Impersonate and Elevate via Server Script

Back to more incredibly useful undocumented APIs in ServiceNow… being able to impersonate a user and elevate to security admin to perform restricted actions via a script.

How To

1. Impersonate

   gs.getSession().impersonate('sys_id_of_user');

2. Elevate

   GlideSecurityManager.get().enableElevatedRole('security_admin');

3. Impersonate back

   The trick here is to store the original user id before you impersonate if you want to impersonate back

   var originalID = gs.getUserID();

   gs.getSession().impersonate('sys_id_of_user');

   gs.getSession().impersonate(originalID); //impersonate back

Example Use Cases

There are quite a number of reasons you might want to impersonate or elevate.

Impersonate

• Approve on behalf of another user

• Activity log, comments, and work notes showing as an automation user

Elevate

• Grant admin roles to user accounts automatically via a script

• Grant yourself snc_read_only

• Modify ACLs via a script

PS. Impersonations are tracked in the system logs, in case someone may be up to something, always good to check there.