🧑‍🤝‍🧑Impersonate a user features

Nicolas CHIGROS · November 2023

The idea is for account with developer licence and necessary access to a server to be able to Impersonate any user from his account directly.

You select the user you want to impersonate from a drop down list then everything you view - his selects, read & write data, folder access etc.. - are like the member itself on your server.

Why :

You may lack free licence slot to do proper testing.
More secure : No reason to share a password of a testing account.
With subscription hub it require to register alternative email to get access which is a pain point for large scale testing.
Faster unitary test when developing.
Better assistance/debug capabilities as you're only a few click await from seeing what the user see.

Zachary Turner · November 2023

I can definitely see a feature like this being useful!

Nicolas CHIGROS · November 2023

https://community.board.com/discussion/comment/16040#Comment_16040

It would be for sure! Even in a presales demo, it's very convenient to quickly show how data is secured in Board

Scott Bloxsome · November 2023

This would be very useful indeed. Currently we put a label with 100% transparency on the home screen of an application to at least mimic a user selection within an application, but we can't get it to fully replicate security.

Samir Jones · November 2023

@Nicolas CHIGROS, Good idea.

As a workaround, in a demo environment, I've used an Entity (i.e. UserType) that have the members Admin and User.

In the home screen you can select which UserType (dropdown list from custom Suggested Values) you will demo the solution with. The UserType selection will then apply to the Screens with Dynamic selection.

The Entity UserType is connected to a several Cubes. The Cubes control DataEntry, Label visibility, Screen access etc.

You could also combine it with Database Security.

Nicolas CHIGROS · November 2023

@Samir Jones, I do that kind of "trickery" too! However, in my opinion, it's not as good as sales pitch as compare to have native feature because you can't guaranty that it will be available in the final product.

I wanted that kind of feature for years because it was available in a tool I was using at the time and very recently I've seeing it implemented in another EPM software so I thought it was time to post it as an idea 😆

Samir Jones · November 2023

@Nicolas CHIGROS, I totally agree with you.

It would be useful when testing from a user perspective, and you don't have spare licenses.

Fortunately, in my current project, we have spare licenses, so I use a test account simultaneously in another browser (Dev = Chrome, User = Edge InPrivate).