Administrators should be able to impersonate a user

1160
3
05-26-2021 05:42 PM
Status: Open
GraemeHill
New Contributor III

It would be great if agol (or portal) administrators could impersonate a user to see what user experience they have and confirm they have the right permissions and access. We seem to spend a bit of time following trails of permissions for maps, layer, web app, etc.. to make sure a particular user can access content correctly. This capability would hopefully make this process only take only take a few seconds to sort out rather than going back and forth with the end user confirming they have the right access. Other systems have this capability such as service now.  The capability to impersonate could be a permission based option in itself eg allow user to impersonate that administrators could set.  If concerns are raised over editing content or data while impersonating maybe the edit tracking could be highlighted with the impersonate details eg last edited by: adminaccount (impersonating otheruser) or editing could just be disabled while impersonating.

impersonate.jfif

3 Comments
PeterKnoop

This would be helpful as workaround.

In the long run, it would be better to have the underlying issues with system design addressed. Of all the SaaS solutions we use institution-wide, it is only the ones with very poorly designed user experiences that have support staff stooping to this level.

RobertBorchert

Comments like that make me tend to think you develop very simple applications or have someone else develop them for you. Or an exceptional ego.  

@GraemeHill  I agree.  Quite often it is important to check an application as it works for the Field Worker. 

It can be cumbersome to change your Type and Role to test an application. 

 

ReinaCMurray

This would be a useful feature for us as well. As a workaround, I currently have, in addition to my admin account, two other accounts that are set to other types/roles, which I will log into through another browser if I need to run checks on permissions. It's cumbersome but works fine.