What is password emulation?

Ryan Morlok

As it relates to WestlawNext/Cobalt.

Unknown

OnePass has implemented a much more secure feature for this where the customer must give the user permission. Since WLN is moving to COSI, and sign in to WLN with a prism username/password will no longer work, this new feature will need to be used.

James Greene

I believe that we use this in order to emulate a real end user's account (permissions, etc.) and optionally requests access to their data. Mostly used by Foldering (and perhaps now Data Room, too), IIRC, and allows us to track instances of us accessing user data for auditing purposes.

Diane Swearingen

Password emulation is a feature within WestlawNext that enables a user with specific access (primarily just Customer Technical Service users) to log on with their credentials, and then enter the OnePass username of another user whom they wish to "emulate". When an "emulation" session is created, a flag is set in the SessionBindings object, and the emulatee's (the password being emulated) prism guid is available in a special field in the Session object. Various modules have checks on the emulation flag and go through special processing during an emulation session, so that the behavior seen in WestlawNext should (mostly) mimic what the emulatee would see in a real session. (In other words, when CTS emulates an external user's password, their session should behave the same way that the external user's session would.) Not all features are available to an "emulated" session, but feature access controls, content display access controls, preferences and inPlan processing (warnings, etc.) should definately mimic what the external user would see. If the emulator (CTS rept) chooses to, History or other Folder data can be copied from the emulatee (external user) during the signon process, and the emulation session can mimic behavior in Foldering.

James Greene

Sounds like a nice setup. Good idea, as usual.

James Greene

Accept Diane's answer as it is clearly superior.