Receiving "Access Denied" when attempting to "Act as User"

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elevine_1
Community Member

Hi there!

I'm an admin for my instance, so I'm really curious why I'm receiving this "Access Denied" message when I try to act as someone else other than students in my instance. 

Does anyone know if Canvas limits who can be acted as depending on their permissions? 

No one I'm trying to act as would be considered an admin, they'd be a teacher, so that's why this is even more puzzling. 

Reached out to Instructure Support last week and no response. 

-Erin

1 Solution

Hi @brasmussen,

If you go to your Root Account Settings -> Feature Options area, you should see an account feature labeled "Check permissions when Masquerading as Course Admins".  If you disable this option, an admin should be able to masquerade as any user.  With the option enabled, the admin can only act as users if the admin account had equal or more permissions and access than the user they are masquerading as (preventing what some see as an elevation of privilege flaw).  This option was added a year or two ago, after Instructure basically forced the option on and broke many Institution's processes.  We disabled this option so our admins could again masquerade as anyone as we intended them to for support reasons.

Hope this helps!

-Chris

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