📚 Part of the series Application Building Phase II: The Slate-hosted Application

Slate administrators and users with the following permissions combination (Person Impersonate, Application Update, Person Update) can impersonate an applicant and see the application from their point of view. 

They are also able to:

• See Periods/Rounds that are inactive

• Bypass hard fails and submit the application

When administratively impersonating an applicant, an administrator can make changes and see data that the applicant would not be able to do or see directly.

🔔 Important!

• It is strongly discouraged to impersonate a live application in a Production environment as it can lead to data loss depending on the structure of the Slate-Hosted Application. Instead, use a Test Environment, Time Warp, or a test record to troubleshoot issues safely.

• Only impersonate a single application at a time.

• Do not open multiple tabs or windows within the same browser when impersonating.

Impersonating an applicant as an administrator

To impersonate an applicant:

1. Go to an application record.

2. Select Impersonate > Applications.

It is helpful to impersonate an applicant as an administrator when:

• Testing that application pages and conditional logic show or work as expected

• Testing submission requirements to ensure they are behaving as expected from the applicant point of view

• Replicating an applicant's experience or troubleshooting reported behaviors concerning conditional logic and application logic

When impersonating an applicant as an administrator, it is possible to bypass Slate’s built-in rerouting behaviors. For example, it will be possible to access and update the Slate-hosted Application even after it has been submitted, or to access the application status page before an applicant has been submitted. This is helpful when testing updates to application pages and portal logic.

Impersonating an applicant

To impersonate an applicant and see the Slate-hosted Application exactly as an applicant would, it is necessary to use an incognito window and effectively log out as a Slate administrator and log in as the applicant. This is sometimes referred to as a true (meaning non-administrative) login. For non test records, a true login can be performed without username or password credentials using the following steps:

1. Go to an application record.

2. Right click on Impersonate > Application or Impersonate > Status Page and choose "Open in incognito window."

3. In the new window, log in to Slate when prompted by SSO.

4. Once logged in, right click on the tab you have open and select "Duplicate."

5. In the new tab, click the Logout option in the top right corner and press enter. This should log you out as an administrator.

   1. If there is no “Logout” link, swap “apply/status” with “manage/logout” in the URL.

6. Return to your other open tab and click refresh.

7. You are now be authentically impersonating the applicant and seeing exactly what they would see.

It is helpful to impersonate an applicant when:

• Determining which types of application a record is eligible to create

• Confirming that round settings and period settings work as expected

• Testing navigation between multiple applications or multiple application status pages

• Replicating an applicant's experience or troubleshooting reported behaviors concerning routing or application access