How standards series work
A standards series groups related standard definitions into ordered levels of the same programme, such as Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. Your site adopts the levels in order, and Our Standards reports the highest level the site has achieved.
What a series is
Related standard definitions can share a series: a series name, an order position, and a short label. Together, the definitions form the ordered levels of one programme, so a site can work up from the earliest level to the highest instead of adopting each standard in isolation.
Series can come from Calm programmes and from definitions your organisation authors. Organisation editors set the series fields when writing definitions; for details, see Authoring Standard Definitions.
Standards that are not part of a series are unchanged: they appear as individual cards in the library and individual rows on Our Standards.
One card per series in the library
The Standards Library shows one card per series instead of one card per level. The card shows the number of levels in the series and visual marks for each level's adoption state, so you can see at a glance how far your site has progressed through the programme.
Open the series card and the detail panel provides Level buttons for switching between the series levels. For the library as a whole, see Browse the Standards Library.
Adopting levels in order
A site cannot adopt a later level until every earlier level in the series has a current adoption. This applies whether the earlier level is active or still being set up: any level without a current adoption blocks the next one.
If you try to adopt out of order, a message tells you which earlier level to adopt first, in the form "Adopt Level 1 before this level."
Adopting a series level works the same way as adopting any other standard. For the full flow, see Adopt a standard from the library.
Reading a series on Our Standards
Our Standards groups your site's adoptions into three sections: Needs Attention, Adopting, and Active. Empty sections are omitted.
An adopted series appears as one expandable row. The row shows the series title, a headline such as "Level 1 achieved, working towards Level 2", and a "Level X of Y" progress label with one segment per level.
Expand the row to see its individual levels: the levels your site has adopted, followed by later levels that have no adoption yet, which show Locked and the text Unlocks after the label of the earlier level. For the page in detail, see Standards Dashboards and Site Home.
How achievement works
A level counts as achieved only when its adoption is active, its health is Green or Amber, and every earlier level in the series is also achieved. Red adoptions, adoptions still being set up (Adopting), and archived adoptions do not count as achieved.
"Working towards" is shown only for the next level whose adoption is currently being set up. Series achievement uses the existing Green, Amber, and Red statuses; a series does not introduce a separate grading system. For how those statuses are calculated, see Understanding Compliance in Standards.