Workiva Support Center

To support data collection for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) or sustainability reporting, you can create and manage a Sustainability Program to track topics to report on, with metrics to collect each reporting year. From the outline, you can organize the Program's topics and group them in related sections.

Add topics and metrics to outline

From the outline of Sustainability Program, you can organize the metrics values you disclose for sustainability topics.

• Topics — which appear in bold in the outline — indicate the specific factors that the Program addresses and can categorize those factors by theme. For example, an Environmental topic may include more granular topics such as Energy and Waste, while a Social topic may include topics like Diversity & inclusion (D&I) and Human rights.
• Metrics enable data collection of values for each topic. For example, a Scope 1 emissions topic may have metrics to collect values to disclose for Stationary combustion, Mobile combustion, and Refrigerants.

To organize your topics and metrics from the outline:

1. From the outline, add the topics to collect values for:
   • To add a top-level topic, click Insert outline item, Topic.
   • To add a topic within another topic, right-click the existing topic, and select Add topic .
2. To enter the topic's name, double-click it, or right-click and select Rename .
3. To add the topic's metrics, either:
   • Select the topic in the outline, and click Insert outline time, Metric.
   • Right-click the topic in the outline, and select Add metric.
   • From the topic, click Add metric.

For information about how to set up a topic's metric, refer to Add metrics to Program topics.

Arrange items in outline

From the outline, you can arrange the hierarchy of the topics and metrics:

• To adjust the position of an item in the outline, select it and click Move up arrow_upward or Move down arrow_downward, or drag it to its new location.
  
  

  Note: Metrics can appear only within topics in the outline.

• To view only the top-level topics in the outline, click Collapse all unfold_less.
• To view only topics in the outline, with no metrics, select Hide metrics visibility.
  
  

  Tip: To return metrics to the outline, select Show metrics.

• To view metrics by both their names and IDs, select Show metrics and Show metric IDs.
  

  Tip: If you select Show metric IDs, you can then search the outline by metric ID.

• To view all items in the outline, click Expand all unfold_more.

Search outline for topic or metric

To find a specific topic or metric in the outline, click Filter , and search by name or — if shown in the outline — metric ID.

Tip: You can also search for topics and metrics from Program overview.

Apply icons to outline items

To help ease scanning and quickly identify the context of items in a Program's outline, apply icons to specific sections or topics:

• To apply an icon, right-click the outline item, select Add icon or Update icon , then choose the icon to apply.
  
• To remove an icon from an item, right-click the outline item, and select Remove icon .
  
  

Rename an outline item

To edit the name of a Program item:

1. From the outline, double-click the item, or right-click and select Rename .
2. Enter the item's new name.

Note: You can't rename the Program overview item in the outline.

Delete a topic or metric

If you no longer need a topic or metric, you can remove it from the Program. 

Note: You can't remove Program overview from the outline.

• When you delete a topic, you also delete its metrics, including any values and supporting material collected.
• When you delete a metric, you also delete any values and supporting material collected.

To delete a topic or metric:

1. From the outline, right-click the topic or metric, and select Remove .
2. Click Remove.