Learn about the permission preview feature and how to use it to understand visibility.
The Permission Preview feature is available to full Admins only and allows you to view requests and the application as a requester or another staff person. This will give you a better understanding of visibility within a request as well as the portal in general.
Please note: You can take actions while you are previewing permissions, however any action you take will be associated with your user account, not the user you are previewing.
How to use permissions preview:
- When signed into the portal hover or click on Signed In in the upper right hand corner, then click Permission Preview:
- Select the user you wish to view their permissions from the drop down menu or type their name or email address to search. There are also generic users you can select to view the portal at that permission level in general:
- Click Set Permissions to apply
- While you are viewing another users permissions you will see a yellow banner across the top of the page showing which user you are viewing the portal as:
- You can navigate the portal as usual to see what the various pages look like to another user.
- Click the blue Turn off permissions preview button to exit the preview:
Errors
In some cases you may receive an error when you attempt to navigate to a page that the user does not have access to. For example if you try to preview a request as a requester user who did not submit the request you may receive the following error if that user does not have access:
In other cases if you begin the permission preview session on a page that the user doesn't have access to, for example if you use permission preview to view as a requester while on the Admin dashboard, you'll receive the following error and be brought to the front page of the portal: 
Both of these errors are indicating that the user you are attempting to preview does not have access to that section or page in some way.
Taking action on a request in preview
While you are previewing permissions you will see the actions that are available to that user. However if you take an action, for example send an external message, the action will be recorded in the timeline as being associated with your user account. You cannot impersonate a user and take actions as that user, you are only previewing what the portal looks like to them.