A workshop entitled “Tracking and understanding volcanic emissions through cross-disciplinary integration: a textural working group” was held at the Université Blaise Pascal (Clermont-Ferrand, France) on the 6–7 November 2012. This workshop was supported by the European Science Foundation (ESF). The main objective of the workshop was to establish an initial advisory group to begin to define measurements, methods, formats and standards to be applied in the integration of geophysical, physical and textural data collected during volcanic eruptions. This would homogenize procedures to be applied and integrated during both past and ongoing events. The workshop comprised a total of 35 scientists from six countries (France, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland and Iceland). The four main aims were to discuss and define: standards, precision and measurement protocols for textural analysis; identification of textural, field deposit, chemistry and geophysical parameters that can best be measured and combined; the best delivery formats so that data can be shared between and easily used by different groups; and multi-disciplinary sampling and measurement routines currently used and measurement standards applied, by each community. The group agreed that community-wide, cross-disciplinary integration, centred on defining those measurements and formats that can be best combined, is an attainable and key global focus. Consequently, we prepared this paper to present our initial conclusions and recommendations, along with a review of the current state of the art in this field that supported our discussions.