Summary
You can impersonate other Users (your co-workers) within your Planhat tenant, if you have the workflow permission "User Impersonation" enabled in your Role (which will typically be if you are a Planhat admin)
Impersonating another User means you can see and do what they can - useful when investigating/checking their access levels, or training them within their own version of your Planhat tenant
To impersonate, you go to a User's Full-Page Profile, click the ellipsis symbol (3 dots) and then click "Impersonate User". You click "Exit view" to stop the impersonation
In addition to this form of impersonation, Planhat staff ("Super Admins") can impersonate Planhat Users with consent, and you can impersonate External Users (your customers/prospects) within Portals, but these are detailed in separate articles
Who is this article for?
Planhat admins who are configuring Planhat and managing Users
Article contents
Introduction
When we say "impersonate", we are referring to the ability to see and do what another person can see and do.
There are actually three different variants of this within Planhat:
A Planhat staff member (also called a "Super Admin"), typically a member of the the Planhat Support team, can request the temporary ability to impersonate you (a Planhat User) in your Planhat tenant
You can read about this in our separate article here
You (a Planhat User) can impersonate External Users, which are End Users (your customers/prospects) that have been added to Portals
You can learn more about this in our Portal FAQs article here
You (a Planhat User with the necessary permission - typically a User with the "Administrator" Role) can impersonate another User within your Planhat tenant
This is the focus of this article
The main advantages of this impersonation are the ability to investigate and troubleshoot if there are any issues (e.g. a person can't see something they should), and the ability to demo to a User based on their own view of Planhat.
What is impersonating another User?
If you're a Planhat User whose Role has the necessary permission (for details of this, see here), you can go to the Full-Page Profile (User Profile) of any User within your own Planhat tenant, and select to "impersonate" that User.
You will then be able to view and interact with your Planhat tenant as if you were logged in as that User - as shown by a banner at the top (pictured in the example screenshot below).
Why impersonate another User?
If you're a Planhat admin, it can be useful to be able to impersonate your co-workers so you can see and do what they can see and do. This can help you when configuring User permissions via Roles, etc., when setting up your Planhat tenant or adding new Users.
Impersonating is a great tool for testing and troubleshooting, and while Planhat staff ("Super Admins") can impersonate Users if they give consent (read more in a separate article here), with the functionality described in this article you can impersonate your teammates without needing to ask Planhat staff to do it, and you don't even need to request access from the individual Users with this method either.
Impersonation is also super useful for when you - as a Planhat admin - want to train your co-workers, because by impersonating a User you can carry out a demo whilst showing exactly what they can see, which may be different than you (e.g. each User may only see Companies where they are the Owner, and have different Sections configured for their Home, and you as a Planhat admin likely have access to admin settings that most Users in your tenant will not, and so on).
How to impersonate another User
Prerequisite: permission
The ability for you - as a Planhat User - to impersonate other Users in your Planhat tenant is determined by a specific workflow permission called "User Impersonation", within the "Admin and Security" category of workflow permissions.
You configure this for each Role (within the "Settings" Global Tool for admins) - Roles being the Planhat equivalent of "Profiles" or "Permission Sets". Make sure you are in the "Workflow" tab of the Role in question (rather than the "Data model" tab) and toggle "User Impersonation" on to give Users with that Role the ability to impersonate other Users in the tenant.
Click the image to view it enlarged
If you can't see the "User Impersonation" toggle switch to enable in a Role, there are two possible causes:
This workflow permission can only be enabled for Roles with the "Core" (or "Core + Service") User Types - so it's not available for Roles that have the User Type "Productivity" or "View". (You can read more about User Types here)
For you to be able to see the "User Impersonation" workflow permission toggle in any Roles, it first needs to be enabled for your tenant. If you can't see this permission even for "Core" Roles, please speak with a Planhat staff member ("Super Admin"), who can enable this feature/permission via the "Tenant Permissions" part of the "Settings" Global Tool
Impersonating a User
If you're a User with the "User Impersonation" workflow permission enabled for your Role, it's super quick and easy to impersonate any User within your Planhat tenant.
🚀 Tip
Unlike when Planhat staff (Super Admins) impersonate a User (detailed here), as a Planhat User with the appropriate permission, you do not need to ask for consent to impersonate another User in your tenant.
Navigate to the User's Full-Page Profile (also called their User Profile)
For example, within the "Settings" Global Tool, you may be viewing the list of Users in your tenant via the "Users" tab, and then you click on the name of the User whose Profile you want to open
Looking at the User Profile, click on the ellipsis symbol in the top right, and then select "Impersonate User"
You will then see your Planhat tenant as if you were that User. You will see a banner at the top of the screen informing you that you are impersonating that User
Click the image to view it enlarged
To come out of this impersonation, click the "Exit view" button in the top right
Click the image to view it enlarged