Collection Overview

Collection Overview answers one question at a glance: how is data collection going? Open an indicator app and it is the first thing you land on, on the Overview tab, beside Questionnaire and Contributors. It shows completeness, who is contributing, and where the gaps are, all in one place.

It is built for you from the data you collect, and there is nothing to configure. The time window comes from the reporting period you pick in the header, which is shared with the other two tabs; the app derives its periods from its reporting interval, so there is always one to pick. Beyond that you only have a group filter and a Refresh button, and, on the heatmap itself, a View control that sets how fine the columns are.

The headline numbers

Across the top sit three summary cards:

Overall completeness - the share of expected values that have actually been collected, with the filled and expected cell counts behind it.
Active contributors - how many people have entered data, so you can see collection is a shared effort and not resting on one person.
A combined card for what needs attention: how many indicators are Overdue, how many are Indicators at risk (below 50% complete), and when the Last entry was made.

Find the gaps

Below the headline numbers, several panels show where collection needs attention:

Completeness heatmap - a grid of indicators against periods, coloured from well-covered to empty. Filter it by group, search by name, expand or collapse groups, change the column resolution with View, and open it Fullscreen for a busy app.
Coverage by dimension - for indicators broken down by a dimension, bars showing how complete each member is, worst first, so a lagging region or site stands out.
At-risk & overdue - a short table of the least-complete indicators, with how many of their expected values are in.
Submission trend - a chart of how many values have been entered day by day, so you can see whether collection is keeping pace.

Reporting periods

A reporting period names the period you are reporting - for example "Reporting year 2025" - so the collection effort is scoped to one well-defined window. You never create periods by hand: the app knows its reporting interval (chosen when the app is created - calendar year, quarter, month, or a custom start month and length) and derives the timeline of periods from it, into the past and the future alike. Every period is there the moment the app exists.

A derived period starts as a plain calendar entry. It becomes a record the moment you act on it - rename it, submit it for review, approve it, or run a round against it - and keeps its name and window from then on. Renaming works on any open period; the window itself always comes from the interval and cannot be moved or resized.

Changing the interval takes effect from a month you choose, forward: periods before that month keep their windows, and the timeline after it re-tiles at the new rhythm. If the new boundary cuts an old period short, the shortened remainder simply becomes its own (shorter) period. A change that would re-tile the window of a period you have already acted on is refused with the period's name - reopen or delete that period first, or pick a later start.

Collection is never blocked by a missing period. You can enter data for any date at the datapoint's own collection cadence - past or future - without setting anything up first. The only thing that locks a cell is a period that has been submitted for review or approved: every bucket that touches such a window is read-only until the period is reopened.

Reporting periods are managed in the editor. Click Open editor, then open the Reporting periods tab (the calendar icon, the last of the editor's tabs). The Reporting interval card at the top of the list shows the interval history and, for admins and reporting managers, offers Change interval from … and removing the latest change. Below it, the list shows every period with its status badge - a period nobody has acted on is simply open - and the detail panel has two tabs: Configuration (the label) and Status & approval (the sign-off flow below). Deleting is offered on an acted-on period's row while it is still open and not bound to a round; deleting it returns the window to a plain derived period, and the values collected in that window stay.

The period you pick is shared across the app, so whichever one you select in the header is the one every tab shows, and it rides in the page address, so a link you share opens on the same period.

Last year's figure, and carrying it forward

Ovidens puts last year's number where you need it: on the cell itself. Wherever you enter a value, a small clock icon appears; hover it and you see that exact cell's value in the preceding calendar years, most recent first, up to three years back. Only years that actually hold a value are listed, and the icon does not appear at all when there is no history. It reads the same for a single figure and for every cell of a breakdown.

If a figure is unchanged from last year, you can carry it forward. Any empty cell in an open reporting period offers a "carry forward from last year" action that copies the previous window's value across and marks the cell as carried forward. The marker keeps the provenance visible to reviewers, and the carried-forward value is checked by the same rules as a value you type yourself. The action is not offered on a period that has been approved and locked.

Review and approve a reporting period

When collection for a period is finished, you close it with Approve & lock: a locked, versioned record of what you reported. Open the Reporting periods tab in the editor, select the period, and use its Status & approval tab. It states in one line what Approve & lock does (it freezes the period's data and publishes an immutable version), shows the period's status with a plain-language explanation, and lists what still blocks it.

Submit for review (optional) hands the period from collection to review. While a period is in review its values are locked for everybody, administrators included, and only an administrator or a reporting manager of this app can reopen it - so what the reviewer reads is exactly what gets approved. Because it freezes the whole window, submitting is open to the people who collect or govern here and not to the whole workspace: an administrator, a reporting manager of this app, or somebody who holds an assignment on one of this app's open or finished collection rounds. A member who is none of these has entered no figures here and is asked to have an administrator or reporting manager submit the period, or to be assigned to a round. You may submit while a collection round is still open - the panel says so, and says the figures may still change until it closes.
Approve & lock freezes the period. TWO things gate it. First, no collection round bound to the period may still be open: approving freezes the data, so approving mid-collection would freeze the report while people are still answering. The panel names the rounds that are open and the confirm stays disabled until you close them. Second, readiness must be green: every applicable datapoint is filled and every blocking consistency check passes. Until then the button is disabled and the panel lists what still blocks it, by datapoint and by check message. Approving is for an administrator or a reporting manager of this app; a small team can approve straight from open without a separate review step.
If you were the last person to edit the period's figures, the approve dialog says so before you confirm. You may still approve: the warning is there because an assurance review asks whether the person declaring the figures also entered them, and the activity log records on the approval whether the approver was the last editor. Approving through Vera or a connected AI records the same. If your organisation separates entering figures from approving them, ask somebody else to approve.
An outstanding change request never blocks approval. If a reviewer has asked for a change on some answers, the panel says how many and says in words that it does not block: those figures are still editable and the period is still approvable. It is there so you decide knowingly, not so the platform decides for you. These three lines are shown only to the people who govern the app's collection - administrators and its reporting managers - so a collector submitting a period for review sees no warning about an open round; the hard block is on Approve & lock, which only they can do. A period whose rounds have since been deleted keeps its change requests but has no round left to count them off, so the line is absent there.
Approving captures an immutable version of the whole app, so the report can always be reopened exactly as it was approved. In the approve dialog you may optionally expand Add a declaration to record who is declaring the report, their role, and, depending on your reporting framework, the basis and module option - each field explained inline. A declaration is not required and can be added on a later approval, so a one-click approval on a ready period is valid. The approved state shows who approved it and when, a link to that version, and the declaration when present.

An approved period is locked: its cells become read-only in the grid and a banner names the status, so no one can quietly change a figure after it was declared. To make a change, unlock & reopen the period. Reopening is for an administrator or a reporting manager of this app, behind a confirmation, because it unlocks the period for editing and sets aside the approval; the version you approved stays in history, and approving again produces a fresh version and a fresh approval record. Every submit, approval, and reopen is recorded in the audit log with who did it.

Consistency checks

Where a validation rule guards a single value, a consistency check guards a relationship between datapoints, for example that a renewable and a non-renewable energy figure add up to the total. A failing check can block Approve & lock for the period, so checks are what turn "all cells filled" into "the report holds together". See Consistency checks for how to write and read them.

Contributors

Contributors is a tab of its own, beside Overview and Questionnaire. It lists who has been entering data and how active they have been, for the same reporting period. It is the quickest way to see who to thank, or to nudge, as a collection deadline approaches.