We would like the ability to search for someone by their telephone number, email address, or student ID number. Sometimes we don't know the name of the person we are looking for.
Today our Dean's Office received a telephone message with poor quality and they could not make out the name of the student, but did have the student's number. But we cannot search using that so finding this person became a bit of work.
Very important! Even the old-fashioned "core\users\edit user profile", which I am told is going away comes closer to this than the people finder. [you can search by host id or [less useful] user id]. It shouldn't be so difficult.