Login as a user

Sign in to another user’s Empuls account temporarily to reproduce issues or assist users — every session is audited and the user is notified.

When a user reports a problem, the fastest way to diagnose it is often to see exactly what they see. Login As lets a Super Admin sign in to another user’s account temporarily, in a separate audited session. The user is notified every time Login As is invoked on their account, and every action you take while impersonating is attributable to you in the audit log. Login As is a sub-page of Manage Employees in your tenant.

Before you start

• You must be a Super Admin.
• Login As is for diagnostic and support purposes. It is not an alternative to delegation — delegation is for long-term cover during leave; Login As is short-term diagnostic access.
• Every Login As event is logged with timestamp, target user, reason, and your identity. The user receives a notification.

When to use Login As vs delegation

Scenario	Use…
A user can’t reproduce a bug on a call	Login As — sign in, reproduce, sign out, file the bug
A manager is on vacation; their team needs approvals	Delegation — set up a 2-week delegation
You need to fix a misconfigured profile field	Edit the employee record directly — no impersonation needed
A user reports their feed looks wrong	Login As — see their actual feed, then close

Start a Login As session

1. Open the user's record

   Navigate to Manage Employees, find the user, and click the pencil icon to open their record.

2. Click Log in as a user

   The action is in the Action column or in the record’s overflow menu.

3. Enter a reason

   Empuls requires you to enter a reason — this appears in the audit log and in the notification the user receives. Examples: “Reproducing the feed bug from ticket SUP-1234”, “Verifying user can see the new flexible benefits flow.”

4. Choose whether to notify the user

   By default, the user receives an in-app notification immediately. You can suppress the notification for sensitive scenarios (rare; defaults to notify).

5. Submit

   A new browser tab opens signed in as the target user. The tab is clearly marked as an impersonation session.

Work inside the impersonation session

The session looks exactly like the target user’s normal session — same feed, same permissions, same UI. A persistent banner at the top says “You are signed in as ” so you can’t forget you’re impersonating.

You can do anything the target user can do — view their feed, see their balance, navigate to their settings. Your actions during the session are attributed to you in audit logs, not to the user (even though the UI shows the user’s perspective).

End the impersonation session

1. Click End impersonation in the banner

   The button is at the top right of the impersonation tab.

2. Or close the tab

   Closing the tab ends the impersonation session as well.

You return to your own Empuls session, which was running concurrently in your original tab.

Audit log

Every Login As event creates an audit-log entry visible to Super Admins:

Field	Value
Actor	The admin who initiated the impersonation
Target	The user whose account was accessed
Reason	Free-text reason you entered
Started at	Timestamp
Ended at	When the impersonation session was closed
Notify suppressed	Yes/No

Audit log entries are immutable. Filter the log by actor, target, or date range from the audit-log page.

What the user sees

By default, the user receives:

• An in-app notification: “Admin signed in to your account. Reason: .”
• An email summarizing the same.

The notification appears in real-time, so the user knows immediately. If they have questions, they can ask via the notification’s response action.

Limits and gotchas

• You cannot impersonate another Super Admin. Empuls blocks this to prevent privilege escalation chains.
• Impersonation sessions inherit the target’s session timeout. Long sessions auto-end after the timeout.
• Some destructive actions (e.g., deleting your own account from the impersonated session) are blocked.
• Login As does not transfer points, role, or any other state — it’s read-and-act as if you were the user, nothing more.

Related

• Manage employees — Where Login As is initiated.
• User delegation — Different feature for longer-term account access.
• Session management — How impersonation sessions are tracked.
• Access control — Who can use Login As.