About CommonWatch FOI

Freedom of information software built for police services

CommonWatch FOI is built for the records and access units of police services. It helps them receive, track, review and answer requests under Ontario's Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. It is built on Microsoft Dataverse and installs in the institution's own Microsoft tenant, so requests, records and the audit trail stay under the institution's control.

What it does

• Every channel, one queue. Requests from the portal, email, mail and the counter, entered with their date stamp and acknowledged and assigned in one step.
• The legal clock. 45 business days for requests received from July 1, 2026, skipping weekends and Ontario holidays. A fee estimate stops the clock under s. 45(3.2); payment restarts it and moves the decision date by the stopped days. Third-party notices, time extensions and transfers under s. 18 are recorded with their dates.
• The review desk. Exemption codes as one click, boxes drawn on the original page, and a check that finds withheld words left visible elsewhere. Originals are never changed; an independent renderer rebuilds image-only releases.
• Letters and fees. Approved, versioned templates with merge fields; each stored letter keeps its fingerprint. Fees follow Regulation 823 with a ledger.
• Approval and audit. A different person approves every release, enforced on the server. Every change is an event; the audit trail exports to Excel.
• Retention and disposal. Retention from closing, legal holds and appeals that stop disposal, and two-person disposal that leaves a searchable record.

Who it is for

Police services: the records unit, FOI analysts and the clerks who release occurrence reports, collision reports and other police records. Police exemptions under MFIPPA s. 8 and s. 14 are one click on the review desk, and transfers to the OPP or another service under s. 18 are built in. It runs in the service's own Microsoft tenant, with Canadian hosting and the service's own security controls.

Get started

Read more at commonwatch.ca. Install CommonWatch FOI from Microsoft AppSource, then read the installation and evaluation guide. For a demonstration, contact hello@tworiversdigital.ca.

Two Rivers Digital Inc. is an Indigenous- and women-owned Microsoft partner in Winnipeg, Treaty 1 territory.