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Building your organizational structure

Create custom organizational units in two steps — the unit type under Directory Console → Fields, then your list of units under Structure.

Written by Greg Bennett

Microsoft 365 only groups employees by office and department. With organizational units, OneDirectory lets your directory match how your company is actually structured — by division, branch, business unit, district, faculty, and more.

Setting one up takes two steps in the Directory Console: create the unit type under Fields, then add your list of units under Structure.

Note: Organizational units are available on the Pro plan.

What organizational units do

Once set up, org units appear on profiles and in search results, are directly searchable, are clickable throughout the directory, and show up as sidebar filters (for example, view all divisions in one place). Each org unit also has its own homepage with a unique URL, description, and background.

Step 1: Create the unit type in Fields

The default units are Office (Location Picker) and Department (Team Picker). To add your own:

  1. In the Directory Console sidebar, select Fields.

  2. Under Organizational Structure Fields, click Add org unit field.

  3. Enter the Display Name (Singular) — for example Division, Branch, or District.

  4. Choose an Icon that represents the unit.

  5. Choose whether it’s Synced with Microsoft 365 or Editable in OneDirectory (Editable is the default — contact support if you need it synced to an existing Microsoft 365 field).

  6. Set the Edit Permissions.

  7. Click Add.

Your new unit is listed under Organizational Structure Fields, marked Custom, and a matching profile field is created.

Step 2: Add your list of units in Structure

In the Directory Console sidebar, open Structure. Your new unit now appears there alongside Offices and Departments. Select it and use Add to build your master list, for example all of your company’s divisions.

Once added, those values appear in the dropdown when you set the field on a profile, so they’re easy to assign. See How to add an organizational unit.

Note: A unit with nobody assigned to it appears in the Directory Console but not in your live directory. It shows up once at least one person is assigned to it.

Tip: Already storing units as Microsoft 365 directory extensions in Entra ID? You can map those to OneDirectory org units — contact our support team to set this up.

Related

Understanding Fields and Structure · Enabling & disabling profile fields · How to add an organizational unit

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