Building a Portal for Secure Data Collection and Reporting Across Municipalities
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DWCNZ 2023
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Municipal Benchmarking Network Canada, or MBNCanada, is a not-for-profit association that supports municipal performance management through the provision of data collection, reporting, and networking programs across Canada. MBNCanada collects 700 performance measures across 36 service areas on an annual basis, and provides reports and data back to the municipalities, it's board, and the general public.
In 2022, MBNCanada launched a project to modernize their portal, previously hosted by the City of Kitchener and dating back to 2004. Microsoft 365 (SharePoint, Teams, and Power BI) and Azure were selected to host the new portal. Azure AD B2B was used to invite in 1,000 guests across the partner municipalities for data entry, reporting, and committee and panel management.
This session focuses on the secure implementation of external sharing in Microsoft 365 at scale, optimization of Azure AD security controls, and the zero-trust security design of the MBNCanada portal itself, which is hosted in Microsoft Azure App Services. Meighan Finlay, Executive Director of MBNCanada, will join us as a co-presenter with Peter Carson, President of Extranet User Manager.
Key takeaways of this session are:
- How to build a data portal, leveraging Power BI and Azure AD to share and collaborate across organizations
- Enable portal members to access Power BI Embedded dashboards and live reporting, while minimizing licensing costs
- Using One-Time Passcode to allow users to sign in seamlessly with their own organizational credentials
- Create a rich online data dictionary with data source notes
Speakers

Peter Carson
Peter Carson, President of Extranet User Manager and a Microsoft MVP, is a recognized expert in Microsoft 365, SharePoint, and Extranet strategies. Read Peter's full bio and check out some of EUM's recent articles on all things Microsoft and Extranet related.

Meighan Finlay
Meighan Finlay, Executive Director of MBNCanada, works closely with the MBNCanada Board, Municipal Leads, and Service Area experts in supporting excellence in municipal service delivery.