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Searching for people

People Directory allows you to search for people in your organisation.

To make a search, type your query into the search bar at the top of web part, then click the magnifying glass or press Enter.

To clear a search, click the cross icon in the search bar.

Searches check against all of the following SharePoint user properties:

  • Username
  • FirstName
  • LastName
  • PreferredName
  • WorkEmail
  • WorkPhone
  • JobTitle
  • Skills
  • Department
  • OfficeNumber

To search on a single property, enter the property name with a colon followed by your search query.

E.g. to return all people from a specific department:

Department:"Marketing"

People Directory supports Keyword Query Language (KQL) and FAST Query Language (FQL) syntax for building more complex searches. For more information and examples, see Advanced searching.

Alphabet filter

People Directory features an alphabet filter which filters results by the first letter of the first name.

The filter works in conjunction with any search. For example, searching "Marketing" and then clicking the letter 'A' will return all results for "Marketing" beginning with 'A'. Enabling the filter first and then making a search will also return the same results.

To enable the filter, click on any one of the row of letters underneath the search bar. The active letter is marked with a blue border.

To disable the filter, click on the currently active letter.

Selecting hash (#) will return results that begin with a numerical value.

Results

Search results are displayed in rows of cards with each card representing a person.

Cards feature a profile photo, details about the person and a row of clickable icons. Hovering over an icon shows a short description of its purpose.

Clicking on a result card shows a person's profile.

Profile

The profile provides more detailed information about a person, such as their contact information, relevant files and teams they are a member of.

Clicking on another person inside the profile window will load their profile. The new profile is added to a breadcrumb trail at the top of the window which can be used to navigate back to previous profiles.

To exit the profile window, click the blue cross in the top right hand corner.

Sections in the profile:

  • Contact - shows contact information for a person including their email address, job title, department and office location.

  • Organization - shows organisational information for a person including anyone they may report to, anyone who may report to them and people most relevant to them. Clicking on a person loads their profile.

  • Files - shows the files most relevant to a person. Files can be filtered by filename using the text box in the top right of the tab.

  • Teams - shows the teams a person is a member of. Clicking the Teams icon will open the team in Microsoft Teams (as long as the user is also a member of the team). Clicking on a team will expand the team to show its members. Clicking on a member loads their profile. Team members can be searched using the search box in the top right of the tab. The results will appear in their respective teams. This search works the same way as the main search feature and supports advanced searching.

  • Groups - shows the groups a person is a member of. This section works in the same way as the Teams section.

Advanced searching

People Directory supports Keyword Query Language (KQL) and FAST Query Language (FQL) syntax for constructing complex search queries.

Examples:

Return people from both the Marketing and Sales departments:

Department:"Marketing" OR Department:"Sales"

Return people in the Marketing department whose first name is John:

Department:"Marketing" AND FirstName:"John"

Exclude everyone in the Marketing department:

-Department:"Marketing"

Though KQL and FQL support the wildcard operator ("*") to enable prefix matching, this is included in People Directory as default behaviour. E.g. searching for "Jo" will return results including Jo, John, Johnson etc.

For more information and examples, see the KQL Documentation and the FQL Documentation.