Create your corporate directory with Office 365

1. The company directory, a tool at the heart of the Digital Workplace

Business directory is a directory that centralizes all public information about the employees of a company. Each employee has a record, summarizing who they are, what they work on, who they work with, and what they do. This information is taken from Microsoft accounts created by IT and from information entered by each user in their personal Dashboard.

Because it centralises information and makes it available to everyone, the company directory has become a must-have for Microsoft SharePoint intranets and the Digital Workplace in general. While the Digital Workplace aims to improve internal communication, promote knowledge sharing and encourage collaboration, the directory helps to meet the first two challenges.

Indeed, it offers many advantages, such as highlighting one's skills, identifying one's colleagues and easily getting in touch with the right person.

However, setting up an Office 365 corporate directory is not an easy project. You have to set up synchronisation with your database, authenticate users with their email address, create a consistent and unified user experience in the Digital Workplace.

This is why Mozzaik has created the "Trombinoscope" component, a Widget to easily create your company directory in Microsoft. In addition to being secure and constantly updated, it comes in several forms to suit all uses: Employee Directory, trombinoscope, organisation chart and personal user profiles.  

1.a. The benefits of the company directory for employees

The company directory provides many benefits to employees:

• The search for an expert or an expertise, thanks to the search by name, department, function, skills ;
• Viewing and editing your profile, to highlight your achievements and skills;
• Access to the profiles of other employees, to better understand the roles and knowledge of each;
• Connect in one click from the profile of other employees, be redirected to the messaging system and start collaborating immediately;
• The visualisation of teams in the form of an organisation chart to better understand the organisation of the company.

1.b. Benefits of the Trombinoscope Web Part for administrators

Mozzaik365's advanced features offer considerable advantages to administrators:

• Management of profiles imported into the directory, to create an account for each new employee, as soon as they arrive at their workstation;
• The choice of fields displayed in the "My Account" section of each user;
• Customisation of the profile editing form ;
• Layout and customisation of the component's branding in your company's colours;
• Advanced settings to adapt the tool to your preferences.

2. How Mozzaik365's business directory works

The power of Mozzaik365's Trombinoscope Web Part lies in its synchronisation with Azure Active Directory and Delve.

📍Definition of Azure Active Directory:
Azure Active Directory, or AD, is a Microsoft cloud-based service that manages identities and access. It is a database including Microsoft credentials, name and license of each employee account. It is used by employees to connect to Microsoft 365 and SaaS applications.
For more information, see the Microsoft documentation on Azure AD

📍Delve definition:
Delve is a Microsoft 365 employee profile application. It allows you to create rich profiles, with a photo of each employee.
For more information, see the Microsoft documentation on Delve.

The Mozzaik365 webpart brings up the data from these two applications, making them available in a nice and easy to use interface:

👉 The list of employees and their accesses are always up to date thanks to the Azure Active Directory ;

👉 The information is complete thanks to Delve ;

👉 The UX design makes the flip chart a practical tool that increases the possibilities of internal collaboration tenfold with Mozzaik365.

The Trombinoscope component has many uses. This is why we propose to discover some of its features in detail.

2.a. Creating and updating your profile

The first time an employee logs into the Digital Workplace, he or she authenticates with his or her Microsoft account. He then finds his profile, as it appears on the trombinoscope for the other employees. They can check and update their information: first and last name, contact details, profile photo, position held, presentation, skills, projects carried out, interests, etc.

2.b. Search for my collaborators

The user can then explore the directory using the advanced search bar. Personalised suggestions help the user to target their request. For example, they can :

• Go directly to the profile page of the person they are looking for.
• Search by function, department, project skills.
• Run a free search on any profile property.

A search will be able to filter all the sales people working in Lille who have been involved in the Microsoft Office project. From this list, it is possible to explore the profile of each employee and to see the organisation chart of their team.

All that remains is to make contact. By clicking on the messaging icon of their choice, the user will be redirected to the company's instant messaging or mailbox.

2.c. Editing your organisation chart profile

Editing the flowchart profile with Delve

The user can click on a button to edit their profile. This action redirects them by default to the Microsoft 365 profile editing form in Delve. In this page, he can only edit the properties he has the permissions to modify. This takes into account the governance settings of your company.

Customised form

There are several reasons why you may not want to use the profile editing form in Delve :

• It is not desirable that your users leave the intranet for this action.
• Access to Delve is limited in your organisation.
• You need a customised editing form.
• Clear processes need to be defined.

To meet all these requirements, we allow you to open a personalised panel form. Directly in your company directory. This can be a PowerApps application, a Microsoft Forms form, or any application/form created by your company.

By combining a form with the capabilities of Power Automate in Microsoft 365, you can quickly build a complete solution for your business!

For example:

1. The user requests the editing of his profile.

2. Some properties are directly modified.

3. Other properties require a priori or a posteriori validation, by the manager or by the competent department depending on the property.

Therefore, many of your departments could benefit from this simple interface in which they will be made aware of your employees' requests.

2.c. Manage profiles that have been uploaded to the corporate directory

Synchronise profiles

Are you in Microsoft 365? Your user profiles are probably already synchronised with your company directory. If this is not the case, it is still possible to set up a synchronisation as part of your project. This will benefit all your Microsoft 365 features.

Choose the profiles displayed

Not all profiles in your company directory are good to display to your employees:

• Service accounts ;
• Users who have left the company ;
• External users...

You can define a custom query to choose which accounts to include or exclude. For example, do not display users whose email contains -old, or -ext.

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Things to remember

In addition to the basic use of the component as a full-featured corporate directory, you will be able to set it up to :

📌Display a summary of the user profile on the homepage of your intranet ;

📌Display the members of a department or team in the entity overview page ;

📌 Manage a search for people by skills.