By default, the location drop-down in Origami People Directory will grab locations from SharePoint User Profile.
In your organization, you might not store the location in SharePoint and the locations drop-down won’t even show or will list only a handful of locations.
In this case, you’re likely storing locations in Entra ID.
To connect the locations drop-down to read from Entra ID, follow these steps:
Part 1: Configuring SharePoint search property
- Navigate to SharePoint Admin Center in your Microsoft 365 tenant
- In the left hand side navigation, click More features

- Under Search click the Open button.
- Click [Manage Search Schema]
- Search for the [RefinableString] managed property that doesn’t have any other property associated with it yet.
- Edit the property you selected by clicking Edit/Map Property as shown below
7. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Add a Mapping button.
8. In the dialog, search for word “office”:
9. After a few seconds you will see a refined list, select the attribute “People:Office” as shown below and click OK:
- Confirm that the attribute was added:
Part 2: Trigger re-crawl of SharePoint properties
Because we changed search schema, you’ll need to trigger search re-crawl to expedite new refiner being picked up.
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Go to the site where your Origami People Directory is on
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Click (*) → Site information → View all site settings → Search and offline availability
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Click Reindex site
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For the reason, select “Site schema changes” or a similar option
Part 3: Wait 24 hours while SharePoint builds refiners from the new property
Part 4: Connect a refinable string to the People Directory
- In the People Directory web part properties, go to Filters & Refiners web part section.
- Set the refiner like this:
Note: Make sure the refinable string name matches the name you entered in Part 1, Step 6.