The Member Directory is the "people search" tool for your Members. The Member Directory is probably the most convenient way to find other Members and access their profiles.

You can use it to search for community Members by: First Name, Last Name, Company Name, and Email Address. Note that each of these fields will search on as few as one letter!

The other search criteria — City, Country, and State/Province — are slightly more advanced, but still easy to use.

NOTE: This article describes the Member Directory in terms of the default (i.e., "out-of-the-box") Higher Logic site configuration. Keep in mind that, because the Member Directory nomenclature is customizable, the terminology on your site may differ from what's documented here. For example, an admin could rename the Member Directory to "People Finder" or the Find Members button might be relabeled as Go Find!

Watch the video

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

Your profile settings

Your account administrators set the default privacy settings for your profile information. However, you can update the settings in order to control what personal information is visible to others who view your profile. For example, you can toggle the following setting to No if you choose to not have your record be returned in Member Directory searches (i.e., you'd prefer to not be "searchable" by other members).

To learn more about:

Your Profile - see the Manage Your Profile section of the knowledge base.
Your Profile Preferences - see the Privacy Settings section of Manage Your Profile Preferences.

Access Member Directory

The default Higher Logic site configuration includes a Directory option on the main Navigation Bar, as shown in the examples below.

NOTE: If your organization licenses either or both of the optional Experts Directory and Mentor Match modules, your Directory option will probably have a sub-menu dropdown with additional Directory options, as shown in the image on the right, above.

These dedicated directories search for Members whose profiles indicate their involvement in the respective (expert/speaker and/or mentoring) program.

Member Directory searches

The Member Directory has two search tabs:

Search is available to all community Members.
Find Anyone (Admin) displays only for logged-in Super Admins. Refer to Find Anyone (Admin), below.

Search tips & notes

Members will not be returned in searches if:

The Member is not included in an IsMember Security Group.
The Member has opted to hide their profile as described in Your profile settings, above.

The search fields are not case-sensitive. Specify "VIR" or "Vir" or "vir" to find "Virginia."

Any of these fields can be used alone or in conjunction with other fields to find one member or multiple members who have something in common. For example, you could search by:

Last Name to find the one or the handful of Smiths in your community.
City to find the six members who you know live in Sydney or Toronto.

The more criteria you provide, the more focused the search; the fewer/less criteria you provide, the more broad the search. For example:

Broad search - If you search on "jo" in the Last Name field, you get "Johnson," "Johnston," "Joiner," and "Jones" in your results. This scope of searching is ideal when you don't have "precise" information or you want to find multiple members who have a high-level commonality.
Focused search - If you search on "john" in the Last Name field, your results will be limited to "Johnson" and "Johnston" (from this example). This is the better method when you have some "precise" information because it serves up fewer results for you to sift through.

The State/Province field is enabled only when a Country has been chosen AND then it presents only that Country's states/provinces.

Community sites are customizable, so the search results might display in the lower part of the search page (the default setting) or they could display on a new page.

Basic search

This is a simple search that enables you to find users by First Name, Last Name, Company Name, and Email Address. There are also City, Country, and State/Province fields that accommodate region-based searches, rather than personal data.

To search for members:

Specify search criteria in one or more fields.
Click Find Members.

The search results display in the lower part of the page. You can:

Click Back to Search Options to specify more or different criteria if the results are not what you expected.
Click Export to generate and download a .CSV or .XLS version of the list of results. NOTE: The exported file will respect any sorting (such as reverse alphabetical order) that has been applied to the results list. To learn more, see Export Search Results.
Click the dropdown options to sort the list. NOTE: The Name sorting is on last name.

In the results list, you can:

Click a member's name to access their profile.
Click a member's email address to send a non-system message using your default email client.
Click Add as Contact to send an invitation to connect. NOTE: Click Remove Contact to disassociate from an existing Contact. See Connect with Other Users for information on adding and managing your Contacts.
Click Send Message to send a system-based message to the member.

Map icon in addresses

If a user has provided their address information in their profile, a map icon displays next to their address in the search results, as shown below.

NOTE: The map icon does not display if the widget setting Hide Map Icon Based Upon the User's Primary Address? is set to Yes.

You can click the icon to open Google Maps in a new tab with the map centered on and pointing to the address.

Privacy settings

This feature respects privacy and display settings.

For example, if a user has hidden their street address (Address Lines = Only Me in their profile) but has not hidden their city, state, and zip (as shown in the Privacy Settings image below), the map will only center on the city; the street address will not be indicated.

Super Admin search

The functionality of the Admin search is identical to the basic search and the tips & notes above apply.

The only difference between the Admin search and the basic search is that, here, Super Admins' searches return members AND non-members; Super Admins can find any user in the system.

IMPORTANT: The Find Anyone search tab is applicable to Super Admins only. Super Admins must be logged in as such in order for this tab to display.

NOTE: If you are logged in as a Super Admin and initiate an impersonation session, this search tab no longer displays; it returns when the impersonation session concludes.

To learn how to create Demographics and make them searchable, see Profile Demographics.
To learn how to limit search results to users whose are within a specified radius of an address, see Directory Radius Search & Higher Logic Interactive Map.

How to Find Other Users