Viewing the platform as somebody else
View as puts you in the platform as another person, seeing exactly what they see. It is how you answer “it is not showing up for me” without asking somebody to send screenshots.
It is also a serious thing to do. The person is not told, and everything about the session is recorded against your name.
Before you can use it
Section titled “Before you can use it”Allow admin view-as must be switched on for the account, under Admin, then Workspace and Security. You also need the View as permission.
Who you can view as
Section titled “Who you can view as”Anybody whose permissions you already have. An administrator can view as a learner, a manager, or another administrator with the same access.
You cannot use it to see more than you are entitled to. It does not grant data you lacked; it changes whose eyes you read your own data through.
Two managers with the same permissions but different teams are the exception. Neither can view as the other, because each would gain the other’s people.
Starting a session
Section titled “Starting a session”- Find the person in Users. The search box is quicker than paging.
- Open the actions menu at the end of their row, the three dots.
- Choose View as.
- Read what the window tells you. It names who you are about to view and says that everything you do will be recorded against your name, under a panel headed This is recorded: “Everything you do is logged against you. Evidence and credential changes are blocked.”
- Fill in Reason. It is required and holds up to 1,000 characters, and Start session stays greyed out until you have typed one — there is no way past it. What you type is stored word for word against your name.
- Choose Start session.
If View as is not on the menu, the person is not somebody you are allowed to view as, and the item is left out rather than shown and refused.
What a session looks like
Section titled “What a session looks like”You land on that person’s own view rather than the admin area — for a learner, their My learning page — and the administration navigation is simply not there.
A banner sits above everything for as long as the session lasts: Viewing as their name, started by your email address, the time remaining, and an Exit button. It opens at ends in 59m, so the hour is counted down in front of you rather than left to guess at.
Leaving
Section titled “Leaving”Choose Exit on the banner. You land back where you started, signed in as yourself — the screen you left from, with any filter still applied, not a generic home page.
What the audit log shows about a View as session
Section titled “What the audit log shows about a View as session”Every session writes an entry to Audit logs as it starts and another as it ends. If a session is revoked or times out instead, that is written as its own entry too.
The row names both people. Who is the person who ran the session, and Did what names the person who was viewed, both with their work IDs — for example “Started impersonating Fred Smith (EMP042)”. The Action column reads Started, Stopped, Revoked or Expired.
Open the entry for the rest. Choose View details on the row. The panel shows the reason you typed, word for word, the ticket reference if you gave one, the session type and its status, and for a revoked session why it was revoked. Context carries the IP address the session was run from.
It also ends on its own: after an hour, or after fifteen minutes of doing nothing. Anything you were part-way through is lost, so treat a session as something you go into with one question.
If a session is ended for you rather than by you, you are not handed your own session back — you sign in again as yourself.
Before you start one
Section titled “Before you start one”Most of what makes View as consequential is not in the steps. What you are allowed to do while you are in a session, what is written down about it, and who can read that afterwards are covered in How View as sessions are restricted and recorded.