Google Workspace Directory: What It Shows and Its Limits

Your company already has a Google Workspace directory, whether or not anyone set it up on purpose. Once an admin turns on contact sharing, every user’s name, email and photo show up in Google Contacts, autocomplete in Gmail, and pop up on a card when you hover over someone’s picture. For a 30-person company, that often covers it.

It stops covering it when someone asks “who handles payroll in the Denver office?” and the answer isn’t an email address. This post walks through what the built-in directory shows, who controls each field, and the gaps you’ll hit as the team grows.

Where the Google Workspace directory lives

There’s no separate directory app. The directory shows up inside tools your team already uses. According to Google Workspace Help on turning the Directory on or off, when it’s on, users can find profile information in Google Contacts, addresses autocomplete as they type, and pointing at a profile image opens a card with that person’s details.

Admins switch it on under Directory > Directory settings > Sharing settings > Contact sharing in the Admin console. Two choices there matter:

• Which email addresses to show. All addresses, primary only, secondary and alias only, or only addresses in the primary domain.
• Which profiles to show. Internal users only, shared external contacts only, or both.

Google says changes can take up to 24 hours. Some people never appear at all: suspended and deleted users, anyone you’ve hidden from the Directory in Google Workspace, and personal contacts people added themselves.

What a profile card actually shows

The hover card is the part your team sees most. Google Workspace Help on adding Directory profile information lists what it shows: name, photo, email, phone number, job title and department, desk location (building, floor, section) and links.

The contacts sidebar in Gmail goes one step further. It adds the manager’s email address and a list of reports, which Google builds from each report’s manager email field.

Behind that, admins can fill in job title, manager email, department, cost center, employee ID, employee type and custom attributes. That’s a decent set of fields. The catch is who fills them in.

Who edits what

Here’s the split, from Google Workspace Help on letting users change their profile. If the admin allows it, users can change their name, photo, gender, pronouns and work location, plus a couple of other personal fields. Google’s page is blunt about the rest: “Only an administrator can update a user’s phone number and other contact information.”

Job title, department and manager aren’t on the user-editable list. So when Sam transfers to the sales team, the directory keeps saying “Support” until someone in IT hears about it. That gap is how company directories go stale. The person who knows the information changed can’t fix it, and the person who can fix it doesn’t know.

One more thing to know before you change these settings: if you clear the Pronouns box, Google deletes pronoun information users have set within 48 hours. Turning a field off isn’t the same as hiding it.

Five places it falls short

None of this makes the Google Workspace directory bad. It’s a contact list, and it’s a good one. These are the jobs it wasn’t built for.

1. Reporting lines, one card at a time. You can see one person’s manager and reports. To see how a whole department fits together, you click through people one by one. For anything bigger, see how to make an org chart.
2. Admin-owned data. Titles, departments and managers depend on someone in IT keeping up with every promotion and reorg.
3. Only people with Google accounts. Staff without a Workspace license don’t have a profile. External contacts only appear if an admin adds them as shared contacts, and guest accounts aren’t listed in the Directory in Contacts.
4. Half the company on another system. If part of your org runs on Microsoft 365, Google’s directory only knows about the Google half.
5. Finding people by what they do. It’s built to answer “what’s Priya’s email?” It’s weaker at “who’s on the facilities team in Austin?”, which is the question new hires ask most. The fields that answer that kind of question are listed in what belongs in an internal company directory.

Settings to check this week

If Google’s directory is your directory for now, these five checks make it noticeably more useful:

• Turn on contact sharing and pick the address option that hides aliases nobody uses.
• Let users edit their own photo, pronouns and work location. Faces matter more than you’d think. See why org charts with photos work better.
• Fill in job title, department and manager email for everyone. The reports list is built from manager email, so one blank field breaks a reporting line.
• Hide shared mailboxes and service accounts so “billing@” doesn’t show up between two real people.
• Keep a spreadsheet as the backup source of truth. This employee directory template has the columns laid out, which helps when you’re auditing who’s missing.

FAQ

How do I see the Google Workspace directory?

Open Google Contacts on the web and choose Directory. You’ll only see it if your admin has turned on contact sharing in the Admin console. Names also autocomplete in Gmail, and hovering over someone’s photo opens their profile card.

Why are some people missing from the Google Workspace directory?

Google never shows suspended or deleted users, or anyone an admin has hidden from the Directory. Guest accounts aren’t listed in the Directory in Contacts. If your organizational unit is assigned a custom directory, you’ll only see the people in it.

Can employees update their own job title in Google Workspace?

Not with the standard settings. Admins can let users edit their name, photo, gender, pronouns and work location, plus a couple of other personal fields. Job title, department and manager are admin-entered fields, so they’re only as current as whoever maintains them.

Does the Google Workspace directory include an org chart?

It shows reporting lines one person at a time: the Gmail contacts sidebar lists a person’s manager and their reports, built from the manager email field. If you want a chart of a whole team, this guide on how to make an org chart walks through the options.

A directory your team keeps current, coming soon

We’re building one. InstaCheckin People, our employee directory and org chart app, is coming soon. It’s a searchable photo directory with filters by location and department (coming soon), plus an org chart you can browse up and down the reporting line (coming soon). Employees will add their own photo and edit their phone, pronouns and bio (coming soon), so the person who knows a detail changed can fix it.

Sync with Google Workspace is coming soon, and sync with Microsoft Entra ID is coming soon too, so mixed Google and Microsoft companies get one list. Compare approaches on our employee directory software page, see what’s planned on the InstaCheckin People page, then join the waitlist and we’ll email you when it opens.