Who Am I? An investigation into R12 UMX Proxy User functionality : Part 1

Just back from a short vacation and I learnt an important lesson.

My tent is NOT waterproof.

Not the best thing to find out at 2.30am on a dark, wet and cold night in the middle of a Farmers field in the English countryside!

A different post from me today.

On my current project, we've been struggling with the requirement to allow Administrators and other Users to perform the functions of another User without knowing their password e.g. submit and review reports, approve documents, perform iprocurement transactions and so on.

My friends at Solution Beacon turned me on to the new R12 User Management (UMX) Proxy User functionality to allow a user to sign on to the E-Business suite and assume ALL the responsibilities of another User WITHOUT knowing their password.

Turns out that this functionality is a perfect fit.... or so we thought!

In this post, I'll walk through the steps to set up the UMX Proxy User functionality. In my next post, I'll discuss the biggest stumbling blocks: auditing and control.


Steps to setup R12 User Management Proxy User Functionality:

Setting up this functionality is actually very simple. To illustrate, I'll refer to two types of E-Business suite Users:
1) MANAGER - this is the User who will delegate responsibility to perform transactions on their behalf to the Administrator user. In my examples, this user name is KWOODROW1.
2) ADMINISTRATOR - this is the user who will sign on to the E-Business suite and assume the responsibilities of the Manager user. In my examples, this user name is JSMITH.

Step 1
- Connect to the R12 E-Business Suite as ANY User (e.g. SYSADMIN) with the responsibility 'User Management' and open the 'Users' form.
- Search for the user name of the MANAGER. In this case, the user name is KWOODROW1.
- Assign the role 'Manage Proxies' to this user name e.g.



Step 2
Now connect as the MANAGER user e.g. KWOODROW1 and navigate to the 'Preferences' form:



Click on the 'Manage Proxies' option and then, the 'Add People' button.

This will allow you to add the User Names of those Users that you wish to perform actions on your behalf:



Step 3
Now, add the user names of all Users that you wish to assume your responsibilities.
In my example, I add the user name of my ADMINISTRATOR JSMITH:


Apply the changes and exit the E-Business suite.

Step 4
OK - now comes the fun stuff.

Connect as the ADMINISTRATOR JSMITH:




Note - the new options 'Switch User' and 'Return to Self' available:



As its name suggest 'Switch User' is the magic button that allows you to 'become' the other User without having to enter their password i.e. JSMITH can become KWOODROW1 and access their responsibility list.

Step 5

Select the 'People Icon' to switch your user to that of KWOODROW1:



Step 6
As if by magic, you are navigated to the home page of the proxied user, can access any of their current responsibilities and can perform action on their behalf in the E-Business that they themself are allowed to perform:


Note - the label 'Logged in As JSMITH Proxy For KWOODROW1':



Step 7
OK - to return to the original user session, select the option 'Return to Self'



That's all there is to it! Powerful functionality - but very simple to set up.

In my next post, I'll look at the Auditing and control options available for this new functionality.