Super sidebar: Admin impersonation
Challenge
Define impersonation behaviour for the super sidebar.
Exploration
What is impersonation?
Allows Admins on self managed instances to use GitLab on their instance as if they were that use. As described by docs:
An administrator can “impersonate” any other user, including other administrators. This allows the administrator to “see what the user sees,” and take actions on behalf of the user.
Proposal
Recommendation
Although I explored a few different options, my recommendation is we proceed with an adaptation of one of the original proposals.
- Additional 'Stop impersonating' button that uses a blue icon.
- Button has 'Stop impersonating' tooltip.
Why blue? When looking at the colour definitions blue made the most sense to me. This button is designed to show the user they are currently impersonating, which is an active, connected, management state.
Blue indicates a current or active state. It communicates management, progress, connectivity, or organization.
Why using this pattern? I was unable to find feedback that the existing pattern had usability issues. This recommendation uses the same pattern, but without creating bespoke styles. I think this is suitable for shipping.
Prerequisite
A prerequisite of this working on gitlab.com is some changes to the buttons spacing to match the spec. Here is an MR to change that: Reduce spacing of tertiary buttons in the user bar (!115563 - merged)
Visuals
Here's how it would look
Here's how it looks with a custom logo
Here's how it looks on .com on GitLab Next
GitLab Next
With these changes we can also close Super sidebar: GitLab Next (#396690 - closed) as this will be resolved by !115563 (merged) and !113104 (merged).