People Directory
The intelligent People Directory that integrates with Microsoft 365 to help you find and contact your colleagues.
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The intelligent People Directory that integrates with Microsoft 365 to help you find and contact your colleagues.
Last updated
Was this helpful?
The People Directory is the component that allows you to have the list of colleagues and their contact information at your fingertips with just one click. The system is fully synchronized with Azure AD, Microsoft's database. Each time the component synchronizes with the corporate Azure AD, it ensures that colleagues' contacts are always available and continuously and automatically updated.
Thanks to the side filters and the dedicated search box, finding colleagues will be even easier and more immediate.
This feature is useful both for quickly finding colleagues' contacts and for getting to know and discovering more about those who work with us every day.
Within this component you are able to do all the following actions:
Search for your colleagues with a free-text search and phone number
Search for your colleagues applying filters
Open the detail pane for every single person to view his/her details
Contact quickly your colleagues via phone (if you have a Voip system), mail or Teams
Navigate your company's structure with the use of the Manager field
View related colleagues
Choose from several data sources
If your page is not already in edit mode, click Edit at the top right of the page.
Click on it and, in the web part search box, enter People Directory to quickly find and select the People Directory web part.
You can customize all the following features of our People Directory:
The fields to view inside each box
The fields to view inside the detail pane of each employee
The field names
The manager field
The field for the Other contacts feature
The filters for searches
Quick actions
See below for more information on each of these options.
The layout settings allows you to customize the appearance of your application by adjusting various layout settings.
By opening this first configuration, you will see the following options:
Do you want to hide the background? You can choose to hide or display the webpart background The default setting is “No”. This means that, by default, the webpart is characterized by a white background. If you enable this option, the white card background will be completely removed, allowing the content appear directly on the page. As a result, the webpart will be transparent, showing either the selected background image or the chosen SharePoint page color.
Do you want to hide the background shadow? You can choose whether to show or hide the background shadow. The default setting is “No”. This means that, by default, the webpart is characterized by a subtle depth effect that can make the webpart stand out more against the rest of the page. If you enable this option, the shadow behind the background will be removed, giving the web part a flatter, cleaner look without any depth.
Select the type of background shadow If you decide to set the background shadow, a further configuration will appear and you can select the style from High Contrast, Light, or Dark options.
If you select High contrast, this option creates a strong, bold shadow effect that provides a high level of contrast between the background and the content.
By choosing the Light background shadow, it will create a soft and subtle effect, giving a more delicate and gentle depth to the background.
Finally, the Dark background shadow style provides a darker, more intense effect, adding depth and emphasizing the background even more.
Do you want to hide the title? Here you can select whether to show the webpart title or hide it. If set to visible, the web part title will appear on the left side.
Enter the application title Thanks to this configuration, you can customize the application title. If you keep it blank, SharePoint will show the default title “People directory” at the top left angle of the webpart.
People Directory allows you to quickly find your colleagues. Therefore, it's essential to include People Directory details in this section.
Data source: Select the People Directory data source, which can be either SharePoint or Graph. Since a SharePoint list can contain a maximum of 5,000 items, companies with more than 5,000 employees will be required to use Graph as the data source. For companies with fewer than 5,000 employees, the choice will be the SharePoint list of the People Directory, which is synchronized daily with Azure AD contacts.
Choose the fields to search on: here you can define which fields the user will be able to search by, such as Title, Manager, Country, and more.
Insert the site url where the favorites list is: here insert again the site URL and choose the People directory favorites list. You need to include this list to enable colleagues to add their preferred contacts to a personal favorites list.
Insert the site url where the badge lists are: badge management has been implemented and it is possible to select these lists to view the user's badges. Here it is possible to select these lists to view the user's badges.
For example: https://intranetai.sharepoint.com/sites/Intranet.
Select the Badge categories list.
Select the People badges list.
In this section you need to:
Configure the filters you want to use on your People Directory.
Select the field from the list where the active/is-visible value is stored.
Here you need to configure the filters you want to display within the webpart by clicking on Configure filters.
On the first box you choose the field from your Azure AD you want to show.
On the second box, you type the field custom name for that section.
With the first flag you choose if you want to show that field as a filter.
The second flag you choose if you want to show the filter open by default in the page (open by default means extended).
The filters for searches: it is possible to choose which fields to use to activate the search filters. Filters are not mandatory but are a useful research tool. The Favorites component is set by default in the web part, all other fields are optional.
Select the field from the list where the active/is-visible value is stored: We suggest choosing Active, so you can filter only the active contacts of your People Directory list.
In this section, you need to configure the fields you want to display on the person’s card, as well as decide the number of users to be shown within the webpart and other options.
Open field configuratior: Click on Configure fields and a tab will open
On the first box you choose the field from your Azure AD you want to show.
On the second box, you type the field custom name for that section.
With first flag you choose if you want to show that field in the profile section.
With second flag you choose if you want to show that field in the card details.
Here’s an example of that panel already configured.
Always remember to click Save at the bottom of the page!
When SharePoint is selected as data source, it is possible to choose one or more fields to use for searches. Here you have a drop-down menu showing all the texts fields contained in the People directory list. If no option is selected, searches will be performed on the standard fields: Title, Business Phone, Mobile Phone, Email and User Login Name. If you select one or more fields from the drop-down menu, these will replace the standard fields (they will not be added to them).
Select the property to search for suggestions in profile card: You can choose which field you want to show suggested contacts. We usually use Department or Manager to create a sort of organizational chart, but the choice is entirely based on your preferences. For example, if you select Department or Manager, the people who belong to the same department or have the same manager as the user you searched for will be shown as suggested contacts.
Choose the property to order the contacts: n this section, you can choose the order of the people shown. We suggest you to select Title, so people will be sorted alphabetically, but you can choose to display the contacts from the Azure AD field in the order that you prefer the most.
Choose the number of users to show: you can choose how many people you want to show on the page.
Do you want to show public infos from MyProfile app? you can flag this option if you want to show public infos from My Profile.
Those fields are the same as your Azure AD’s, so you can choose any of them to make visible on the Intranet. Please find here all the screenshots for the configurable features.
The field for the Other contacts feature: this area shows the contacts that have a certain property in common with the selected contact. For example, if you choose to set the Department field for other contacts, the contacts of colleagues who belong to the same department as the person you are looking for will be shown.
Select the property to search for suggestions in the profile card: you can choose which field you want to show suggested contacts. We usually use Department or Manager to create a sort of organizational chart, but the choice is entirely based on your preferences. For example, if you select Department or Manager, the people who belong to the same department or have the same manager as the user you searched for will be shown as suggested contacts.
Choose the property to order the contacts: you can choose the order of the people shown. We suggest you to select Title, so people will be sorted alphabetically, but you can choose to display the contacts from the Azure AD field in the order that you prefer the most.
You can choose how many people you want to show on the page.
Do you want to show public infos from MyProfile app? You can flag this option if you want to show public infos from My Profile.
Thanks to this configuration, you can decide how links behave on contact or profile cards. You can set a URL for the profile image, add a custom link with display text in the details tab, and choose whether links open in the same or a new tab and other options.
Insert the link to open on profile image click: Provide the URL that should open when a user clicks on the profile picture.
Enter text for additional link on details tab: You type the text you want to display to the contacts. For example: Find out more!
Insert the link to the details page: Enter the URL that the additional link in the details tab should point to.
On this section, you can activate a link to a specific content.
First of all, you need to create a new column on the People directory list to insert a content for each employee. It can be a link to a video, to a presentation, to their LinkedIn or whatever you want.
In this case, you need to insert every content individually to each person and the link will appear on the person’s card.
How create a new column in the People directory list?
Navigate to the home page,
click on the site settings wheel at the top right,
select the Site Contents option,
scroll down to see if the list named People directory is available.
Click on the list then click +Add column, choose a text column and then click Next. Then fill in the column for each colleague.
Then you go back to the webpart and:
Enter the link text in the details tab: you can insert a common hyperlink to display on the person’s card. Type the text you want to display on the person’s card.
For example the Organizational Chart.
Insert the link to the Organizational Chart’s page.
Type the text you want to display on the person’s card.
Select the flag if you want to open the contact detail in a new tab.
Do you want to open the contact detail in a new tab? Select the flag on Yes if you want to open the contact detail in a new tab. Deflag it, if you do want it to be opened on the current page.
Enter the text for the unique link in details tab: Here you can insert customized text for the unique link in the details tab. For example: Find out more!
Select the field from the list where the unique link is stored: you select the column you just created. For example: LinkedIn.
Do you want to open the unique link in a new tab? Choose Yes if the unique link should open in a new browser tab, otherwise choose No.
And this is the result:
The Show presence option allows you to show the user's Teams status in his or her card. To activate this option, you just need to select Yes.
You can choose the shortcuts to contact your colleagues:
On the first field, you can choose if you want to show the shortcut to send an e-mail to the person.
On the second field, you can choose if you want to show the shortcut to call the person directly from the Intranet – in that case, you need to have a Voip system!
On the third field, you can choose if you want to show the shortcut to open a Teams chat with the person.
Here you need to select each box with the options below:
Select the image field from the list where the profile picture is stored: select User Principal Name.
Select the mail field from the list where mail addresses are stored: select Mail.
Select the field from the list where the manager is stored: select Manager.
Select the field from the list where the username is stored: User Principal Name.
Select the field from the list where the mobile phone is stored: select Mobile Phone.
Select the field where to take the caller's value: this is an optional section, you should select it only if you have a Voip system.
Here are the two types of sources that you can choose for showing your colleagues' information inside the intranet People Directory:
Azure AD - The data source of the component are the users you have on your Azure Active Directory, which performs a synchronization every evening so that every change made to contacts on Azure AD (any new or deleted users, deleted, new fields filled in, deactivated profiles, etc.) is reported automatically in the intranet.
The users who are synchronized are those who have the Name and Surname fields filled in and who are active in Azure AD.
On the first configuration, the People Directory is set up to synchronize all of your Azure AD. So also the "admin" contacts or users external to the studio are displayed on the intranet. To not display these contacts on the intranet, we have two options:
Manually deactivate the contacts you do not want to view from the intranet: it is an activity that you will then have to remember to do manually when add new contacts to Azure AD that you do not want to view on the intranet. To manually deactivate a contact, take the following steps: - Access the People directory list; - Select the contact you want to deactivate and click on Edit; - Scroll down until you see the Active field; - Remove the flag from Yes; - Save.
Create an Azure group (security group or O365 group) containing only the users that must appear in the People Directory. We will set the synchronization only on that group and not on all Azure AD (recommended solution).
SharePoint list - You can manually create a SharePoint list and insert the contacts you want to show on the People Directory, so you will insert yourself all the information needed such as name, surname, mail, phone etc. This option is not updated automatically, so you must remember to always update the SharePoint list in order to show the current and valid information on your People Directory.
The possibility of defining pre-filters in query strings has been implemented, in order to load the People Directory already filtered for specific values.
To use it, the filters on the right must first be configured. After that, just insert the filter name (internal name, eg: Department) and the value into the query string.
It allows you to filter both multiple values of the same filter and multiple values of different filters.
For example: ?Department=HR&Department=IT&Country=Italy
The query string is added to the URL of the page where the People Directory is located.
You can exclude specific users from the synchronization by using a custom field in the SharePoint list. The field must be of the Yes/No type (default value: No) and have the internal name "IAIPDDisableSync".
To create this field, take the following steps:
Access the People directory list.
Click on the gear icon at the top right and select List settings.
Under the Columns section, select Create column.
Enter the following information about the column: - Column name: IAIPDDisableSync - Column type: Yes/No - Default value: No
This feature is useful for a SharePoint list synchronized with Active Directory (AD) that also allows manually added users. These manually added users will not be removed during the synchronization process.
Manually added users might not exist in Entra ID and therefore won’t have a User Principal Name. The User Principal Name field is a key for managing detail links, such as opening a specific user’s profile through the search component. Therefore, when manually adding a user to the People directory list, it is important to provide a value for this field, such as name.surname.
For example, if you add Marco Rossi to the list and he does not exist in Entra ID, you can type marco.rossi in the User Principal Name field. This ensures the user's detail page is opened correctly.
Explore the advantages of Intranet.ai People Directory by to learn more.
Hover your mouse above or below an existing web part and you'll see a line with a circled +, like this:
Click the Edit properties button on the left of the web part to open the property pane and set options.
Enter the site URL where the People directory list has been installed. For example:
What is personal profile? Discover it by .
The People directory favorites list requires a specific configuration so that users can interact with the list and mark contacts as favorites. To learn how to configure this list, read the . In particular, please refer to the First type of configuration section.
For example:
