xarigami news

There are many times when it is useful to want to see exactly what your logged in users are seeing on site. For support calls, it can be quite time consuming for both the customer and the support technician. The situation is often complicated by inability of the customer to describe the problem accurately enough for the support technician to diagnose the problem or replicate it.

To get around this problem, we have implemented what we call 'proxy login'. A nominated user or group of users such as tech support, are able to 'proxy login' to the account of a customer with a support request. Both the tech support and the customer can be logged into the site at the same time which makes it easy to find and diagnose the actual problem in real time while the customer is online.

There is a similar functionality (Putting users in Limbo) that Marc Lutolf implemented some time back for Xaraya 2x. The Xarigami 'proxy login' implementation differs in that:

• we use native Xaraya groups for the proxy login users (eg tech support), and the candidates (eg customers) for proxy login
• both tech support and customer can be logged in at the same time
• You do not need to set a separate password for a tech support to use. Clicking on a 'login as' link takes the tech support to the user's account. An optional extra security step can be checked requiring the tech support group to first supply their normal site password prior to being logged in.

The implementation has focused on site security, usability, and flexibility for various site needs, in that order. You can read more about it in the how to article on Proxy User Login, and then test it out at the Xarigami demo site.