Enable multidimensional metrics in Sustainability Program

This article is for:

Sustainability Reporting customers implemented before October 2025

Note: Multidimensional metrics currently have only limited availability.

For Sustainability Reporting workspaces implemented before October 2025, you may be able to apply one custom dimension — such as Location, Gender, or Business goal — to a metric from Sustainability Program. To apply additional dimensions — up to seven, total — to a metric's values, you can enable multidimensional metrics. For example, with one multidimensional metric, you can collect headcount based on gender, ethnicity, and other demographics, across multiple departments at your company's different locations.

Multidimensional metrics can help streamline data collection, with fewer metrics and tasks:

Fewer metrics — Today, your Program may include multiple metrics that collect values for the same intent (such as Headcount) and with the same dimension applied (such as Gender), but with each metric representing another dimension (such as Location). With multidimensional metrics, you can replace those redundant metrics with one metric that includes those multiple dimensions and collects a value for each combination of dimensional values.
Fewer tasks — With additional values in a metric, you can include more values within a single task, to help reduce task fatigue for assignees and approvers within the Workiva Tasks portal.

That said, given the impact to your workspace and reporting cycle, we recommend you consider whether (or when) to enable multidimensional metrics.

Note: If your Program already enables accurate data collection without excessive overhead or redundant metrics, you may not require multidimensional metrics.

Consider whether to enable

If you enable multidimensional metrics, you affect more than just the metrics and tasks in Sustainability Program. To support multidimensional metrics and their values, additional features and files will need updates, including:

Queries that use Sustainability Program as a source
Your Factbook and Data Collection Spreadsheets
Spreadsheets added as part of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) add-on
Custom files added by your company, an advisory partner, the Workiva Marketplace, or elsewhere

Given this impact, we recommend you determine whether multidimensional metrics are necessary, and — if so — when to enable such an update. You'll want to enable multidimensional metrics when it least disrupts your reporting cycle; for example, when you prepare to add a new reporting year and have:

Extra time to set up new multidimensional metrics that consolidate the multiple dimensional values represented by separate metrics in previous reporting years
A clear starting point for data collection with multidimensional metrics, rather than interrupting data providers' in-progress tasks

As you set up a multidimensional metric, ensure it collects values of the same type and overall context:

Same value type — A metric can collect only one value type. For example, continue to collect currency values for Spend and wattage values for Usage in separate metrics, despite both tracking electricity consumption.
Same overall context — Only use dimensions to segment values within the metric's greater context. For quantitative values in particular, the sum of the parts should equal the whole; for example, to divide your company's total headcount by gender, ethnicity, and other demographics.