employee directory

[matthieu2906]

Hi,

on our intranet (modern sharepoint site) we'd like to have an employee directory.

i showed delve to my management but they don't like the fact that there are all files and other infos showing up as well.

is there a way to have a simple "who's who" ? i checked and found ways to create it with custom pages but not on modern pages...

any advise ? :)

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi @matthieu2906,

There is excellent people and organization information in Office 365, with Contact Cards, Delve, Teams etc., but nothing "out of the box" with SharePoint will meet your needs. A 3rd party web part or custom solution would be in order.

If you are going custom, I think the SharePoint list formatting samples on GitHub are interesting - especially the User Profile Card.

I hope this helps.

Norm

[#3]

Norman is correct...your choices here are build your custom employee directory or use a third party one

[#4]

Are you using Teams?  If you hover over a person and get their contact card, there is an org chart icon - click to bring up the organization tab with a simple org chart.

You can also use /who in the command bar to find out information about a person and find the org chart

[#5]

@teresa baxmeyeryes we start to use Teams but the idea was to have a link to an employee directory on the intranet it self (which is on sharepoint).

Maybe i'm old fashion ;) 

[#6]

@matthieu2906 its not old fashioned to have an employee directory for people to look up information on a central company hub. Sharepoint is supposed to be a collaboration platform, but there is no way to create a dynamic list of colleagues to collaborate with. I find it funny everyone's first suggestion is to use third party tools or build one yourself. Why use Sharepoint then?

[#7]

There is no OOB as everyone mentioned. But, I personally use Saketa employee directory. This is the only app which has better user experience with plenty of customization options. You can take a look at here. 

https://saketa.com/sharepoint-employee-directory/

[#8]

We have deployed the search and refiners PNP wwebpart to provide a custom directory with search. You need to create your own layout to show People information using the handlebars template but it's reasonable easy to follow based on the example. Alternatively look at using Hyperfish as they have an A-Z webpart for the directory.

[#9]

@Alan Marshall Thanks for the suggestions. I tried the Hyperfish approach and unfortunately its built in old classic site and we are using a modern communication site, so they layout is completely different but we'll have to live with it. The mega menu links for example don't translate at all to the old classic site so that's another challenge (links below headers aren't even displayed). I understand the functionality to create the search templates doesn't exist in a modern site yet, as the web parts are all different. Its been a journey understanding two separate platforms for classic and modern and how sometimes they are joined functionally and how sometimes they are not. 

[#10]

@matthieu2906, I know it's an old thread and you're probably sorted by now, but on our intranet I built the employee directory within  Office 365 using our monthly staff list spreadsheet imported into a PowerApps app. We didn't use a delve search for this as at the moment it doesn't hold the info (or completely accurate info). See the images below.

Staff just need to start entering a first name, surname, location, job, business area or cost centre and as they type the list searches and filters. So you could find all staff in Bristol, or all architects, or everyone named Rob.

Staff can access this directly on the intranet or via the app on their smartphone.

If anyone needs more info about the detail of this was built please get in touch.

Rob
Los Gallardos

Employee directoryShowing just staff based in Bristol

[#11]

Hi @RobElliott

That looks great. Do you have the code or package for that?

[#12]

Hey @RobElliott 

Would it be possible to get som more information about the work you did here? sounds very interesting and could be useful for my organization.

[#13]

@RobElliott 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does that not require manual editing when employee changes happen? Or maybe a manual upload once-a-month?

[#14]

@TruSane , the data table links to a spreadsheeet on OneDrive which I have to produce once a month anyway for other reasons. So it's not dynamic.

Rob

[#15]

@matthieu2906  It sounds like your requirement is to see all the employees in a list which as everyone mentioned is not doable. OOTB the best I have come up with is to ditch the requirement to see all the users in a list and just use search to find who you are looking for with a combination of the org chart to navigate through the hierarchy. 

Link to https://<tenantname>.sharepoint.com/sites/Intranet/_layouts/15/search.aspx/people from a quick link with a directory icon and text telling the users to find contact details by searching for who or the job title they are looking for. 

[#16]

@TruSane Check out Powerapps templates when you create new ones, there is one for Employee Directory in there, you can take this link and post it up on your intranet and you can even easily customize it from there. 

This app pulls from the Office365 Users connector which reads from the directory. You can even furthur your search and or gallery by certain attributes even, such as for company, we have our company name for all actual employee's filled in and I filter by that to make sure just employee's show up. 

I use the built in template for Mobile access. And I created my own using Horizontal Galleries that is a link people click, and search and can get details. It's not the prettiest but it works. 

[#17]

@Chris Webb Here is my template for the app. It's super simple really. Just import it in, then under App, put in your company name, assuming you use that attribute in AD, otherwise you'll have to go strip it from the gallery filters on the first screen on both galleries. Anyway, once Company Name is set on the Apps OnStart, make sure to run it after so it sets the variable. Then you can save and link to this App in your intranet. Append the &hidenavbar=true at the end of the App URL to strip the bar etc. 

https://webbtech365-my.sharepoint.com/:u:/g/personal/chriswebb_webbtech_org/EedKP_Yo0eROkpyocplkH8oB... 

Anyway, you can easily tweak this, but you can get the idea how to do it from the App template and make it your own if you want to tweak the looks! 

Anyway, hope this helps some of you, but I think it's a simple easy approach to a quick "Dynamic Employee Directory" with search and minimal information. 

[#18]

Hey Chris
Thank you for a good advice using power app for this.
One question, does this require all users of the employee search to have a power app license?
Our users have E3 and F1 licenses

[#19]

Those licenses work just fine for PowerApps. This is just a built in O365 connector, nothing premium about it.

[#20]

Thank you, @Chris Webb. I appreciate your work on this and your willingness to share it. I will likely end up just taking what you've made here. 

That said, I have a simple bunch who prefer the least amount of info needed in the least amount of clicks so was hoping to stay right on the intranet (which I will look into doing) and forgo (or minimize) the images. So, visually like what is above, but continuously updating like the one you've got there. 

That said, there is no perfect solution and yours comes the closest from what I can tell.