The Member Directory is the main search feature for your community users. It is accessible to all community users.

TIP: The Member Directory is where you search for people; whereas, the site search is where search for content.

NOTE: The Member Directory search works like most standard searches, so the articles in this section will call out only atypical search behaviors.

Overview

By default, the Member Directory search has two tabs:

• Search - This is the default, primary search that is available to all users.
• Find Anyone (Admin) - This tab is exclusive to Super Admins. It is described below in xxx xxx.
  • This tab allows Super Admins to find users who do not have IsMember permissions. To learn about IsMember permissions and Security Groups, see Understand Security Groups.

Each tab includes several main search fields. Specify a value in one or more fields and click Find Members...

...the results display in the lower part of the page.

Notes

When using the Member Directory to find other users, keep in mind the following:

• Your Higher Logic site is customizable. Therefore, in your site, the search results could be configured to display on a new page rather than in the lower part of the main search page.
• The State/Province field will be enabled only when:

• a Country has been chosen and
• that Country has state/provincial territories (such as in the U.S., Australia, and Canada); in this case, the State/Province field then auto-populates with the appropriate list of territories, ensuring that only a valid territory can be chosen.

Super Admin search

The functionality of the Admin search is identical to the basic search.

• The Find Anyone search tab displays to Super Admins only. If you are a Super Admin, you must be logged in as such in order for this tab to display.
• On this search tab, Super Admins' searches return members and non-members; Super Admins can find any user in the system.

NOTE: If you are logged in as a Super Admin and you initiate an impersonation session, this tab no longer displays. It returns when the impersonation session has ended.

Watch the video

TIP: Check out the Higher Logic Academy Paths page for product- and role-specific videos!

Additional Directories

In addition to the default design of the Member Directory, you can:

• Add custom tabs to your Member Directory search page in order to create a custom search page that is dedicated to a defined group of users, and/or
• License either or both of the optional modules, Experts Directory and Mentor Match, each of which automatically adds its own dedicated Directory (which gets added to the Directory dropdown menu). These directories search for users whose profiles indicate their involvement in the expert/speaker and/or mentoring program.

Unable to find a user

It is possible for user records to not be "found" when a search is run. There are two likely reasons for this:

• The user is not in a Security Group that grants IsMember permissions.
  • Super Admins can search for the user on the Find Anyone (Admin) tab.
• The user has opted to hide their profile from Member Directory searches.

Opt out of Member Directory searches & community rosters

Users can self-manage whether their profile is included in Member Directory searches and community rosters.

The following setting (which defaults to Yes) is managed on the My Account > Privacy Settings page. Each user can toggle this setting to No if they prefer to "hide" their profile.

When a user toggles this setting to No:

• Super Admins: the user is visible in Member Directory searches and on the "community roster" (i.e., a community's Members tab).
• Community Admins: the user is not visible in Member Directory searches but the user is visible on the "community roster" (i.e., a community's Members tab). This "failsafe" ensures that Community Admins can always manage the members of their communities.
• Non-Admin users: the user is not visible in either Member Directory searches or on the "community roster" (i.e., a community's Members tab).

Search field values

All of the search fields accept the standard alphabetic and numeric values.

• The percent symbol ( % ) is a wildcard character

Search results

When your search results display, you can:

• access a user's profile,
• send a message to a user,
• invite a user to become a Contact, and
• export the results to a .CSV file or Excel (.XLS) file and save a copy.

See Connect with Other Users and Export Search Results to learn more about these actions.

Related articles

• See Experts Directory to learn about using this optional module to create a directory that is dedicated to event speakers and subject-matter experts, based on the optional Expert Profile.
• See Search for Mentors and Mentees to learn about the dedicated Mentor Directory.