A common feature request of an Intranet is to display employee birthdays, anniversaries, and call attention to new additions to the organization. Using the different configuration options available in Directory Plus you can automate the display of all three of these scenarios without the need to manually maintain and update lists lists of people.

Anniversaries & New Hires

The display of anniversaries or new hires may be configured using the Hire Date Query option when defining the web part’s directory source. This scenario requires that the employee hire dates exist in Entra ID. Where possible, it is recommended that the native Entra ID “Employee Hire Date” property is used for this data. For scenarios where an organization is syncing from on-premises Active Directory to Entra, an extension property may be used and mapped to Directory Plus using the custom attributes wizard. When mapping a custom attribute as a Hire Date, Directory Plus will discard whatever exists in the native Entra Employee Hire Date property.

Birthdays

The display of employee birthdays may be configured using the Birthday Query option when defining the web part’s directory source. This requires that the employee’s birthday exists in Entra ID. Where possible, it is recommended that the native Entra ID “Birthday” property is used for this data, as Entra provides some additional privacy protections for that property. For scenarios where an organization is syncing from on-premises Active Directory to Entra, an extension property may be used and mapped to Directory Plus using the custom attributes wizard.

NOTE: The Birthday date must be a full date, including a year. When using an extension property, an organization might elect to set all of the years to a common year (eg: 2000), to help ensure privacy around age and birth date. When determining which employees to display, Directory Plus normalizes all birthday dates to the current year, to ensure that the employee’s full birth date or age can never be inadvertently displayed to the user when viewing the web part.

When mapping a custom attribute as a Birthday, Directory Plus will discard whatever exists in the native Entra Birthday property.