Ability to search through members database in the front end

I’m curious if anyone in the inSpired community or anyone at inSided have found any 3rd party solutions that can help solve this need. Does anyone out there have alternatives that they’ve used?

We just implemented our community and this would be so helpful to have!

I’ve had 3 more requests for this - by far the most passionately asked for feature. The asks are:

1. Search members by username and/or any information contained in their profile fields
2. Allow members to opt-out of the member directory
3. Allow the community team to segment/categorise members using custom categories that make sense for their community. EG by rank, badge earned, a profile field. For my community, that would be by sector - which is a multiple choice question in their profile form.

 Would really appreciate an update on this idea, it’s really important to us now and I’d love to be able to deliver on it for our community.

This is something our team is very interested and has become a large ask for our customer.  Would love this to be implemented sooner than later. Thank you.

I like what has already been proposed for the feature so echoing:

1. Search members by username and/or any information contained in their profile fields
2. Allow members to opt-out of the member directory
3. Have a voluntary option for members to display that they are online and active
4. Allow the community team to segment/categorise members using custom categories that make sense for their community. EG by rank, badge earned, a profile field. For my community, that would be by sector - which is a multiple choice question in their profile form.

Thanks for all your input here! I’d like to dig a little deeper here so hope you can help me out :)

So, a public member directory makes sense if you want your users to connect and in that sense, I understand the basic requirements of being to search on (user)name and other profile fields, and being able to opt-in or -out. 

Being able to search for other users, showing results and viewing another user’s profile is one thing, but what would be the most common use cases after that in terms of networking? In other words, what would you like your users to be able to do/achieve after they found another interesting user?

@Onomatopoeia I’m curious about the third request. Do you mean that you’d like to segment users in Control? If so, what would be some use cases for those segments? Reporting, actions, etc.?

Here’s the problem I face:

Let’s say that you implement the ability for users to search for other users, and browse a list of opted-in community members. That’s great for me and my team, but it doesn’t aid community members who are looking to either:

• Start networking - where they want to be able to find specific types of people. They’ll be wanting to find people from their industry, or who use the same product, or who have a certain skill / experience.
   
• Call others to action - we always ask new members why they joined the community when they register. One of our popular answers is “to help others”. Imagine if a member could filter the directory by people who’ve said that they want to help others out. 

Hope that helps add some context. 

Hey @Sebastian! Here are a few of my thoughts:

I think viewing the user’s profile is sufficient from a networking standpoint. This allows them to view posts the user has shared, their profile info, follow them, send them a message, etc. It would be cool to see some improvements to the user profile page over time to further assist in networking activities like:

• Allow users to optionally display all the public groups they’re a member of in the community on their profile
• Allow users to optionally display all of the past & future events they’ve attended/plan to attend in the community on their profile
• Allow users to optionally add quick links to their professional accounts (like LinkedIn) and social accounts (like Facebook, Insta, etc.)

I know there are already ideas for some of these things in the community and I think they’d be great improvements to an eventual “directory” experience if implemented!

Thanks @Onomatopoeia. So if I’m interpreting correctly, you would like your users to filter the search results or directory based on custom profile fields?

Another thing I’m curious about is the follow-up action: what if a user found someone with a certain skill/experience or wants to help others? Any use cases that would help you out?

Correct!

Another thing I’m curious about is the follow-up action: what if a user found someone with a certain skill/experience or wants to help others? Any use cases that would help you out?

OK I can think of multiple use cases for this:

• A user wants to form a group, or host a networking session. This functionality would enable them to find and contact other opted-in (and I’m going to keep saying that because it’s super important) members who meet their criteria and privately message them.
   
• A user has a question specific to their industry. They can post their question in the community, then use the member directory to find active members who might be able to help them. eg. by filtering by both Industry and Why did you join the Community fields
   
• A member of staff is launching a new research project and wants a group of users to participate in a short discussion about a product concept. They only want people who are really good at using X feature, so they can go to the member directory and filter by members who have earned a badge that is awarded when you share expertise about that feature.

The key calls to action once they find their users would be three things:

1. Follow this member
2. Send a Private Message
3. Mention this member in a new post