Impersonating a User

This guide explains how to impersonate a user in a learning platform for troubleshooting purposes. By following the steps provided, TA’s can temporarily login as another user to perform actions on their behalf. It also highlights the importance of properly ending the impersonation session to ensure the impersonated user receives a notification.

Introduction

As a TA, you can temporarily login as another user in your branch to perform actions on their behalf to help with troubleshooting in their learning platform. When impersonating a user, you’ll have access to exactly what the user can access in the platform and you’ll be able to operate in the platform as if you logged in as that user.

Impersonating a User

Login to your Admin Panel at learn.ue.org.
Click Manage My Learners.
On the All Users page, find the user you want to impersonate, click on the ellipsis button at the end of the user’s row.
Select Log In as This User or Log In as This Power User, depending on the user level.
Confirm your action by pressing the corresponding button and you’ll be redirected to the homepage of the account of the user you chose to impersonate

Note: A notification is immediately sent to the impersonated user (in-platform and, if your user’s email is configured in the platform, via email) to inform them that you accessed the platform on their behalf.

Since the notification is sent to the impersonated users while you are logged in as that user, remember not to open it, so that when the user logs into his or her account, they will see the unread notification. If you open the notification, it won’t be deleted, but the user may not notice it when logging into their platform, since the red dot won’t be shown over the bell icon indicating that there are unread notifications.

When you switch back to your account, the user you impersonated receives another notification informing them that you logged out from their account.

Warning: Always remember that all of the actions you perform while you’re impersonating another user are real actions.

If you complete a course while you are logged in as another user, then, when the user you impersonated logs into his or her account again, they will find that this course has been completed (and the course will be marked as completed by the user you impersonated, not by you). Similarly, if you progress the course, when the user logs into their platform again, they will be able to resume the course from the point where you left off.

Switching Back to Your Account

In order to end the impersonation and log in again as yourself, click on Switch Back to Your Account on the right side of the bar at the top of any platform page.

Always end the impersonation by clicking the Switch Back to Your Account button in the bar at the top of the page. If you end the impersonation by letting your session expire, the system isn’t able to track when the impersonation session ended and, as a consequence, cannot send a notification to the impersonated user.