Directory
The Directory answers two questions that come up constantly on a job: who is this person, and which company do they work for. It is the list every other tool draws on, so a mail recipient, a meeting attendee and a permit approver are all picked from the same set of names.
Two directories, one idea
Teralo keeps a directory at both levels, and the difference is who is in it. See Organisation level and project level.
Organisation, then Directory is your own people. Everybody your organisation has added, whichever projects they are on.
Project, then Directory is everybody on that job, your people and your subcontractors and consultants alike. This is the one most people mean, and it is the one the rest of this article is about.
The three tabs
The project directory splits three ways.
People is the register of everyone on the project: name, job title, organisation, discipline, permission template, the date they joined and their induction status. It is a register screen like any other, so grouping by organisation is usually the fastest way to read it.
Organisations lists the companies rather than the individuals, with each one's compliance status, accounting details and how many people it has on the project. It is a read-only view: organisations arrive here because somebody from them was added, not because they were added directly.
Distribution Groups are named sets of recipients, covered further down.
The two populations in the People tab
By default the People tab shows project members, meaning people with a Teralo account and access to the project.
Show Inducted Workers adds the other population: workers who have been inducted onto the site but have no account and no project access. They are on site, they are on the evacuation list, and they belong in a directory, but they never sign in to Teralo. The toggle only appears when the project has some. See Inductions.
The distinction is worth holding on to, because it is the answer to why somebody who is plainly on site is not in the list you are searching.
Adding somebody
Two controls, and the right one depends on whether the person already exists in Teralo.
Global Directory searches every account in Teralo. Find the person, select them, choose the project permission template they should have, and they are added. This is the one to reach for first, because most people you work with regularly are already here.
Create Account is for somebody with no account at all. Choose the organisation they belong to, enter their email address, name and job title, and pick their project permission template. Teralo checks the address as you type and tells you if it already belongs to an account, which saves creating a duplicate.
There is nothing to accept afterwards. The account exists immediately, the person is on the project, and Teralo emails them their login details and a temporary password to change.
If their company is not in Teralo either, the Create Account panel offers a way through rather than a dead end. Can't find their organisation? Create a new one opens a short wizard: the organisation's name, business number and discipline, then the person who will administer it, then optionally a first worker, then a review of what is about to happen before anything is created.
Choosing the permission template is the decision that matters here, and it is covered in Inviting people to a project.
Distribution groups
A distribution group is a named list of people, created once and used as a single recipient afterwards. Design Team, Client Representatives, Site Supervisors.
Groups are used by Mail, Site Messages and Meetings, so one group set up in the Directory saves picking the same eight names in three different tools. Give each group a description, because a name alone stops explaining itself about a month after it was created.
A group is a convenience rather than a permission. Adding somebody to a group does not give them access to anything; it only means they are selected along with the rest of the group next time somebody addresses something to it.
What a guest sees
A guest sees the project directory and the people on it, which is the point: knowing who to send an RFI to is not privileged information. What a guest cannot do is add or remove anybody. Their own colleagues are added by the host, or by their own organisation administrator once their organisation is on the project.
SettingsHost only
Directory has no Tools settings page of its own, because it has nothing to configure: it is filled by what happens elsewhere. Two of those places are worth knowing.
Organisation, then Settings holds each organisation's own details, including the discipline that shows against its people in the register. Discipline comes from a fixed industry list rather than being typed, so filtering by it is dependable.
Organisation, then Permissions holds the permission templates the Directory assigns. See Permission templates.
PermissionsHost only
Three permissions govern the Directory, and the split is deliberate.
Viewing the directory is the ordinary one and most templates grant it. Adding people and removing people are separate from each other and separate from viewing, so somebody can bring a subcontractor onto the job without also being able to take one off it.
Note what adding does not include: it lets somebody assign an existing permission template, not edit what a template grants. Running a project and inventing new levels of access are two different jobs. See How permissions work.