Impersonation made easy (in Google Chrome)

snuser1
Kilo Contributor

Note: This information may already be available in the community, I could not find so thought of posting it.

Often, we have to impersonate a user or multiple users to test a change, or reproduce a defect or for any other reasons. Though, it's quite simple to impersonate users, I used to consider it as not-a-welcome pause in my usual work and at times, it had resulted in unintentional changes when I forgot to impersonate back to my id.

If you have felt the same way, and you use Google chrome, you are in a bit of luck here.

Chrome has a feature which allows having multiple 'instances' (called profiles) of the Chrome browsers to be opened at the same time. These instances do not share sessions, and that's exactly why they are helpful in impersonating different users. We can impersonate other users in different instances of chrome browser without worrying to re-impersonate to our ids (given we keep main chrome instance to our login id)

Steps:

1. Go to the following URL to understand the chrome feature:

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en

2.Once you have gone through the link, you can create as many chrome profiles as you require and edit the profile names for ServiceNow roles e.g. admin, itil, end user

3.You can use itil profile for itil users, or end user profile for end user related changes.

Bonus:

If you use windows 7 (or up), you have option to pin these profiles to taskbar for quick access.

2 REPLIES 2

josh_nerius
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

This is a great tip and something that I use regularly. Thanks for sharing with the community!


Uncle Rob
Kilo Patron

Nice find.