We're rolling out the biggest Employee Directory update in a long while - version 26.10. It's built around one simple idea: help everyone in your organization find the right person and reach them at the right moment. Here's what's new.
Quick filters at the top of the list. One click narrows the directory down to My department, My team, People I work with or Favorites - no typing, no advanced query needed. People I work with is powered by Microsoft Graph, so it surfaces the colleagues you actually collaborate with most.
Favorites. Mark the people you look up often and get back to them instantly. Your favorites stay with you between sessions.
Search by skills. Looking for someone who knows Power BI, speaks Spanish or has SharePoint experience? Type it in and the directory finds people by the skills in their Entra ID profile, highlighting the matching skills right in the results.
Local time and working hours. Before you ping a colleague in another region, the persona card now shows their local time, how many hours ahead or behind they are, and whether they're currently within working hours. No more "sorry, did I wake you up?".
Availability at a glance. The schedule view shows the person's free/busy alongside your own for today, so you can pick a good moment to talk.
More ways to connect. From a card or its context menu you can now Chat, Call, Email, Copy email or Schedule a meeting - all in one click, next to the Download (vCard) action you already had.
Group your directory. A new Group by option organizes cards - for example by department - for a cleaner overview of a large organization.
Smarter New Employees. The New Employees web part now lets you choose how far back to look for recent hires, for example the last three months.
Faster and leaner under the hood. We modernized the build pipeline and removed a lot of legacy code, so the directory loads faster and ships as a smaller package.
Version 26.10 is available now in the Download Center; the full list of changes is in the changelog. Update to the latest version to get all of this - your license stays valid, and the update takes a few minutes.
As always, we'd love to hear your feedback.