Standards Overview
Standards is a site-scoped module in CalmCompliance that lets you adopt compliance programmes from a central library and track them against a specific site. The module is described as Adopt and track compliance standards at a site.
Two places to work with standards
Users see two main surfaces for standards work:
Standards Library — a browsable repository of compliance programmes and definitions. This is where you find standards to adopt.
Our Standards — the site-level view that lists the standards your site has adopted and tracks their progress or compliance health.
Library definitions versus site adoption
A standard in the library is a reusable definition: a named compliance programme with a version, a discipline, a description, and a set of requirements. The library holds the master copy. When a site needs to meet that programme, it adopts the standard. Adoption creates a site-level instance that is configured for that site’s people, locations, and evidence.
Requirements inside a standard can be either trackable or non-trackable. Trackable requirements are the measurable items that carry evidence slots, role assignments, and attestation intervals. Non-trackable requirements act as section headers or grouping rows and do not participate in compliance scoring or evidence tracking.
Status labels you will see
Standards move through different states depending on whether you are looking at the library or the site view.
Library card statuses
On the Standards Library page, cards show one of these footers:
Adopting — the site has started adopting this standard but has not yet activated it.
Active — the standard is adopted and live at the site.
Draft — the standard definition is still in draft and not yet available for adoption.
Not Adopted · Mandatory — the site has not adopted it, but organisation policy marks it as mandatory.
Not Adopted · Recommended — the site has not adopted it, but organisation policy recommends it.
Site-level lifecycle states
The Our Standards page groups your adoptions into Needs Attention, Adopting, and Active sections (empty sections are omitted) and lists each adoption as a row. The states below describe those rows.
Adopting — the standard is being set up for the site. Requirements may show adoption progress labels such as Not Started, In Progress, or Ready.
Active — the standard is fully configured and tracking compliance. The summary strip shows Adopted Standards, Compliant Requirements, and Obligation Gaps. Rows show compliance or setup progress, and active rows carry a Green, Amber, or Red health colour.
Archived — the standard is no longer actively tracked at the site but remains in the record for audit purposes.
When a site has not adopted a standard at all, it simply does not appear in the Our Standards list.
Related standard definitions can be grouped into an ordered series that a site adopts level by level, such as Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. On Our Standards, each series appears as one expandable row showing the highest level the site has achieved. How standards series work covers series adoption and achievement in detail.
Compliance health and RAG
Active standards surface a compliance health summary. The Our Standards list and series summaries show the health as Green, Amber, or Red. This gives site managers a quick view of which programmes are meeting their obligations and which need attention.
What is next
Once you understand the model, the next topics to explore are how to adopt a standard for your site, how permissions control who can view or manage standards, and how compliance scoring works in practice.
To walk through the full workflow from adoption to activation and monitoring, see Adopt and manage a standard at a site.
For a quick-start guide covering the same workflow, see Set up and manage compliance standards.