In August and September we rolled out major updates to our Microsoft 365 Sync, including a new priority sync queue and sync performance improvements.

At the same time, we also started work on one of our most highly requested features: Custom Fields! Coming soon to a OneDirectory near you 🔥🔥🔥

As always, we’ve fixed bugs and made numerous behind-the-scenes improvements. Here are some of the key updates:

✂️ Removed the thin progress bar that appeared at the top of the screen on every page load, as it added visual noise without providing meaningful value

🛠️ In Settings, Fields has been renamed to Fields & Structure. Organizational Structure fields are now displayed at the top, where you can add and manage organizational units. Profile fields are listed below them, now in alphabetical order instead of categories, making it easier to find the field you're looking for.

🎯 You can now easily enter additional custom Skills and Interests with a new tag editing control, which replaces the comma-separated list

🔄 The field settings pane now loads asynchronously, to ensure you're always seeing the latest field changes (e.g. if multiple admins are editing fields at the same time)

🏷️ You can now see the internal field name and field type directly in the field settings pane

💡 Added helper text under some of the more complex fields in Settings (such as Synced and Editable, and Edit Permissions) to make them easier to understand

✨ Enhanced the “New organizational unit…” settings pane with clearer help text at the top and more intuitive labeling. Plus icon selection highlighting and various other UI refinements.

💼 ICYMI, two new fields that you can enable in field settings 👉 Employee Type and Employee ID

💯 Enabling the Assistant or Dotted Line Manager fields will override the "Hide people pane" setting, so they show on the profiles

🐛 Your company logo should appear automatically based on your domain name. However, uploading a logo manually wasn’t working, and now it is.

🐛 Resolved an issue where a department and an organizational unit sharing the same name could cause a URL conflict

🐛 Date selectors in profile edit mode now correctly populate January in the month dropdown after clicking the edit pencil

🐛 Organizational unit tiles and header icon now show the icon of the organizational unit and not the generic department icon

We’ve significantly boosted sync performance: syncs are now 2-3x faster across the board, for both automatic and manual updates.

Combined with our new sync priority queue, your Microsoft 365 profile data is now updated in OneDirectory faster than ever.

We've improved manual sync performance with a new priority queue.

Previously, all syncs - scheduled, manual, and trial - shared the same queue, which sometimes caused delays depending on system load ⏳

Now, manual syncs are prioritized and processed immediately, so your syncs will start without delay 👌

You can now enable 💼 Employee Type and #️⃣ Employee ID fields for inclusion on the profiles.

These fields are synced from Microsoft 365 by default, and can be made editable in OneDirectory.

Employee Type and Employee ID are optional (and disabled by default) since you may not wish to display this information on the profiles for all employees to see. However, if you do have this requirement you can now simply enable the fields and they'll work out the box.

👉 Employee Type is for storing and displaying the worker type, for example, Employee or Contractor.

👉 Employee ID is used for storing and displaying the internal employee number or identifier. Perhaps you've used this field to store other generic information about the employee (as we've found many companies do) and in this case you may wish to display this field on the profile.

To enable one or both of these fields, go to Settings > Fields, find them under Job Information, and toggle them to enabled.

In July we released two new features: org chart display options and the ability to add organizational units to OneDirectory. We also completed a huge platform upgrade that's been in the works for months 🚀

Here's some of the other things we improved in July 2025:

📄 A completely redesigned trial registration page. Including new "Continue with Microsoft" sign in option.

✨ Improved field styling across the profile page, with a more compact contact number section and layout tweaks to support upcoming fields

📱 Updated app icons for better support on modern browsers and mobile devices

🖼️ Improvements to the image selector, including smarter upload behavior for office, department, and org unit images

✍ Various UI tweaks to editing controls in profile edit mode

🍪 New cookie banner design across our web properties to make it easier for you to customize your consent preferences

🐛 Fixed a bug with filtering rule tooltips not showing in edit mode (the tooltip when hovering over the "eye" icon in the list view)

Organizational units are here!

Microsoft 365 only lets you group employees by office and department. But most organizations need more flexibility, such as grouping employees by division, branch, business unit, district, or faculty.

So we built organizational units into OneDirectory to let your directory match how your company is actually structured.

This feature has been in limited release with select customers for the past few months, and is now available to you in our Pro plan.

You can add people to org units in whatever way makes sense for your organization. Organizational units appear on profiles, in search results, are directly searchable, are clickable throughout the directory, and appear on the sidebar filters (e.g. view all divisions in one place). Each org unit has its own homepage with a unique URL, description, and background.

How to enable organizational units in OneDirectory

Here's how to enable org units in OneDirectory. First, go to Settings > Fields, and under Organizational Structure click "+ Add organizational unit"

1. Enter the display name of your org unit in singular form (e.g. Division)
2. Choose an icon that best represents this org unit
3. Choose if it's Synced with Microsoft 365 or Editable in OneDirectory. Currently, "Editable in OneDirectory" is default - chat to our team if you need it synced to an existing field in Microsoft 365.
4. Set the field's edit permissions
5. Click Add

Now, when you enter Edit Mode in the directory, you’ll see the new org unit section in the left sidebar. Click it, and you can add your master list of organizational units.

For example, if you’ve defined an org unit called Division, this is where you’ll add all your company’s divisions. Once they’re added, those divisions will appear in the Division dropdown when editing a profile, making them easy to assign and manage.

Can I sync an org unit to my Microsoft 365 directory extensions?

Yes. If you're already using directory extensions to store your organizational units as metadata against profiles in Entra ID, you can map those to org units in OneDirectory. Please chat to our support team for assistance with this.

We’ve spent the past few months working behind the scenes on one of the biggest upgrades to OneDirectory since its launch.

We’re excited to share that the entire core of OneDirectory has been upgraded to a faster, more maintainable platform, now fully deployed across all our regions. As part of this work, we restructured the entire codebase and rebuilt our architecture on a more modern foundation.

While this upgrade isn’t something you’ll notice visually, it brings improved stability and performance, and makes it easier for us to deliver new features faster. We also used the opportunity to strengthen our security foundations and further protect your data behind the scenes.

OneDirectory has come a long way since our original Staff Directory web part launched back in 2011. As the OG enterprise employee directory for Microsoft, we're committed to pushing the boundaries of what employee directories can do and continuing to lead this space.

If you're a customer, thanks for being a part of our journey! We’ve got an exciting roadmap ahead with some new things in the works, and we can’t wait to show you what’s coming next.

You can now toggle various elements in the org chart with a brand new Display Options button in the org chart toolbar.

Show or hide photos, offices, departments, assistants, and dotted line managers in the org chart, and swap name and job title fields to prioritize titles.

We plan to add more display options over time 🚀

In June we released our new Dotted Line Manager feature, and there were many improvements and bug fixes along the way:

🟦 Changed the default org chart highlight color from your company's brand color to OneDirectory's system blue, to improve visibility of highlighted paths and cards. Brand-highlighted blocks were fun, but they were hard to see in most cases.

💅 Highlighting a node in the org chart now highlights the expander button too. We also fixed the hover style of the highlighted org chart blocks.

🌉 The org chart blocks are now slightly larger to allow more text without wrapping, for those extra-long names and job titles

💼 The icon in the group by dropdown is now the icon of the selected field

🎭 The "Dotted Line Manager To" heading in the reporting pane was renamed to "Dotted Line Reports." Much simpler.

🆎 Optimized size of avatar text in card view, and in the horizontal org chart layout

🛸 Better hover styles on org chart nodes and office/department tiles

🔨 Org chart toolbar styling updates, and sizing of org chart toolbar dialogs (e.g. download dialog)

➕ Increased the size of the reporting line expander button on the profiles, to make it easier to click (it's a feature that's used a lot)

👁‍🗨 Text contrast improvements in list view for readability

🐛 Corrected the position of the assistants on the org chart in horizontal layout

We’re really excited to announce a brand new feature we've been working on for months. You can now view dotted line managers and dotted line reports directly in the org chart!

OneDirectory already gives you an up-to-date, fully interactive org chart of your entire organization, built automatically from your Microsoft 365 people data. But Microsoft 365 only gives you solid line reporting (via the Manager field) - it doesn't allow for dotted line reporting 😢

By enabling the Dotted Line Manager field on your OneDirectory profiles, you now have a powerful new view within your org chart. Unlike other org chart tools, OneDirectory overlays dotted lines right on top of your existing solid line structure. No separate view, no context switching. Just browse your dotted lines directly within the live org chart, exactly where they belong 😍

Plus, it's interactive. You’ll now see a little dotted tab on the card if someone has dotted line reports, with a quick tooltip showing who their reports are. Click the tab to expand the dotted lines, hover to highlight them, and use the display options in the toolbar to turn dotted lines on or off whenever you need (e.g. for download/printing).

We hope you love this new feature! 💚 Let us know what you think.