Introduction to Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service

Organizational data is the foundation for Microsoft 365 experiences. Companies use organizational information such as reporting structures, job functions, locations, skills, certifications, and employee attributes to power people discovery, organizational intelligence, workforce analytics, and AI services. Without a centralized foundation, this data often remains fragmented across HR, identity, and business systems, making it difficult to govern and use consistently across Microsoft 365.

Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service lets companies bring organizational data from HR and business systems into Microsoft 365 through a single centralized platform. It helps organizations establish trusted organizational context that can be reused across Microsoft 365 Copilot, Viva apps, organizational analytics, and people experiences.

Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service provides three core capabilities:

1. Ingest organization data from multiple sources through a single unified ingestion point.

2. Improve data quality by detecting, communicating, and helping resolve organizational data issues before the data is served across supported apps.

3. Distribute organizational data for use across Microsoft 365, Copilot, and Viva apps to power a host of Copilot scenarios and people experiences through fine-grained controls that help ensure the right people and apps can access the appropriate data.

Key benefits

Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service helps organizations unlock the full value of their organizational data across Microsoft 365. By making organizational data available to Microsoft 365 services, organizations can:

1. Find people using specific skills, certifications, prior experience, education, reporting relationships, and organizational knowledge.

2. Understand organizational structure and workforce composition through insights into headcount, functions, geographies, employee types, tenure, and reporting hierarchies.

3. Enhance Microsoft 365 Copilot services with richer organizational context that enables more accurate people, expertise, and organizational intelligence scenarios.

4. Enable workforce intelligence and organizational analytics to better understand organizational trends, workforce makeup, and business performance indicators.

5. Measure and personalize Microsoft 365 apps by analyzing adoption, engagement, and impact across organizational dimensions such as business unit, location, role, and function.

Architecture and data flow

The illustration below shows how organizational information ingested into Microsoft 365 Organizational Data service can be used by other Microsoft 365 apps and services.

Related topics

How to get started with Microsoft 365 Organizational Data Service