Practical Guide-Transform Community Engagement Feedback into Meaningful Insights with Power BI
- Jill Singleton
- Mar 1
- 12 min read
Updated: Mar 2
Last month, I shared some thoughts on using Power BI to boost community engagement and communication in councils. The response was fantastic (thank you!) I received many questions from councils wanting to know the practical 'how-to' steps for implementing these ideas. So, for this month's blog post, I'm providing you with a comprehensive, step-by-step guide that walks you through exactly how to build a community engagement Power BI Report, from preparing your data to publishing it for your community.
I hope you find it useful!
Welcome to the Iamdata Solutions Asset Management Newsletter – March 2026
From raw feedback to trusted, transparent insights
This step-by-step guide outlines how councils can leverage Power BI to improve community engagement, increase transparency, and ensure community feedback informs real decision-making.
Don't worry, you don't need to start big. Many councils begin with a single consultation or engagement dataset and build from there.
Step 1: Start with Purpose, Not Technology
Before building anything in Power BI, be clear on why you're reporting.
A short workshop with key stakeholders works well here. From that discussion, create a simple one-page brief that sets out the purpose of the Community Consultation Power BI Report. Include details such as the main audiences, the top questions it must answer, how often it needs to be updated, and whether it will be internal or public. Councils that do this upfront find their Power BI Reports stay focused and genuinely useful.
Questions to Ask
Who is this report for? (community, executives, Councillors, internal teams)
What questions should it answer?
What decisions should it support?
Common Use Cases
Public transparency reporting
Executive summaries of consultation outcomes
Identifying under-represented communities
Tracking engagement performance over time
Demonstrating how feedback influences funding and delivery
Create a Requirements Document
Starting with a clear requirements document ensures your Power BI report actually serves its intended purpose. This step prevents scope creep and keeps stakeholders aligned from day one.
Schedule a Stakeholder Workshop (1-2 hours)
Invite representatives from the community engagement team, executive team, and IT
Use a shared document or some other brainstorming software (Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard that allows users to create and share digital mind maps, diagrams, flowcharts, wireframes, and other types of visual content). Some other suggestions here: https://www.iamdata.solutions/post/mind-mapping-consider-ditching-the-paper-and-embrace-the-digital
Document Your Audience and Their Needs
Create a simple table that maps each audience to their key questions and decision needs, e.g:
AUDIENCE | KEY QUESTIONS | DECISION TYPE |
Community | Did council listen to my feedback? | Trust & participation |
Executives | What are the main concerns? | Resource allocation |
Councillors | How engaged is my ward? | Policy priorities |
Engagement team | Where are we under-performing? | Strategy adjustment |
Define Success Criteria
Set concrete, measurable goals for your Power BI Report, for example:
Within 3 months, executives can answer 'what did residents tell us', in under 2 minutes
Public can see how feedback influenced the budget within 5 clicks
Team identifies participation gaps within 1 day of consultation closing
Create a One-Page Brief
Your brief should include:
Primary purpose
Target audiences (ranked)
Top 5 questions to answer
Update frequency needed
Sensitivity level (public vs internal)
Tip: One report can have multiple audiences, but clarity of purpose keeps it focused and usable.
Step 2: Understand and Prepare Your Engagement Data
Once the purpose is clear, the next step is understanding and preparing your data. Engagement data often lives in many places, such as online surveys, CRM systems, event registrations, demographic datasets, and sometimes social or campaign tools.
Start by listing what data you have, where it lives, who owns it, and how often it’s updated. Then choose one core dataset to begin with, usually your main survey or consultation extract. Before loading anything into Power BI, spend a bit of time cleaning and standardising the data. Removing duplicates, fixing date formats, trimming extra spaces, and agreeing on consistent suburb or theme names will save you a lot of frustration later.
Tip: Where possible, do this work upstream in SQL, whatever the source system is so your Power BI report stays fast and reliable.
Typical Data Sources
Community engagement data often sits across multiple systems:
Survey tools (online forms, engagement platforms)
CRM (customer request systems)
Event registration or attendance lists
Demographic datasets (ABS or internal GIS layers)
Social media or campaign metrics
Phase 1: Data Discovery (Week 1)
The first week should focus on understanding what data you have, where it lives, and its quality. This reconnaissance prevents nasty surprises later in the project.
Create a Data Inventory
Build a simple tracker with these columns:
SYSTEM NAME
DATA TYPE
OWNER
FORMAT
UPDATE FREQUENCY
ACCESS METHOD
Document Each System
For each system, record:
Connection type (CSV export, API, database connection, etc)
Sample data quality (check for duplicates, blanks, inconsistencies)
Historical availability (how far back does data go?)
Any limitations or restrictions
Identify Your Core Dataset
Start with your main survey/consultation platform. This should contain at least:
Date
Location
Response text
Respondent ID
Phase 2: Data Standardisation (Week 2)
Standardisation is critical for reliable reporting. Inconsistent data will produce misleading insights, so invest the time upfront to get this right.
Create a Data Dictionary
Establish standard field names and formats:
FIELD NAME | TYPE | FORMAT | EXAMPLE |
EngagementID | Text | ENG-YYYY-#### | ENG-2026-0234 |
SubmissionDate | Date | DD/MM/YYYY | 15/01/2026 |
Suburb | Text | Proper Case | Kewarra Beach |
EngagementType | Text | Controlled List | Parks & Recreation |
Sentiment | Text | Positive/Neutral/Negative | Positive |
Standardise Location Data
Create a master suburb list from your GIS data, then use Power Query to map variations:
St Matthew → St Matthew
St. Matthew → St Matthew
st matthew → St Matthew
Saint Matthew → St Matthew
Clean Common Issues in Excel/CSV Before Importing
Address these common data quality issues:
Remove duplicate rows (Data > Remove Duplicates)
Fix date formats (ensure consistency)
Trim extra spaces (=TRIM(A1))
Replace blank cells with ‘Not Specified’
Phase 3: Export Your Data
Once your data is clean and standardised, export it in a format Power BI can easily consume.
For CSV Exports
Save as CSV UTF-8 to preserve special characters
Store in a dedicated folder: C:\PowerBI_Data\Engagement\
Use consistent naming: Engagement_Data_YYYYMMDD.csv
For Database Connections
Ask your IT for a connection to the various databases. (involving IT at the beginning of the project means that they are aware of these requirements).
Document required permissions
Best Practice: Where possible, prepare and clean your data upstream in SQL or source systems so Power BI remains fast, simple, and reliable.
Step 3: Build a Simple and Reliable Data Model
With your data ready, you can move into Power BI and build a simple data model. This doesn’t need to be complicated. A good starting point is one main table that holds your engagement records, supported by a few small lookup tables such as Date, Suburb or Ward, Engagement Type, and Theme.
This structure makes it much easier to analyse trends over time, compare locations, and slice results by different categories. Keeping the model clean and well-structured is far more important than adding lots of visuals at this stage.
Why Data Models Matter
In Power BI, a clean data model matters more than fancy visuals. A well-structured model makes reporting easier, faster, and more accurate.
Step 4: Focus on a Small Set of Meaningful Measures
After the model is in place, create a small set of core measures that answer your key questions. For most councils, this includes total responses received, number of engagement activities, participation rate (if population data is available), simple year-on-year change, and basic sentiment indicators where sentiment has been captured.
Keeping measure names clear and in plain English helps ensure the Power BI Report is accessible to non-technical users and can be shared confidently across the organisation.
Here are a few useful measures that will allow you to build valuable visuals in your Power BI Reports:
Total Responses
Total Responses = COUNTROWS(Fact_Engagement)
Total Engagements
Total Engagements = DISTINCTCOUNT(Fact_Engagement[EngagementID])
Participation Rate
If you have population data, this shows what percentage of your community is engaging (requires population field in Dim_Suburb).
Participation Rate =
DIVIDE(
[Total Responses],
SUM(Dim_Suburb[Population]),
0
) * 100
Response Growth
This shows year-over-year growth in engagement, helping you track improvement over time.
Response Growth =
VAR CurrentPeriod = [Total Responses]
VAR PreviousPeriod =
CALCULATE(
[Total Responses],
DATEADD(Dim_Date[Date], -1, YEAR)
)
RETURN
DIVIDE(CurrentPeriod - PreviousPeriod, PreviousPeriod, 0) * 100
Step 5: Design an Executive-Friendly Summary Page
The first page you build should always be an executive-friendly summary. This page is designed to answer ‘what’s happening right now?’ at a glance.
A few well-designed KPI cards, a simple trend over time, a list of top themes, and one or two filters are usually enough. Maps can be very effective if location data is reliable, but they should be used thoughtfully. If someone can’t understand the page within a few seconds, it’s a sign it may be doing too much.
Using Your Asset Management Plan to Inform and Engage the Community
If your council has built its Asset Management Plan in Power BI, you already have a powerful foundation for community engagement. Much of the information residents want to understand, how money is spent, what level of service they receive, how council measures success, and what’s planned for the future, already exists in your Asset Management reporting.
Power BI provides an ideal opportunity to reuse and repurpose these pages, turning what is often seen as a technical or internal document into clear, visual insights that help residents understand council decisions and priorities.
Below are examples of Asset Management Plan pages that are particularly well suited to being shared (or adapted) for public-facing communication.
Financial Reporting – Where the Money Is Going
The Financial Reporting page helps explain how council plans and prioritises investment in infrastructure over time. By showing long-term forecasts, renewal profiles, and peak investment years in a visual format, residents can clearly see why certain projects are scheduled when they are, and how council is managing asset renewal to reduce risk and avoid future cost spikes. Presenting this information visually through Power BI makes complex financial planning easier to understand and supports transparency around budget decisions.
Levels of Service – What the Community Can Expect
Levels of Service Power BI Report pages are an excellent way to communicate what ‘good service’ actually means in practical terms. These pages translate technical asset standards into outcomes that matter to residents, such as road condition, response times, and maintenance performance. Sharing this information helps set realistic expectations, explains the relationship between funding and service outcomes, and shows how council balances risk, cost, and service quality.
Measuring Our Success – Listening to the Community
Customer satisfaction and performance reporting shows residents that their feedback is being captured and taken seriously. Visualising survey results alongside asset condition or service performance helps tell a clear story about how community perceptions align with actual outcomes. These pages are particularly powerful for demonstrating accountability and closing the feedback loop — showing not just what council does, but how the community feels about it.
Plans for the Future – Preparing for Growth and Change
The Plans for the Future page helps residents understand how council is preparing for population growth, changing demand, and evolving service needs. By visualising population trends, demand drivers, and future planning scenarios, councils can clearly explain why new assets are needed, why priorities may shift, and how long-term planning supports sustainable service delivery. This information is especially valuable for helping the community understand that today’s decisions are made with tomorrow’s needs in mind.
Step 6: Add Deeper Insights Only Where They Add Value
From there, you can add a small number of deeper insight pages if needed. These might explore participation trends over time, differences between suburbs or wards, or how sentiment varies by theme.
The key is to only add pages that support real questions or decisions. More pages and visuals don’t automatically mean more value.
Step 7: Show How Feedback Leads to Action
One of the most powerful ways to build trust both internally and with the community is to show how feedback leads to action. Councils often already track actions in spreadsheets or project systems, and these can be linked back to engagement themes in Power BI.
A simple ‘Our Response’ page that shows what actions are planned, in progress, or delivered goes a long way in demonstrating that community voices are being heard and acted on.
Step 8: Embed Engagement Insights into Microsoft Teams
Internally, many councils get great value from embedding their Power BI reports into Microsoft Teams. This makes engagement insights visible to a wider audience and supports shared discussion and decision-making.
A dedicated Teams channel with the Power BI Report added as a tab allows teams to discuss trends, tag colleagues, and link insights directly to actions. Over time, this helps make data-informed engagement part of everyday business rather than a one-off exercise.
Step 9: Share Insights with the Community Safely
When it comes to sharing insights with the community, it’s important to create a public-safe version of your report. This means removing personal or identifying sensitive information, avoiding very small numbers that could identify individuals, and simplifying the content so it’s easy to understand.
A short ‘How to read this Power BI Report’ page with plain-English explanations can make a big difference to how the report is received. Councils can then choose whether to publish publicly, embed securely, or share via their website or SharePoint, depending on governance and risk considerations.
Public Power BI reports work best when they are easy to interrogate without overwhelming users. Limit slicers to only the most useful filters, such as date range and suburb, and remove complex or internal-only options. Set sensible default selections so users see a meaningful view as soon as the report loads. Where necessary, restrict visual interactions to prevent confusing cross-filtering behaviour.
Publish and Share Safely
Once the public version is ready, publish it to a dedicated workspace designed for external reporting. Keep workspace access limited to staff responsible for managing public content. From there, choose the most appropriate sharing method based on your council’s requirements. This may include fully public access via a web embed, secure access for authenticated users, or embedding the report within a public SharePoint site.
Each option offers different levels of control, so it’s important to understand who will be able to view the data and how widely it can be shared.
Test, Promote, and Maintain
Before launching, test the report on mobile devices to ensure it remains readable and usable on smaller screens. Once live, promote it through your usual communication channels such as your website, social media, and newsletters, and consider supporting materials like a short walkthrough video or quick start guide.
Finally, treat the report as a living document. Schedule regular reviews to confirm data is refreshing correctly, content remains relevant, and privacy safeguards are still appropriate. Including a ‘last updated’ date and a way for users to provide feedback helps maintain trust and demonstrates an ongoing commitment to transparency.
Step 10: Treat Engagement Reporting as a Living Process
Finally, the most successful councils treat engagement reporting as a living, ongoing process. Regular data refreshes, quarterly check-ins on whether the Power BI Report still meets needs and retiring visuals that no longer add value all help keep the report relevant.
Starting small, learning from use, and improving over time is far more effective than trying to build the ‘perfect’ Power BI Report in one go.
Start Small, Build Trust, Improve Over Time
If you are just getting started, remember that one dataset, one summary page, and a few clear metrics are enough to begin. The real value comes from using the insights to inform decisions and communicate openly with your community.
Remember, Start small! You don't need to build everything at once. Many successful councils begin with:
One consultation dataset
One summary page
Three core metrics
Then build from there based on actual use and feedback.
Focus on outcomes. The best dashboard isn't the most complex it's the one that changes decisions and builds trust.
Make it a habit. Power BI works best when it becomes part of your regular rhythm, not just a one-off project.
By following this guide step-by-step, your council can transform community engagement from isolated surveys into a living, trusted feedback loop that informs real outcomes and strengthens the relationship between council and community.
And if you would like support tailoring this approach to your council’s data, systems, and governance requirements, I’m always happy to help!
I have worked on many different projects with my Local Government clients, from designing and developing Power BI Reports, to building SQL Server databases for spatial data, to managing and maintaining GIS and the Asset Management systems. If you'd like to discuss how we might work together, then please email Jill at ➡️ jill.singleton@iamdata.solutions
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