Impersonate a user

What is impersonation?

Impersonation lets you view and use Pave as if you were logged in as another person in your company. While impersonating, you see exactly what that person sees, including their data, their team, and their permissions. This is useful for testing what a new user will experience, troubleshooting what someone can or cannot access, or taking action on their behalf when they are unavailable.

Who can impersonate

You need admin-level access to use impersonation. Specifically, your role must include the ability to view Settings and edit users. The default Admin role includes these permissions.

Who you can impersonate

You can impersonate any employee at your company, with these exceptions:

• You cannot impersonate yourself.
• You cannot impersonate other admins. Users who have the ability to manage other users are protected from impersonation.
• You cannot impersonate candidates. Visual Offer Letter recipients are not employees in Pave and do not appear on the Users page.

Start impersonating

1. Go to Settings > Users.
2. Find the person you want to impersonate.
3. Click the eye icon on their row. The icon only appears for users you are allowed to impersonate.
4. The page reloads and you are now viewing Pave as that person.

What you see while impersonating

A violet border appears around the entire screen, and a banner at the top displays the email address of the person you are impersonating. The banner includes an End impersonation button.

[Screenshot: impersonation banner showing violet border, email address, and End impersonation button]

What you can do while impersonating

You can do almost everything the impersonated person can do, within the scope of their permissions:

• View their data and team rollup in Total Rewards and Team View
• Submit and approve compensation changes in Compensation Planning
• View and manage Visual Offer Letters they own
• Access any page or feature their role has access to

Actions you take while impersonating are attributed to the impersonated person, not to you. For example, if you submit a compensation change while impersonating a manager, it appears as submitted by that manager.

Any emails triggered by your actions (such as export completion or dispatch notifications) are sent to you, not the impersonated user.

What you cannot do while impersonating

• Confirm reward letters. Reward letter confirmation requires the actual recipient to take action.
• Mark reward letters as viewed. Viewing status is tracked per recipient and cannot be set by an impersonator.
• View or update notifications. Notifications are disabled while impersonating. You cannot see the impersonated user's notifications or mark them as read.

Impersonation across tabs

Impersonation applies to all open Pave tabs in the same browser. If you start impersonating in one tab, all other open Pave tabs automatically reload to reflect the impersonated user. Ending impersonation works the same way: all tabs return to your original account.

End impersonation

Click End impersonation in the banner at the top of the screen. Pave redirects you to the Users page as your original account.

Impersonation stays active until you end it, even if you refresh the page or navigate to other areas of Pave.