Data Residency
Sensei IQ is built entirely inside your Microsoft 365 tenant. Your project data stays there: Sensei does not port, move, store, or manage your organization's data in any external system. The one exception is the optional Connected Intelligence AI service, described below — it is off by default and is not yet activated for any client environment.
Your Data, Your Tenant
All Sensei IQ data is stored in your organization's Microsoft Dataverse environment, which is part of your Microsoft Power Platform subscription. This means:
- No external databases — Sensei does not operate any servers or storage systems that hold your data
- No data transfers in the base product — project, resource, portfolio, and configuration data never leaves your M365 tenant. The optional Connected Intelligence service is the one exception; see Connected Intelligence (optional) below
- No Sensei access to your data — we recommend clients grant Sensei engineers access to your system so they can assist with deployment and support, but your data is governed entirely by your organization's own Microsoft 365 policies and permissions
Connected Intelligence (optional)
Connected Intelligence is in internal beta and is not yet activated for any client environment. Client activation is expected late 2026. The description below is the data-handling design as it will ship.
Connected Intelligence is an optional AI service that is off by default; when it becomes available and an administrator enables an advisor, invoking that advisor sends an explicit, named set of fields — not your whole project — to a Sensei-managed service, which relays them to a commercial AI provider (currently Anthropic) and returns a suggestion. The suggestion is plain text that the user accepts, edits, or rejects; nothing runs in the background, and nothing is written to Dataverse unless the user accepts and saves.
All Sensei-managed infrastructure for this service runs in US-region Azure (West US).
If your contract requires data to remain within your own tenant, the Sensei-managed option does not meet that requirement. The self-hosted (Bring Your Own Model) option does, and is targeted for early 2027.
For the full data-handling description — what each advisor sends, what the provider may and may not do with it, and how it is logged — see the Connected Intelligence Advisors FAQ.
Compliance Inherited from Microsoft
Because Sensei IQ runs on Microsoft Power Platform and Dataverse, it inherits the compliance certifications, regional data residency commitments, and security controls that Microsoft maintains for those platforms. Your data resides in the same Microsoft datacenter region as your Power Platform environment.
For organizations in regulated industries or government (including GCC tenants), this means Sensei IQ benefits from Microsoft's existing FedRAMP, ISO 27001, SOC 2, and other certifications without requiring separate accreditation of the Sensei solution itself.
Identity & Authentication
Sensei IQ authenticates exclusively against your organization's Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory). There are no separate Sensei user accounts or credentials — access to Sensei IQ is controlled entirely through your existing identity and access management policies.
What Sensei Does Not Do
| Sensei does not… | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Store your data outside your tenant (base product) | Full data sovereignty — your org retains complete control. The optional Connected Intelligence service is the one exception: when an administrator enables it, a scoped set of fields is sent to the AI provider for processing — see Connected Intelligence (optional) |
| Access your project data without your involvement | Sensei may collect aggregate usage metrics (such as record counts) to support product health and client success, but does not access or extract your project, resource, or portfolio data. Where Connected Intelligence is enabled, a Sensei-managed service relays a scoped set of fields only when a user invokes an advisor — never in the background |
| Manage credentials on your behalf | Authentication is handled entirely by Microsoft Entra ID |
| Move data between tenants | Each client's deployment is fully isolated within their own M365 tenant |
For a full inventory of what is deployed into your tenant during installation, see What Gets Installed.