West of England Combined Authority

Contributing to the Regional Indicators Report

Three lessons + a quick reference for analysts new to the publishing workflow


These lessons cover the freeze cache — the mechanism that lets five analysts publish a shared book without sharing raw data — the step-by-step workflow for contributing your chapter, and how to read and fix the most common publishing errors.

Work through them in order. Each takes under 15 minutes and includes an interactive exercise to check your understanding.

Lessons

Lesson 1
The Freeze Cache

Why it exists, how the fingerprint check works, and the four files you always commit together.

⏱ ~10 minutes · Quiz included

Lesson 2
Your Workflow

Branch naming, the six-step contribution workflow, what never to commit, and conventional commit messages.

⏱ ~15 minutes · Drag-and-order exercise + quiz

Lesson 3
Diagnosing Failures

The five most common GitHub Actions errors — cause, fix, and a diagnosis challenge to test yourself.

⏱ ~10 minutes · Reveal cards + quiz

Reference

Quick reference · print-friendly
Workflow Cheatsheet

The fingerprint diagram, the four files, the full command sequence, commit types, the error index, and the never-commit list — all on one page.


Source documents: all content is drawn directly from CONTRIBUTING.md and WORKFLOW_LEARNING_GUIDE.md in the project repository. If in doubt, those documents are authoritative.