Online Campus Directory and Contact Searching

I. Overview

• Security Update: To improve university cybersecurity and protect employee information from automated web scraping, phishing, and spam harvesting, the public-facing directory (www.uah.edu/directory) site was changed on June 23, 2026.
• New Method: Active UAH faculty, staff, and students will use Google Contacts to securely find contact details for faculty and staff, so that logging in is required.
• Website Change: On the go-live date, visiting the legacy www.uah.edu/directory link will automatically redirect users directly to the authenticated Google Contacts directory interface.

II. How to Search the UAH Directory via Google Contacts

1. Accessing the Directory:
   1. Navigate directly to the authenticated UAH Directory page: contacts.google.com/directory
   2. (Alternative Method) Open your UAH Gmail, click the Google Apps "Waffle" icon (the nine dots in the top right corner), select Contacts, and then click the Directory tab on the left-hand menu.
2. Searching for Colleagues and Verifying Active Status: Type the name or email address of the person you're looking for directly into the top search bar.

• Note Regarding Offboarded Employees: If you have previously saved a colleague's contact details, their card will display under your personal "Contacts" section. People you've interacted with but haven't saved as a personal Contact will be automatically saved under "Other Contacts." If an employee leaves the university, they are completely removed from the browsable Directory, but their stale contact information will remain in your personal Contacts and/or Other Contacts. To remove an employee from your list of Contacts or Other Contacts, select them and click the three-dot menu, then Delete.

3. Department and Location Limitations: Google Contacts searches strictly for individual personnel profiles. It cannot filter a list of staff members by typing a specific campus building (e.g., "Shelbie King") or office structure.

• If you do not know a specific person's name and are trying to find general department information, please follow the steps in Section III to use the university’s public-facing departmental web pages.

• Note for Advanced Search Roles: If your specific campus job duties require advanced directory filtering capabilities (such as generating building-wide personnel lists), please contact the OIT Help Desk to request specialized access.

III. Finding General Departmental Information

1. Functional Group Searches: Google Contacts searches for individual names rather than entire departmental office structures.
2. Using Departmental Web Pages: If you do not know a specific person's name and just need to find someone in an office (e.g., Financial Aid, Admissions, Registrar, Facilities):
   1. Go to the main university website and navigate to that specific department's webpage (e.g., uah.edu/registrar).
   2. Look for the "Contact Us," "About," or "Staff" tabs in their menu.
   3. Departments maintain their own page which usually includes a physical campus location, phone number, and email address.

Regarding the Main Campus Line

In tandem with these directory security updates, UAH has transitioned the main campus line (256.824.1000) to an automated voice assistant powered by natural language processing.

Automating these standard external routing requests allows OIT to strategically reallocate resources—freeing up our technical staff from manual switchboard routing so they can focus entirely on technical work and direct campus support. This optimization enables our local Help Desk team to handle daytime OIT support calls directly in-house (rather than using a third-party company), significantly improving IT support services for the UAH community.

Still Need Help?

If you have additional questions about this topic, please contact the OIT Help Desk.