter, month, week, or any other specified length of time. Having periods marked as ‘Closed’ prevents the modification or deletion of data for a specific date within that period, as well as the addition of new records for that date. If the status of all periods for a particular year is marked as ‘Closed,’ the entire year will be set as ‘Closed,’ and this will not only affect constraints on record management but also prevent that year from appearing in date filters on the dashboards.
b. Region Mapping
From this section, as the name suggests, country/region-group mapping is configured. For example, it’s possible to group Mexico, Canada, and the USA under a single group called ‘AMERICAS.’ Country-region/group mapping makes reporting and analysis more flexible and is also necessary for some public disclosure organizations.
2. Data Settings
In this section, reference data, greenhouse gases and unit conversions are managed. This page can be divided into three parts as reference data, greenhouse gases and unit groups.
a. Reference Data
First, let’s explain what reference data is. Reference data directly influences how Sustainability Manager calculates and reports on the activity data imported. Data categories such as fuel type, vehicle type, industrial process type, and others are categorized as reference data.
b. Greenhouse Gases
Here, each greenhouse gas is kept along with its categories and GWP factors. You can access to my first article where I explained what GWP factor is. Greenhouse gases are also considered as a category of reference data, and they can be created within the reference data page as well.
Visualize this view feature
Here, I want to point out something I didn’t talk about before, “Visualize this view” button. This button can be found in some pages where data records are available. It automatically generates a Power BI dashboard based on the data at that moment in that specific page. This is a summary mini-dashboard and typically consists of a maximum of 3–4 types of graphs. The aim is to provide the user with summary information via visual perspective.
The generated report may not include accurate aggregations, and thus may not yield the desired results. Since we cannot create new measures here, we have to use what is available. For example, the total sum of GWP factors may not be very meaningful in this case. However, from here, you can learn the total number of greenhouse gas records registered in the system and view their breakdown by categories. If desired, new charts can be added, the types of charts or data they hold can be changed. Charts can be displayed as data tables. Data export for the whole dashboard is also available. With the ‘Save’ button, it can be saved as a pbix file to the desired Power BI workspace.
c. Unit Groups
Finally, let’s take a look at unit conversions. Unit conversions are critical to ensure accurate results in calculations. To better understand the function of unit conversions, let’s provide a small example.
For instance, consider a consumption data entry for the mobile combustion category (which I will explain in more detail in my future articles). The user has used cubic meters as the unit and selected Ethanol as the fuel type. When calculating the emissions for this consumption data, the calculation is performed based on the values within the factor for Ethanol in related factor library. So, if this factor states that 1 gallon of ethanol releases x grams of carbon dioxide, it would use gallons as the base unit. However, the user had selected cubic meters. At this very point, unit conversion comes into play. If a gallon-to-cubic meter unit conversion is defined in the system, the engine performs the conversion in the background and provides an emission result accordingly. As this example illustrates, this section is crucial to avoid incorrect results.
In the images above, you can see that the Volume unit group uses ‘L’ as the base unit. This means that it converts the entered unit to another unit based on liters. When a user enters cubic meters, it first converts it to liters, then further converts these liters to gallons to match the unit in the factor library, and calculates the result accordingly.
3. App Settings
In this section, general system settings, report settings, and Teams integration configurations can be found.
With general system settings, a pop-up guidance window, containing steps to be followed in accurate order in Sustainability Manager, can be activated or deactivated. I will discuss about custom dimension topic in more detail in my later articles so I won’t go into detail here.
With report settings, currency and its scale for the company’s revenue can be configured.
With teams chat settings, integration between Sustainabiliy Manager and Teams is established and configurations are made. I won’t delve into the technical details of Teams integration in this article since I will publish another article specifically focusing on that topic.
IN CONCLUSION
In this article, I aimed to provide you with a more comprehensive information by breaking down Sustainability Manager’s first tab, Settings, into sub-sections. I have supported my explanations with screenshots to help you visualize the operations better. In summary, the Settings tab is a section where the company for which emissions will be calculated is established virtually within Sustainability Manager and initial settings that need to be configured to avoid errors or incorrect results in calculations are managed. In my next article, I plan to continue with data tab. Until then, take care!
I also recommend you to review the articles of Onat who is my colleague and friend. He’s writing about Sustainability Manager too!
📌Sustainability Management And Microsoft Sustainability Manager — Chapter 1: The Basics
