You can also compare your company's sustainability efforts year after year and with other organizations, providing an overview of sustainability.
Sustainability Insights comes with pre-built themes and messages that can help you get started on creating your own sustainability agent.
Note : Managed agents and template agents are currently only available in English and should be limited to internal use within your organization.
Prerequisites
- Copilot Studio account
- Sources of information on sustainable development progress (e.g., internal documents, website)
- Optional: Link to public sources on sustainable development from other organizations for comparison.
Set up your agent.
Follow these steps to set up your agent based on Sustainability Insights.
- On the Agents page , under Start with an agent template , select Sustainability Insights .
- Update the agent name, description, and instructions for your new agent. You can also change the icon and primary language for your agent. Select Create .
- Replace the default knowledge sources with links to information sources about your organization's sustainability. These sources could include sustainability reports (including multi-year reports), corporate social responsibility portals, or any other relevant information.
- Refine your agent by adding or updating necessary themes and updating notifications as needed within the built-in themes.
- Select Test . Validate the agent's responses against the data contained in the knowledge sources.
- To publish your agent, select Publish .
Use cases
The specific use cases and the questions an agent can solve depend on the knowledge base you use. However, agents are designed to:
- Answer questions about progress and sustainability efforts.
Sample messages include queries such as "What is our total greenhouse gas emission?", "What is our Range 1 emission?", and "Who is our Director of Sustainability?"
- Compare the results year by year.
The queries might include, "What are our greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 compared to 2022?"
- Compare it to other organizations.
Users can also ask questions such as, "How does our Range 1 emissions compare to [another organization]?"
Note : An agent built from this agent template may ask if you want to compare reports between two companies or compare reports by year for a single company. The answer to this question helps the agent differentiate between the second and third use cases. The agent includes built-in quick responses to assist users in answering.
Configure the Compare theme to compare with other organizations.
This agent has a predefined template to compare data between multiple different companies from their respective data sources.
- Set organizational variables in the Conversation Start topic with the names of the companies, such as your company and the company you want to compare or compare to (e.g., a peer or supplier).
Variables: OrganizationName(your company), OrganizationToCompare(company used for comparison purposes)
The agent uses these variables in messages and as part of Generative AI queries to ensure that the data retrieved from data sources is specific to that particular company.
- Configure knowledge sources for both
OrganizationNameandOrganizationToCompare.
Note : For best results, ensure your knowledge sources have overlapping data points and similar information to your organization's sources so the agent can perform an effective comparison.
A three-step model for making comparisons:
- Persistent data retrieval is required for
OrganizationName[CompareQuery1]. - Recyclable data retrieval is required for
OrganizationToCompare[CompareQuery2]. - Mark the retrieved datasets as custom data and perform comparisons between them, returning the results to the user.
Note : This model provides an efficient way to generate comparative results. However, the ability to compare specific data points is only good when the data source is well-provided. If their Scope 1OrganizationToCompare emissions for a specific year are not listed , while others are, then such a comparison will not work.OrganizationName
Example: Query about emissions
For example: Ask about what Microsoft is doing regarding sustainability.
Opportunities for expansion
You can configure this agent with more knowledge bases to answer related queries.
You can also integrate agents with or without data logging systems, including using pre-built connectors provided by the platform.
Tips to improve your understanding of sustainability
If your agent is unable to extract the necessary data points from the tables embedded in the PDF report, try the following steps:
- Use the Microsoft Excel Power Query plugin to extract tables from PDF files.
- Save the tables as CSV files.
- Upload CSV files as an additional source of knowledge.
The values of key performance indicators (KPIs) for sustainability vary from reporting period to reporting period. Please specify the relevant reporting period, such as 2022 or 2023, for the information you need.
You can create a custom topic to specifically answer questions such as the value of sustainability KPIs (e.g., emissions range 1, 2, or 3, or renewable energy consumption). You can use the reporting period as input by following these steps:
1. Configure the Trigger node, which will trigger the topic when one or more trigger phrases closely match the message received from the user. Specify the names of the sustainability KPIs that are likely to be queried.
2. Configure Question nodes to collect user queries and reporting periods.
3. Create a Power Fx formula to extract KPI values for the specified reporting period.
4. Configure the Create Generative Answers node and select relevant knowledge sources. For example, select reports on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) or CSV files containing sustainability KPI information.
Limit
AI-generated content may contain errors, so remember to ensure it is accurate and appropriate. Review the Additional Terms .