Public documentation (Tier 1)Approved
OCRS glossary and canonical terminology
The approved OCRS vocabulary: what each term means, what it must not be confused with, which wording is withdrawn, and the verified difference between platform availability, census updates, submissions, notifications, delivery and retries.
- Document version
- 1.0
- Last updated
- 2026-09-08
- Document owner
- OWNER INPUT REQUIRED — DOCUMENT GOVERNANCE
- Applies to
- OCRS 2.4.0 (multi-tenant hosted edition)
- Status
- Approved
- Audience
- Procurement teams, State agencies, Counties, Provider organizations, Facilities, Implementation teams, Technical evaluators
- Evidence source
- src/lib/terminology.ts (canonical registers) · app_role enum and src/lib/permission-matrix.ts (role registry) · level_of_care enum (facility classifications) · src/lib/obcc/csv-schedule.ts and jurisdictions.reporting_schedule (submission cadence) · report_settings and src/lib/obcc/transmission.ts (notification grouping and retry policy) · scheduler_runs and report_deliveries run history (runtime evidence)
How this glossary is governed
This glossary is the approved OCRS vocabulary. Terminology describes implemented behaviour: every entry is derived from the running application, its configuration and its recorded run history, and no term here asserts a capability the system does not have. Changes are approved by the OCRS Product Owner / Documentation Owner before they appear on the website, in the application, in this documentation set or in the demo.
Note: Wording is reconciled here; data, permissions, the hierarchy and the reporting schedule are unchanged by it. Where a term was previously used loosely, the previous wording is recorded so earlier material can be read against the current vocabulary.
How OCRS is structured
| Level | Sits inside | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Jurisdiction | Top level | The state or governmental authority that receives reporting and sets the reporting schedule, deadline and time zone for the organizations and facilities inside it. |
| Account | Jurisdiction | The contracting and billing entity that holds the OCRS agreement. An account may be a state agency, a county authority, a healthcare network, a provider company, an association or a pilot participant. Tenant separation is enforced at this level. |
| Organization | Account | The operating entity that owns and manages one or more facilities. Organizations see roll-up views of their facilities; they do not themselves report occupancy. |
| Facility | Organization | The individual licensed reporting location. A facility holds licensed capacity, beds and census records, and is the only level at which occupancy is reported. |
Provider is not a separate level of the OCRS hierarchy and not a separate record. It is a classification of an account or organization — a company that operates licensed facilities — and the source of the "Provider Administrator" role label. Where the audience is a provider company, the record in OCRS is still an organization inside an account.
Jurisdiction
Receives reporting
Account
Belongs to one jurisdiction
Organization
Belongs to one account
Facility
Belongs to one organization
Occupancy exists only at the facility level. Every level above a facility reads roll-ups of the facilities beneath it.
Facility, licensed classification and the sector
- "Facility" is the generic platform entity for a licensed reporting location, matching the facilities table. It is used for navigation, counts, permissions and reporting language regardless of the licensed classification of the site.
- The regulated classification of a site is separate structured data held on facilities.level_of_care, and is displayed with its exact licensed name — including where that name contains "Home" rather than "Facility".
- "Home" is never used as a generic synonym for the platform entity. It appears only inside a licensed classification such as Residential Treatment Home, Secure Residential Treatment Home or Adult Foster Home.
- "Residential treatment" is a specific licensed programme category that appears in four of the five stored classifications. It is used when the licensed classification is meant, never as a general description of the sector.
- "Residential care" is the broad sector description for the population OCRS serves, and may be used when describing the market. It is not a facility classification in OCRS, and it is not a synonym for "residential treatment".
| Licensed classification | Displayed as |
|---|---|
| Residential Treatment Home | Exactly as licensed — never renamed |
| Residential Treatment Facility | Exactly as licensed — never renamed |
| Secure Residential Treatment Home | Exactly as licensed — never renamed |
| Secure Residential Treatment Facility | Exactly as licensed — never renamed |
| Adult Foster Home | Exactly as licensed — never renamed |
Terms
| Canonical term | Definition | Used for | Not to be confused with | Approved aliases |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OCRS | The Occupancy and Capacity Reporting System: a hosted, multi-tenant platform in which licensed residential facilities record occupancy and capacity, and authorized jurisdiction recipients receive scheduled reporting derived from those records. | Website, application, documentation, contracts | A licensing system; An electronic health record; A referral or placement marketplace | the platform; the OCRS platform |
| Jurisdiction | The state or governmental authority that receives reporting from the facilities inside it and sets the reporting schedule, reporting deadline and time zone applied to them. | Application, documentation, reporting configuration | Account; Organization | State (where the jurisdiction is a state) |
| Account | The contracting entity that holds the OCRS agreement and inside which tenant separation is enforced. One account contains one or more organizations. | Admin console, contracts, billing, documentation | Organization; Jurisdiction | Customer account; Tenant (technical contexts only) |
| Organization | The operating entity that owns and manages one or more facilities, and sees roll-up views across them. An organization does not itself report occupancy. | Website, application, documentation | Facility; Account; Provider as a hierarchy level | None |
| Provider | A classification of an account or organization that operates licensed facilities, and the source of the Provider Administrator role label. It is not a separate record or a separate level of the hierarchy. | Website audience language, role labels, organization classification | Organization as a hierarchy level; Facility | Provider organization (as an audience description) |
| Facility | An individual licensed reporting location. The facility is the only level at which beds, occupancy and census records exist, and the only level from which a submission originates. | Website, application, navigation, reporting, documentation | Facility classification; Organization | None |
| Facility classification | The regulated licensed category of a facility, stored as structured data and displayed with its exact licensed name: Residential Treatment Home, Residential Treatment Facility, Secure Residential Treatment Home, Secure Residential Treatment Facility or Adult Foster Home. | Registration, facility records, reporting extract, documentation | Facility (the platform entity); Residential care as a sector description | Facility type; Licensed classification |
| Licensed capacity | The number of beds a facility is licensed to operate, recorded on the facility and used as the denominator for capacity reporting. | Facility records, dashboards, reporting extract | Active beds; Available beds | Licensed beds |
| Active bed | A bed that is in service and therefore counts toward reportable capacity. | Bed board, dashboards, reporting extract | Licensed capacity; Available bed | None |
| Occupied bed | An active bed currently filled by a resident. | Bed board, dashboards, reporting extract | Blocked bed | None |
| Available bed | An active bed that is neither occupied nor blocked, and is therefore reportable as open capacity. | Bed board, dashboards, reporting extract | Active bed; Blocked bed | Open capacity |
| Blocked bed | An active bed that cannot currently accept an admission, recorded with a block reason. A blocked bed is not counted as available. | Bed board, dashboards, reporting extract | Occupied bed; Inactive bed | None |
| Census | The occupancy and capacity record for one facility at one point in time, recorded by an authorized facility user. | Application, reporting, documentation | Submission; Census update | None |
| Census snapshot | A stored census record retained exactly as recorded. Snapshots are append-only: a correction is filed as a new record and the original remains retrievable. | Reporting history, audit, documentation | Census update; Submission | None |
| Census update | An authorized facility action that changes current occupancy or capacity information. A census update is saved immediately whenever the user is authorized to use the platform; it is not itself a scheduled reporting submission. | Application, website, documentation, demo | Submission; Immediate census notification | Occupancy update |
| Validation | The rule checks a census must pass before it can be accepted or included in a submission. A single failed rule blocks transmission until it is corrected. | Application, reporting, documentation | Verification (of OCRS itself) | None |
| Submission | The official reporting record OCRS generates for a jurisdiction from accepted census data on the scheduled reporting run. | Application, reporting history, documentation | Census update; Delivery; Roll-up report | Reporting submission |
| Transmission | The act of sending a generated submission or report to a configured destination. | Reporting configuration, delivery history, documentation | Delivery; Acknowledgement | None |
| Delivery | The outcome of a transmission recorded against a destination, with its own status: pending, sent, failed or suppressed. | Delivery history, documentation | Submission; Acknowledgement; Transmission | None |
| Acknowledgement | Confirmation recorded from the receiving destination that a transmitted submission was accepted. An acknowledgement is separate from, and later than, a successful transmission. | Delivery history, documentation | Delivery; Transmission | None |
| Reporting history | The append-only record of census snapshots, submissions, transmissions and delivery outcomes retained for review. | Application, website, documentation | Audit record | None |
| Immediate census notification | An event-driven notification sent when a census is recorded, grouped so that updates arriving inside the configured grouping window produce one notification per burst. It is a notification, not a reporting submission. | Automated Reporting configuration, documentation, demo | Submission; Delivery | Immediate notification |
| Retry | An automatic re-attempt of a failed transmission of an already generated submission. A retry never creates a second authoritative submission. | Reporting configuration, delivery history, documentation | Submission; Correction | None |
| Workspace | The application context an authorized user lands in, determined by their role. A workspace is an interface, not a permission and not an audience. | Website, application, documentation | Role; Audience | None |
| Role | The stored authorization identity that determines what a user may see and do. Roles are held in a separate table and checked by database policy, not by the interface. | Application, documentation, contracts | Workspace; Audience; Job title | None |
| Audience | The type of customer or user being addressed in public material — a facility, a provider organization, a county or regional authority, or a state jurisdiction. An audience is not a role and not a workspace. | Website, sales material | Role; Workspace | Buyer type |
| View As | A Global Administrator capability that renders the application in another role's context for testing, without replacing the administrator's own session or granting that role any additional access. | Admin console, Testing Center, documentation | Role assignment; Delegated access | Role preview |
| Platform availability | When authorized users can sign in and use OCRS. Availability is a property of the hosted service and is never used to describe how often reporting occurs. | Website, documentation | Submission cadence; Uptime commitment | None |
Audience, role and workspace are three different things
- Audience describes the type of customer being addressed in public material.
- Role is the stored authorization identity that decides what a signed-in user may do.
- Workspace is the application context a role lands in.
| Role | Workspace | Scope | Purpose | Restrictions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OCRS Global Administrator | Global Administrator console | Platform | Operates the platform: accounts, organizations, facilities, roles, reporting configuration and verification. | Multi-factor authentication required; Every action written to the audit record |
| State Administrator | State workspace | Jurisdiction | Statewide oversight of licensed facilities, capacity and reporting compliance. | Cannot record a census for a facility; Scoped to its jurisdiction |
| Organization Administrator | Organization workspace | Account / organization | Administers an account's organizations and users, and reviews roll-ups across its facilities. | Scoped to its own account; Does not generate submissions |
| Provider Administrator | Provider workspace | Organization | Multi-facility operational management for a provider organization. | Multi-factor authentication required; Scoped to its organization |
| Facility Administrator | Facility workspace | Facility | Administers a facility, including its beds, users and census records. | Scoped to assigned facilities |
| Facility Manager | Facility workspace | Facility | Maintains beds and records occupancy and capacity for assigned facilities. | Scoped to assigned facilities; No account administration |
| Reporter | Facility workspace | Facility | Records occupancy updates for an assigned facility. | No user administration; No configuration access |
| Read-Only Auditor | Reporting workspace | Account or jurisdiction, as assigned | Reviews append-only reporting history and audit records without changing anything. This is the role that performs compliance review in OCRS. | Read-only: cannot record a census, change beds or administer users; Operates inside the reporting workspace, not a separate workspace |
Note: Compliance review in OCRS is performed by the Read-Only Auditor role inside the reporting workspace. There is no separate Compliance Reviewer role and no separate compliance workspace; earlier material that implied one has been withdrawn.
Cadence: seven separate concepts
OCRS keeps availability, occupancy updates, submissions, notifications, delivery and retries separate, because they happen at different times for different reasons. Every frequency below comes from the running configuration and recorded run history.
| Concept | What it means | Trigger | Verified frequency | Days | Time | Time zone |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Platform availability | When authorized users can sign in and use OCRS. | User sign-in | Continuously available; no scheduled maintenance window is published | Every day | Any time | — |
| Census update | When a facility can change its occupancy and capacity information. | Authorized facility user records a census | Whenever an authorized user chooses; saved immediately on submit | Every day | Any time | — |
| Submission cadence | When OCRS generates the official reporting submission for a jurisdiction. | Scheduled run for the jurisdiction, gated so exactly one submission is produced per reporting day (idempotent run key jurisdiction:cycle:date) | Once daily | Monday–Friday | 8:00 AM Pacific Time | America/Los_Angeles (Pacific Time) |
| Immediate census notification | Event-driven notification raised when a census is recorded. | Census recorded; queued immediately by a database trigger | Per qualifying event, grouped so updates inside a 5-minute window produce one notification | Monday–Friday | Within the reporting window | America/Los_Angeles (Pacific Time) |
| Delivery cadence | When a generated submission or report is transmitted to its configured destinations. | Generation of a submission or roll-up completes, and each configured destination is dispatched | Once per generated submission per destination | Monday–Friday | Immediately after generation | America/Los_Angeles (Pacific Time) |
| Retry policy | How a failed transmission of an already generated submission is re-attempted. | Transmission failure recorded against a destination | Up to 3 attempts with a 5, 15, 45-minute backoff, after which the submission requires manual correction | — | — | America/Los_Angeles (Pacific Time) |
| Acknowledgement | Confirmation recorded from the destination that a transmitted submission was accepted. | Destination confirms acceptance | Per transmission, when the destination confirms | — | — | — |
Note: The OCRS scheduler checks for due work every five minutes. That check is infrastructure, not a reporting cadence: it produces a submission only inside the scheduled reporting window, once per jurisdiction per reporting day.
Scheduled times are held as the IANA identifier America/Los_Angeles rather than a fixed offset, so daylight-saving transitions are handled automatically. Public wording says Pacific Time.
Wording that is no longer used
| Withdrawn wording | Use instead | Why | Remaining valid use | Effective |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24/7 — never used to describe reporting | Platform availability wording, or the verified submission cadence | Availability of the platform was being used to describe how often reporting happens. The submission cadence is once daily on weekdays. | "24/7" remains valid inside the list of support commitments OCRS explicitly does NOT offer (src/lib/support-policy.ts, src/lib/pricing.ts exclusions). | 2026-09-08 |
| Real-time reporting | Current occupancy visibility; or the verified submission cadence | Reporting is not continuous. Occupancy is visible in the platform as soon as it is recorded; the official submission is generated once daily on weekdays. | None | 2026-09-08 |
| 5-minute reporting | Immediate census notification, grouped in a five-minute window | The five-minute interval is the scheduler's dispatch check and the notification grouping window, not a reporting cadence. | The five-minute grouping window may be described for immediate census notifications, where that is the implemented behaviour. | 2026-09-08 |
| Compliance Reviewer | Read-Only Auditor | Not an implemented role, permission bundle or workspace. | None | 2026-09-08 |
| Four workspaces | Role-scoped workspaces, described without a count that omits implemented workspaces | The count omitted the reporting workspace and the platform console, so it understated the implemented surface. | None | 2026-09-08 |
| Home (as a generic platform entity) | Facility | "Home" is part of specific licensed classifications and is not a synonym for the platform entity. | Valid inside licensed classifications: Residential Treatment Home, Secure Residential Treatment Home, Adult Foster Home. | 2026-09-08 |
| PST / PDT as a fixed label | Pacific Time, backed by the America/Los_Angeles identifier in configuration | A fixed abbreviation is wrong for half the year. The IANA identifier is preserved in configuration so transitions are handled correctly. | A time formatter may render the current abbreviation at runtime; the abbreviation is never written into copy. | 2026-09-08 |
Note: A term is only withdrawn where it misdescribes behaviour. Licensed facility classifications keep their exact regulatory names even where those names differ from platform vocabulary.
Version history
This document covers a change-managed subject, so every substantive change is versioned with its effective date and the audience it affects.
| Version | Effective date | What changed | Affected audience |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 2026-09-08 | First published canonical terminology: facility versus licensed classification, organization versus provider, audience versus role versus workspace, and the separated cadence model. | All audiences |