OneDirectory Product Updates

It’s been a busy October in the workshop! Alongside the org chart mini map, editable profile URLs, Teams chats and meetings for any group and the new Directory, we shipped plenty of smaller improvements and fixes. Here’s what else we built:

Directory

📱 Tidier layouts on phones. Office, department and other pages sit better on small screens, and people lists show a cleaner one-line view.

🔢 The Skills page now opens with the most common skills first, and you can sort by number of people to see which skills your company has the most of.

🏷️ Tags on the Skills page now match the tags on profiles, with the same shape and hover, and the same goes for other listings like Languages.

🚪 A “Choose a directory” screen appears when you sign in at app.onedirectory.com with access to several directories, so you can get in without knowing your company’s web address.

🗂️ People with no office or department now come last when you group the list, labeled “(No office)”, “(No department)” and so on.

🔤 Smarter initials on avatars without a photo. Names written surname-first or with a suffix in brackets now show the right initials, and titles and accented letters are handled correctly.

👔 Manager now comes before the contact columns, in the list and in the Sort menu.

🧮 Listing pages show a count at the top, e.g. “12 offices”.

Directory Console

🧹 Dropdown fields can now be cleared. Pick “None” to empty a department, org unit, office, country or custom dropdown in the side pane.

📋 Org units now appear as columns in the Synced and Managed Profiles lists.

🎨 Department backgrounds are easier to change. Tiles with a background style show the full color, with Add photo, From URL and Change style buttons in the corner.

📐 Tidier Fields list that fits smaller screens.

✨ What’s New in the Console now shows seven items instead of five (we’ve been shipping too much for five).

🔑 Console links now take you to sign in if you’re signed out, then straight to the page you opened.

Org chart

🎯 Highlight in org chart now lets you pick the chart. If you have more than one, clicking the org chart button on a people list opens a menu of your org charts to choose from.

Sign-in, security and sync

🌐 “Include specific domains only” now covers accounts with no email address, checking them by their sign-in name instead.

🔐 Tighter security checks when an admin connects Microsoft 365.

Fixes

🐛 Fixed an issue that could delay syncs for some directories.

🐛 Listing pages like Languages now only count people visible in the directory.

🐛 Profiles now open smoothly, without the page jumping.

🐛 The page header now clears straight away when you highlight people in the org chart.

Need a Power BI expert before Friday’s board pack? Open Power BI under Skills, click the new Microsoft Teams button, and everyone who knows it is in one group chat.

The Teams button is on every people list in OneDirectory: departments, offices, search results, skills, and custom fields like Industries or Projects. Click it to start a group chat, schedule a meeting, or copy everyone’s email addresses. (Guests and service accounts are left out automatically.)

A few ideas to try 💡

✈️ Heading to Tokyo for a client visit? Find everyone who speaks Japanese and set up a call before you go.

🧯 Fire drill at 2pm? Message the whole Leeds office.

⛑️ Need a first aider? Search “first aid” and reach them all at once.

OneDirectory finds the people, and Teams gets them talking.

And from any profile

Profiles now have an action bar right under the person’s name. Chat, Call, Video and Meet open straight in Microsoft Teams, and Email starts a new message.

👉 Available now for everyone in your directory.

Your directory looks a little different today. The "Everyone" page is now called Directory, and it gives you a new phone-book view for browsing people from A to Z, without running a search. All your old bookmarks will still work.

We’ve also tidied up the sidebar, toolbar, menus and pages throughout the directory, so everything feels cleaner and easier to find.

On your phone

There’s a new alphabet bar that works just like the one in your iPhone contacts: run your thumb down it and fly through the alphabet. Faces show two per row, so you can spot people at a glance.

A few more things you’ll notice

🧭 Redesigned sidebar, with rounded items grouped into three sections: ways to see people, organization structure, and fields.

🔀 Directory switcher at the top of the sidebar, if you belong to more than one directory.

🧰 Tidier toolbar. Count, Group by and Sort sit on the left, with actions and views on the right.

📐 List view fits your screen. On narrower screens it drops lower-priority columns first, so the page never scrolls sideways.

👤 Profile cards fit any screen width and float over a lighter overlay.

📄 Consistent page headers across offices, departments, deals and every other page.

Org charts now have a mini map. It sits in the bottom right corner and shows the whole chart at a glance, with the part you’re viewing outlined in blue.

The outline follows you as you pan, zoom, expand and collapse. Drag it to move around the chart, or click any spot on the map to jump straight there. People you find with Find in chart or Highlight path show in blue on the map too.

👉 Available now in the org chart, for everyone in your directory.

Admins can now set the Profile URL for profiles synced from Microsoft 365, not just those created in OneDirectory. Find it in the Manage tab. Sync won't overwrite your change.

URLs stay put when someone is renamed in M365

Renaming someone in Microsoft 365 no longer changes their profile URL, so links people have shared keep working. URLs only change if an admin changes them.

Every profile gets its own URL

Previously, people with similar sign-in names (like johnsmith@company-one.com and johnsmith@company-two.com) could end up sharing a profile URL. Each profile now gets its own, with later arrivals numbered, like johnsmith-2.

September was a busy one. Alongside multiple org charts, guest sign-in settings, background styles on org units, Profiles and Structure on the overview, bulk show/hide, and a whole bunch of Directory Console improvements, we shipped plenty of smaller improvements and fixes. Here are the highlights:

Directory

🏢 Office and department now show as an icon and name on people cards, with the office photo or department color in place of the grey tags.

✨ Cleaner list pages, with a quieter heading and tighter spacing between the cover, controls and results.

🏳️ New country flags for Tanzania, Syria and Laos.

📏 Long street addresses no longer stretch the offices list.

Directory Console

🖼️ People pickers now show photos, in the dropdown and on the person once picked.

📊 Overview rows now link through to their lists, and tiles show placeholder rows while loading.

📭 Friendlier empty lists. Instead of "No Rows To Show", empty lists now explain what they mean.

✍️ Org charts now record who created them.

📈 Profile Completeness now includes custom org units and mobile numbers.

🔢 Lookup fields now show as Multiselect in the Fields list.

💾 Save and Cancel now follow the Microsoft 365 order (Save first), and Save in the profile grid shows a spinner while saving.

Appearance

🎨 Settings is now called Appearance.

🙈 Hide individual org units from the sidebar, without disabling the field or removing it from profiles.

🔤 Hide the A–Z list from the sidebar.

🔘 Switches now grey out when the underlying field is disabled.

Sign-in, security and sync

🔐 Stronger security across sign-up and sign-in.

👋 We retired the Setup Assistant and gave the Register page a cleaner design.

⚡ Faster syncs. Hire dates now come through with the main Microsoft 365 sync instead of a separate call per person.

Fixes

🐛 Fixed a bug where two people set as each other's manager would freeze the org chart.

🐛 Role assignments now always apply to the exact profile you pick, and a failed assignment now shows an error.

🐛 Fixed the Skills sidebar toggle, which now follows the Display Settings switch only.

🐛 Fixed signing in with Microsoft after starting a trial with an email code, which could create a second account without your roles.

You can now change directory visibility for as many profiles as you like at once, instead of opening them one at a time.

How it works

Synced Profiles and Managed Profiles both have a new checkbox column. Tick the profiles you want and a bar appears with the count and a Show in directory button. Choose Automatic, Yes or No, and it applies to everything you've selected.

A new toolbar 🧰

Both grids now have a toolbar above them with:

• Name search, moved out of the Display Name column header
• An All / Visible / Hidden filter, so you can narrow down your profile list before you start selecting

Good to know

• Your selection survives a search. Search, tick what you need, search again and keep adding to the same selection. Switching tabs clears it.
• Bulk changes behave exactly like single ones. Your filtering rules are re-applied to each profile just as they would be if you changed it on its own.

👉 Bulk visibility is live now in the Console for admins and directory editors.

If your Microsoft 365 tenant includes guests, such as partners, contractors or IT providers, you can now choose whether they can sign in to OneDirectory.

Where to find it

Members & Roles is now called Access, and the new guest policy lives there. Choose from:

• Allow all guests
• Allow guests from specific domains: enter the domains you trust, and we'll suggest the ones your guests actually sign in from
• Don't allow guests

Domains must match exactly, so subdomains need their own entry.

Good to know

• Signing in and appearing in the directory are separate. Whether guests show up in your directory is still controlled by your filtering rules under Data Sources. You can hide a guest from the directory but let them sign in, or the reverse.
• The policy applies to profiles with the type Guest. If you've changed someone's profile type to Person, they can sign in regardless of this setting.
• Blocked guests see a clear explanation, with the option to sign in with their own company account instead.

Until now, your directory had one org chart, built from a single starting point. You can now create as many as you need - one per division, region, or subsidiary - each with its own name and its own link.

Setting them up

In the Console, go to Org Charts, give a chart a name, and choose who it starts from. Everyone reporting up through that person is included. A chart can start from up to three people, for a leadership team or a division with co-leads and no single head.

Each chart gets its own permanent link, so you can send someone straight to the one they need, and

Show in Directory controls whether it's visible to everyone or not. Creating and editing org charts is limited to admins.

Org charts appear in the sidebar as before. With a single chart, Org Chart opens it directly; with several, it opens a page listing them all.

Find people in an org chart 🔍

The org chart toolbar has a new find button. Type a name or job title and the chart collapses to just the people who match, along with the reporting lines down to them, with a count of how many were found.

The main search box now always searches the directory - no more switching between Directory and Org Chart.

Since we released the Directory Console, we've shipped a steady stream of smaller improvements alongside the bigger feature releases. Here's what you might have missed 👇

🙋‍♂️ Directory Editors can now access the Directory Console to view and edit profiles, offices, and org units. They see only the actions relevant to their role; admins still see everything.

📑 View your Microsoft 365 attribute mappings: if you have custom attributes (extensionAttributes) mapped from Microsoft 365 to OneDirectory, you can now see those mappings in Fields.

​⌚ Audit timestamp of when a profile was synced or created. CreatedAt/CreatedBy now shows at the bottom of the side pane when viewing a profile, e.g. "Added from Microsoft Entra ID on 16 March 2021" or if it's a managed profile, who created it and when.

🔑 Disabled fields are now genuinely respected everywhere: API responses, profiles, org chart, custom attributes, contact details. The Manager field is also now disableable.

💫 "Request full sync" button: admins can trigger a full resync themselves, rate-limited to 4/hour. Remember: syncs run every hour automatically.

📊 Field coverage indicators: In Fields you can now see how populated each field is across your org.

👌 A people picker for adding Admins and Directory Editors, replacing the old email textbox

✨ "What's New" on the Console overview, so you can keep up to date with product updates like this one ;)

📥 The Console sidebar can now be collapsed, and we improved the header bar to show the section you're in.

💬 Two new options in the three-dot menu on a profile: "Copy link to profile" and "Show in org chart", which opens the person directly in the live org chart. Copy link works on offices, departments, and org units too.

🏳️ Country flags and org unit thumbnails throughout the grids, plus entity people counts

🚫 Removed "Default" office and department; they now show empty instead of Default (everywhere, not just in the console)