Creating & Engaging with Reports

This section aims to cover the main reporting journey interactions, including importing universal materiality assessment results to build your report.

1. Starting a New Report

There are a few different ways to create a report in our platform. By clicking on the New Report button and you'll be greeted by the main ways you can get to a report:

Selecting the first option allows us to browse our different frameworks:

Different frameworks have different setup requirements, the most complex being GRI and SASB as they require materiality assessments. This allows users to define the content of their reports by engaging with a list of topics that map to said content. For more information, visit the Materiality Assessment sections of this guide.

We'll select GRI, and continue our journey there. You'll have to give your report a name and a timeline. The timeline is important, this says what period of time your data is relevant for. After completing this step, you will be met with the following screen:

Users are met with 2 options - assuming a universal materiality assessment has been completed, the first option will allow you to import those results and select your report content based on them.

The second option allows you to effectively complete another materiality assessment in a framework-specific context, seeing topics that apply specifically to GRI only, in this case. The process is effectively identical to the experience of the materiality module. Please check the materiality assessment section of this guide for more information.

By selecting the first option, you will be directed to the following screen:

These are the disclosures that map to the results of your universal materiality assessment. You can browse and drill into the detail, deselecting any content that you do not want to appear in the report.

For most users of all levels of experience, this should be enough for content selection, but for those looking to go a step further, they can click on Make Changes and they will be able to review the topic list, now in a framework specific context. This would produce your universal topic list, translted into the specific framework's topic list:

This is complete optional, and only required for those who know exactly what they are looking for. The screen above is the same process users would go through if they selected to Explore Framework Recommendations, instead starting from scratch as opposed to a populated list.

Once done here, users can progress again to the disclosure selection page, and finally moving past that, land onto report data input.

2. Engaging with Reports

Allow us to look at our data input pages:

This is what a fresh report with no data looks like. The left hand menu is a collapsible browser for framework content and disclosures, allowing users to browse and select what they want to focus on.

When collapsed, the screen focuses on the input fields and the right hand side dialog:

When interacting with disclosures, each field will be formatted as needed, including number and unit fields, selections from dropdowns, and rich text inputs to gather all the necessary data for your report. As mentioned, the right-hand side provides you with all the guidance that the framework provider supplies, as well as seeing any comments added to this disclosure.

You have actions that you can take against each field specifically, like adding comments and tagging people, but at the top toolbar, you can find some actions you can do to multiple fields at once. First is the Omission button, which allows you to not answer a specific disclosure but explain why the data is missing, to show the intention to report despite not having all the data available. You can do external data requests, which allow you to send a link to an external email address which is not a user of the platform and select which fields they will be prompted with.

Finally, you have evidence upload, which allows you to attach any document to a specific field or group of fields, intended to contain information to help validate or explain values provided in the report. This evidence is then included in the final report output to allow readers to download the documents as they find the locations where they have been attached to the report data.

If we have a look at a report with some populated data, we can see the features come to life:

Now, here we can see some progress has been made in this report. The list also tells us where there are disclosures tagged against specific users and allows me to filter the list down to see only any disclosures I have been tagged against.

Tagging notifies that user that a disclosure has been directly assigned to them and allows you to track progress and send reminders. You can tag people by clicking on the category action menu ‘...’ and selecting Tag Management. From here, you can select which disclosures under this category you would like to assign, and you can enter the email of any of your colleagues that have also been enrolled in this account. Tags can also be made individually, as you are interacting with a specific disclosure.

The 'My Tags' filter at the top of the list will limit the items shown to only those which have been assigned to you.

Opening the collaborators menu will show you all tags in the report, access dates, progress against each item, and even the ability to send reminders via the action ‘...’ menu on the right.

3. Customize & Publish

Once you’ve worked your way through the disclosures, you can move forward towards previewing and publishing.

You can add a logo, select a cover image, and pick a layout to give you some quick customization options. You can preview it via the button at the top right. You will be able to download this as an editable Word file, so there is no need to spend too much time on this if you are going to have it edited and redesigned later. On the next page you can choose to add an optional introduction section and control some settings, such as whether to include the blockchain tracking record, a content index which covers every disclosure and what page they are on and whether we include the attached evidence in the final export.

The following page shows you a PDF preview which can take a minute to load as it is rendered.

You can scroll through, and if you are happy, continuing onto the next page allows you to share the report with any email you chose to give them a chance to review it and provide approval. This is optional, and you can just go ahead and publish when you are ready. On this next page, you can download the report as a PDF, Excel or Word file to work with.

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