Tech Note: Setting up Pendo for end-user impersonation
In many modern SaaS applications, it is possible for internal users (employees) to impersonate their end-users. If your application allows for this - it is important that you update your Pendo installation to work effectively when an internal user is impersonating an end-user.
In most cases where an employee is impersonating an end-user, you will want Pendo to initialize with the visitor ID of the user controlling the mouse (employee) rather than the end-user visitor ID. This may take a little extra engineering effort - but is important to get right.
There are two main reasons this is important:
Analytics - If you are passing the end-user visitor ID to Pendo when an employee is impersonating that user, the activity the employee is taking is recorded under the end-user visitor record in Pendo rather than the employees. This causes your analytics to be less accurate as some of the usage analytics are from 'real' end-user activity and some of it would be from internal employee activity.
Guides - If you are passing the end-user visitor ID to Pendo when an employee is impersonating that user, the guides the employee sees (and dismisses) will not be shown again to the 'real' end-user since in Pendo it will show that the end-users visitor ID already saw and dismissed the guide.
Comments
Is it possible for us to set it up in such a way that we can not only see the user who is impersonating, but also who they are impersonating so we can track metrics accordingly? This would be super helpful for audit purposes to see who is impersonating whom and what they are doing in the instance.
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