Profiles can be a key element of building community in your Igloo. Every member of your digital workplace has a profile, which can detail their skills, history, contact information, and more. they're the cornerstone of connecting people to people, letting your members find people with similar interests, form communities of practice, and get to know people outside their team. 

In addition, profiles are useful for organizations of every size. Smaller customers make use of them for onboarding, so new employees can easily find who to reach out to. In larger digital workplaces, they offer easy connections to other teams, a look at the reporting structure, and insight into a member's recent activity. In huge organizations this can help connect people across cities, countries, or continents with a comprehensive and easy to use directory. 

Completion

It's not a surprise that the usefulness of profiles is directly proportional to how complete they are. Empty fields don't say anything. Several digital workplaces track profile completion using the Member Export function, and incentivize it as part of their culture. People are encouraged to add notes to their biography and include the best way to reach them, and other personal details. Focusing on profile completion also drives members to engage more deeply with the platform, and a top down approach to this shows investment from leadership in the digital workplace. 

Search

Naturally, everything in member profiles, barring parts restricted by the privacy settings, is searchable. With completed profiles, it's easy to search for people with particular skills, experience, or interests, in order to form social groups or communities of practice. Members can be found based on location, extension, or any other available field. Custom profile fields can also be implemented to suit your needs, and you can contact your Customer Success representative for details. 

Management

The challenge of profiles is managing them long term, however. As your organization grows and changes, that can include large scale changes, and profiles need to scale with it. The Bulk Member Upload function can set members profile fields, making it easy to do a large update for department reorganizations or office moves. Additionally, the active directory sync can add and manage field directly from your AD, letting you maintain your Active Directory as a single source of truth, and rest confident that those fields are being automatically updated in your digital workplace. 

Profiles can transform the way your digital workplace is used, and perform an essential role in connecting your members. 

If you have other questions about profiles, the Igloo platform, workflows, or best practices, you can leave a comment here, or ask a question in the Community area.