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What's new in Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability September 2024

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Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability Tech Summit November 2024.

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Important

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

The September 2024 release of Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability includes the following updates. Check back throughout the month for new updates and links to documentation as they become available.

To find what's new in previous months, go to What's new in Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability overview.

To discover our plans for 2024 wave 1 and 2024 wave 2, check out our release plans:

Microsoft Sustainability Manager

This section provides information about release schedules, updates, fixes, and learning resources for Sustainability Manager.

Planned release timeline

This table shows the timeline for when we plan to make the release available for you to update manually for testing purposes. It also shows when we plan to automatically update sandbox and production environments. If you want to update an environment manually, you can update it with the Microsoft Cloud Solution Center, or you can refer to Manage Dynamics 365 apps in the Power Platform documentation.

Important

In general, updates start releasing around the first of the month with a staggered rollout to different countries/regions. Some updates aren't available until later in the month. Occasionally, we might have to delay availability or updates for one or more regions to a future date.

Region Availability planned Automatic sandbox environment updates planned Automatic production environment updates planned
Germany (GER) September 13 September 20 October 4
United Kingdom (UK) September 13 September 20 October 4
Asia Pacific (APAC) September 13 September 20 October 4
India (IND) September 13 September 20 October 4
Australia (OCE) September 13 September 20 October 4
United Arab Emirates (UAE) September 13 September 20 October 4
United States (NAM) September 20 September 27 October 11
Europe (EU) September 20 September 27 October 11

For more information about release cadences, go to Release schedule.

Supported versions

With this release, we support versions of Microsoft Sustainability Manager that are version 2.20 or later. The September release is version 2.23. For more information, including what to do if your environment isn't running a supported version, go to Supported versions.

Updates

This table shows the September 2024 updates for Microsoft Sustainability Manager. We update it with documentation links as they become available.

For information about features that are available in Sustainability Manager Essentials and Premium, go to Microsoft Sustainability Manager plans.

Feature Description of update
What-if analysis What-if analysis is generally available and includes new functionality to support more customizations, longer forecast horizons, and layered forecasts.
Intelligent insights The intelligent insights feature is generally available.
Defra factor 2023 library Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) factor library for 2023 is available.

Note

The structure of the Calculation flow JSON field in the Emissions calculation table has changed. You can review the new structure in the Power Apps portal.

Fixes

This table lists fixes included in this release.

Problem description Resolution
If you mark an org that has child orgs as inactive in an organizational structure, it still shows up in reports. A fix in this release doesn't show the inactive org in reports. Instead it shows the child orgs at the root level, as if they didn't have a parent org unit.
Incremental refreshes fail with an error saying No Datetime fields found, even though date/time fields exist. The cause of this problem was a mismatch between the Power Query name and data connection map names. A fix in this release resolves the problem.
The August 2024 release includes the alternate emissions feature, which allows you to calculate alternate emissions outputs using the same source data. In Sustainability Manager, we adhere to Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol) guidelines, calculating emissions using either location-based or market-based accounting methods. If you don't specify an accounting method, Sustainability Manager defaults to location-based accounting.

Because only scope 2 emissions vary based on the selected accounting method, while scope 1 and scope 3 emissions remain unchanged, emissions dashboards should accurately reflect this distinction. However, due to recent updates to the alternate emissions feature, when you select Market based from the Accounting method dropdown on the Executive dashboard or Emissions insights dashboard, scope 1 and scope 3 emissions don't display.		 Select Location based from the Accounting method dropdown to view your scope 1 and scope 3 emissions. A hotfix in the August release fixes this issue. For more information, go to Calculate emissions for different standards (preview).

Training, videos, and documentation

This section lists new and updated documentation, training, and videos.

Videos

Documentation

Article Description of updates
Forecast business practice changes on your emissions with what-if analysis (preview) Removed preview label and updated article with changes in the generally available version.
Configure emission factors Added Defra factors to emission factor sets table.
Perform deep analysis with intelligent insights Removed preview labels, because the feature is generally available with this release.
What's new in Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability September 2024 New article highlighting features and fixes in this release.

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