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.

People Search just got better 🤩 We've improved the card and face views in search results to make them more useful and easier to navigate.

In card view, each card now includes an office and department label. Photos are slightly larger, text contrast is improved for better readability, and we’ve added new borders and hover styles.

Hovering over a card now shows contact options. You can hover to preview details or click to call or email directly from the search results.

Face view also got a refresh, with office and department labels, improved contrast, clearer separators, and updated hover styles.

Hot off the heels of the new Assistant field, you can now add a Dotted Line Manager to any profile in OneDirectory!

This new field helps reflect matrixed reporting lines by showing secondary or dotted line managers directly on employee profiles, so reporting relationships are clearer across your organization.

To enable the Dotted Line Manager field:

1. Go to Settings > Fields
2. Under Connections, click the Dotted Line Manager field
3. In the side pane, toggle the field to Enabled
4. Choose who can edit it (Directory Editors or Employees)
5. Click Save

Once enabled, just switch to edit mode on any profile and you’ll see the new Dotted Line Manager field in the Connections pane on the right.

May was a big one with our brand-new Assistants feature! Here's everything else we fixed and improved this month:

🧑 Group by Manager uses the manager's pic in group headings

🗂️ Updated styling of group headings to make it easier to navigate when groups are collapsed

🚦 If you start from a specific person in the org chart, you’ll now see a “Starting from {name}” button at the top. Click it to clear the starting point whenever needed.

📃 Various improvements to Register page

💭 Show support chat during sign up process

🔨 Various updates to the org chart toolbar:

• Changed Collapse/Reset button to just Reset
• Updated styling of the Save (download) dialog
• Implemented "click-away" on the org chart toolbar dialogs
• Fixed a bug with resetting the org chart when in a "Start from here" position
• Initial work for upcoming display options dialog, coming soon! 🎉

🌐 Browser compatibility updates

🧱 Numerous state management improvements in the org chart, giving you a better user experience

Bugs we killed this month:

🐛 Quite embarrassingly, when a country field was set to just "Korea," we were displaying the North Korean flag instead of the South Korean flag 🤦‍♂️ Now we learned that "Korea" usually refers to South Korea in most modern contexts; if someone means North Korea, they typically specify it explicitly. Apologies to our customers with staff and offices in Korea 🙏

🐛 Fixed a bug with the org chart not updating in real-time when updating the Manager field on a profile that was opened directly from the org chart itself

🐛 Fixed a bug with the job title displaying null on the org chart cards if the job title field didn't exist in the data source

We recently rolled out the Assistant field on OneDirectory profiles, and now we’ve taken it a step further: assistants are now visible right on the org chart! 💥

Now there's an easy way for everyone in your organization to see who’s supporting who, whether you’re checking out a profile or exploring the org chart.

In keeping with OneDirectory's focus on seamless navigation, clicking an assistant in the org chart instantly opens their profile, right in place, so you never lose your spot while exploring your organizational structure.

Getting started is easy: head to Settings > Fields, turn on the Assistant field, add a few assistants to profiles, and enjoy the upgraded org chart!

Read more 👉 Assistants Deserve a Special Place in Your Org Chart and Directory

You can now add assistants to any profile in OneDirectory!

This new feature makes it easy for everyone in the company to see who supports who, right on their profile.

To enable the Assistant field, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings > Fields
2. Under Connections, click the Assistant field
3. In the side pane, toggle the field to Enabled
4. Choose who can edit it (Directory Editors or Employees)
5. Click Save

Once enabled, just switch to edit mode on any profile. You’ll see the new Assistant field in the Connections pane on the right, where you can easily add or remove assistants directly on the profile.