Allow someone to post as another user?

[CarolineS]

Hello!

We have a blog in which a marketing associate will be posting on behalf of a marketing leader. How can I set up this marketing associate to be able to post as the leader?

We have SSO so I can't just give the marketing associate the leader's credentials.

I could allow the marketing associate to "switch user" but I'd rather not; they should only be able to post as the leader and as themselves.

I could give the marketing associate access to the "Manual migration" feature which allows you to post as someone else from the admin console, but this seems a little ugly / techy and probably also requires me to give her more admin permissions than I'd like.

Other ideas? How have you handled this?

Cheers!

[JasonHill]

Post it yourself using the switch user functionality if you're not prepared to give the power to anyone else?

[CarolineS]

But I just finished a months-long effort to get someone besides me to do it! 😆 

I can give "switch user" permission if needed; was hoping for some better / more limited solution though.

Cheers!

[SohilM]

@CarolineS Ability to Ghost Author, post on behalf of another member is an enhancement we have in the roadmap this year, targeted tentatively in the first half. After the enhancement is rolled out, in your case, the market leader would be able to specify who can post articles on behalf of him/her/them. 

[CarolineS]

That’s great news @SohilM!

[StanGromer]

This thread makes me happy as our team was just discussing some of this.

@SohilM Since you brought it up that awesome news, I'll take the opportunity to ask - Any chance you'll be including the ability to alter who the author was after the fact in that enhanced workflow? IE; We post an article on behalf of Timmy, our CEO. 6 months later, Timmy the CEO is gone. We now want to change the post to reflect our new CEO Tommy. Can we edit the article and change who the author was?

[SohilM]

@StanGromer Yes, ability to change the author is also part of this year's roadmap. 

[StanGromer]

@SohilM 

[jamiemccardle]

I hope I'm on the right path here but we have a group of users that we want to write articles and be the article author for certain categories but we don't want them to be Article Publishers in that category.  Here's what we do: 

We set up a role at the Community level and assigned these users to that role.  That role can only have Article Publisher permissions in a certain tkb that can only be viewed/accessed by the same users with this role.  The users with this role will write their articles here, we'll review, then move the articles to the area in which they should be housed.  It shows that person along with the person that moved the article as article contributors.

[JasonHill]

Awesome news @SohilM. Ability to change blog author will be very welcome functionality.

Thanks for the update.

Jason

[imran_patharwat]

@jamiemccardleSeconded. I would recommend the same. @CarolineS I think using roles or aliases with specific responsibilities is a good practice in any such scenario. Aliases work best to hide any internal changes (such as changed posts or employees).

E.g. A helpdesk alias who does not have any front-end work in community but it is used by all helpdesk team who onboard employees and provide community access too. This can also be achieved by assigning a role which has this capabilities to the helpdesk users.

Solution (until Khoros provides solution in roadmap):

Create a user "Marketing Leader" with same posting credentials as the marketing leader's. Work with your IT and create an alias email ID (e.g. ml_community@org.com) that can skip SSO or has a backdoor entry.

Share these credentials with anyone who you want to have the abilities.

The CEO user is also a good idea. What I believe is SSO is a vast enough technology to accommodate your requirements. However, if this is handled by your IT, it is only possible if either an IT associate is your friend or the IT team is extremely co-operative 😉

[caroleighdeneen]

@SohilM @JohnD @SuzieH 

Any update on this request. Other than switch user is there a way to post a blog post on someone's behalf?

Or to switch author?

Thank you.

[JohnD]

@RahulHa - can you provide an update on this?

[RahulHa]

As captured here , it's in our backlog as part of future enhancements. 

Sharing the gist: The thinking is that userA would be able to manage a list of users (userB, userC) that could post on their behalf. Admins could set this up for some users as well. Then when userB is publishing a blog they would have the ability to publish as themselves (default) or select userA. With handling around considerations such as which all users (A or B or both) need to be notified for updates and how attributions (kudos, leaderboards), assignments such as badges should be handled. 

[caroleighdeneen]

thanks @RahulHa And timeframe on when development will start?

[VikasB]

This would be an intersting feature and everyone would love it. 

@caroleighdeneen If this is urgent for you, you can achieve this using Khoros standard API. Using API, you can post a message on behalf of someone else. 

<#assign subject = "Test Article" />
<#assign body = "Here is test article" />
<#assign post_time = "Feb 06, 2017 06:30:40 PM" />
<#assign post_time = post_time?datetime />

<#-- Add Blog -->

	<#assign addBlog = restadmin("blogs/id/reads_and_resources/messages/post?message.body=${body?url}&message.subject=${subject?url}&message.author=/users/login/John&message.post_date=${post_time?iso('UTC')}") />

Here is a similar solved discussion
https://community.khoros.com/t5/Developer-Discussion/Can-I-post-a-new-message-with-a-V1-API-with-a-p...

[caroleighdeneen]

Excellent to know, thank you @VikasB🙂