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Impersonation Flow for Azure AD B2C

Impersonation flows are common for many business needs. We see this for users that manage other users either through functions within an application or services such as customer support. Whatever the reason may be, it can be easily achieved using Azure AD B2C flexible Identity Experience Framework with a few simple changes. Below are the minimum items required for this scenario.

Common Scenarios

  1. Customer Service Representative requires assisting a user and requires to log into the application on the behalf of the user. The CSR wants to see exactly what the user sees.
  2. Financial Investor manages on the behalf of their customers. As such, a bank or an investment firm may require these individuals to log into their service/application to manage their customers information.

Impersonation flow

When you run the impersonation policy, you first need to sign-in with your own credentials. On the second page, provide the email address of the user you want to impersonate. B2C checks whether the user exists in the directory. If yes, B2C issues and access token with the email address of the impersonated user impersonatedUser.

A diagram flow of an admin credential sign-in then, credentials of targetted user being impersonated.

  1. User (a customer service representative) sign-in with local or social account.
  2. After the user sign-in, the AAD-UserReadUsingObjectId technical profile reads the extension_can_impersonate extension attribute from the directory.
  3. The next orchestration step (step number 6) checks whether the user is allowed to impersonate (extension_can_impersonate value is equesl to 1). If not, SelfAsserted-ErrorMessage technical profile displays an error, preventing the user from issuing an access token.
  4. Next orchestration step asks the user to provide the email address of the user to be impersonated, by calling the SelfAsserted-TargetEmailExchange technical profile. This technical profile also checks if the impersonated user exists in the directory, and return the user's email address.
  5. On the last step Azure AD B2C issues the access token, with the claims specified in the RelyingParty XML element, including the impersonated user's email address - impersonatedUser claim type.

Note: You can also prefill the email address of the user to sign-in on behalf of, by sending in the authorization request the &[email protected] query string parameter. The SelfAsserted-TargetEmailExchange technical profile reads the value of {OAUTH-KV:targetEmail} to set the default value.

Authorization

The authorization is based on the value of the extension_can_impersonate claim type. If the value is 1, the user is allowed to impersonate. You should use Azure AD Graph API to set the value of the extension attribute. For example, send an HTTP PATCH request to update the user's profile:

PATCH https://graph.windows.net/yourtenant.onmicrosoft.com/users/user-id
{
    "extension_clientId_can_impersonate": "1"
}

Replace:

  • yourtenant, with your tenant name.
  • user-id, with the user object id, or UPN.
  • clientId, with the extension attribute application client id.

For more infomation, see:

You can also use other authorization method, such as calling a REST API to check is user is allowed to impersonate.

Handling users with Social Accounts

By default this sample will not work for users who login with a social account or a federated Identity Provider. This is beacuse the Admin locates the account by the users Email address, which is stored in signInNames.emailAddress. Federated accounts do not populate the property by default. This allows federted users to sign up for a Local Account with the same email as their federated email.

If this functionality is not desired, it is possible to write the federated account's email address into signInNames.emailAddress when the account is created using the AAD-UserWriteUsingAlternativeSecurityId technical profile.

Community Help and Support

Use Stack Overflow to get support from the community. Ask your questions on Stack Overflow first and browse existing issues to see if someone has asked your question before. Make sure that your questions or comments are tagged with [azure-ad-b2c]. If you find a bug in the sample, please raise the issue on GitHub Issues. To provide product feedback, visit the Azure Active Directory B2C Feedback page.

Notes

This sample policy is based on SocialAndLocalAccounts starter pack. All changes are marked with Sample: comment inside the policy XML files. Make the necessary changes in the Sample action required sections.

A standard to manage impersonation flows is currently in development and has not been finalized. This sample does not reflect the final product or guidance. You should monitor on this progress and plan to make changes to your design as standards of the industry changes. Review the OAuth 2.0 Token Exchange Draft to track the latest changes.