About

Starting with v4.5.5 Power Scripts™ has the ability to let Confluence administrators quickly switch to another user. The Switch User feature allows administrators to switch to any user without knowing their password. Sometimes it’s just easier to understand a users problem if you can experience it first hand. This feature allows you to switch user sessions with any user in order to use the tool with the tool as if the user had logged in themselves. This is useful for troubleshooting permissions issues or assisting the user in setting up personal settings, all without asking for the user's credentials or involving the user in other ways.

Who can use the Switch User feature?

Only Confluence administrators are able to use this feature to switch to another user.

Which users can be impersonated?

Any user who IS NOT a Confluence administrator can be impersonated with this feature. A Confluence administrator CAN NOT impersonate another Confluence administrator and become an admin user who may have higher permissions than themselves.

Usage

Switching to Another User

1. You can access this feature anywhere inside Jira or Confluence by opening the Profile menu in the upper right corner and selecting Switch User

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2. Or, navigate to the Administration → Manage Apps → Power Apps Config → Tools → Switch User page.

3. Once on the Switch User User Page, enter the name of the user who you would like to switch to and press Switch

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Switching Back

When the Confluence administrator has finished their investigation and would like to return to their own account they may do so by clicking Switch Back to Admin from the Profile menu.
 

Logging

New for 5.8.0.x, when using the Switch User feature a message will be added to the native Confluence audit log.

Disabling or Enabling the Switch User Feature

1. In order to disable/enable the Switch User feature, navigate to the Administration → Manage Apps → Power Apps Config → Tools → Switch User

2. Uncheck the Enable Quick Switch button

Completely and Securely Disabling the Switch User Feature

1. In order to disable this feature for good you would need to follow a few simple steps:

2. Create a "traceflags.properties" file somewhere on your local.

   1. Define on the first line of the file the key=value pair "disable.impersonate.user=1" which will set the feature to be disabled.

   2. Set the Java properties on Confluence startup with "-Dtraceflags.resource=file:filepath" where the filepath is the absolute path to the properties file created above.
      Example: -Dtraceflags.resource=file:///E:/traceflag/traceflags.properties

3. To Configure System Properties in Linux/Windows Installations

   • From <Confluence-install>/bin, open setenv.sh(for Linux)/setenv.bat(for Windows).

   • Find the section JVM_SUPPORT_RECOMMENDED_ARGS=

   • Add the  "-Dtraceflags.resource=file:filepath" parameter in the space-separted list

   When Running Confluence applications as a Windows service
           See this Atlassian documentation on setting properties of a Windows service.

   1. Add the path to "traceflags.properies" to the Java Options in the system properties. 

      Example: -Dtraceflags.resource=file:///E:/traceflag/traceflags.properties

       

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