Impersonate another user using the Web API

There are times when your code needs to perform operations on behalf of another user. If the system account running your code has the necessary privileges, you can perform operations on behalf of other users.

Requirements for impersonation

Impersonation is used to execute business logic (code) on behalf of another Microsoft Dataverse user to provide a desired feature or service using the appropriate role and object-based security of that impersonated user. Impersonation is necessary because the Dataverse Web services can be called by various clients and services on behalf of a Dataverse user, for example, in a workflow or custom ISV (Independent Software Vendor) solution. Impersonation involves two different user accounts: one user account (A) is used when executing code to perform some task on behalf of another user (B).

User account (A) needs the prvActOnBehalfOfAnotherUser privilege, which is included in the Delegate security role. The actual set of privileges that is used to modify data is the intersection of the privileges that the Delegate role user possesses with that of the user who is being impersonated. In other words, user (A) is allowed to do something if and only if user (A) and the impersonated user (B) have the privilege necessary for the action.

How to impersonate a user

There are two ways you can impersonate a user, both of which are made possible by passing in a header with the corresponding user ID.

1. Preferred: Impersonate a user based on their Microsoft Entra ID object ID by passing that value along with the header CallerObjectId.
2. Legacy: To impersonate a user based on their systemuserid, you can use MSCRMCallerID with the corresponding guid value.

In this example, a new account entity is created on behalf of the user with a Microsoft Entra ID object ID aaaaaaaa-0000-1111-2222-bbbbbbbbbbbb.

Request:

POST [Organization URI]/api/data/v9.2/accounts HTTP/1.1  
CallerObjectId: aaaaaaaa-0000-1111-2222-bbbbbbbbbbbb  
Accept: application/json  
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8  
OData-MaxVersion: 4.0  
OData-Version: 4.0  
  
{"name":"Sample Account created using impersonation"}  

Response:

HTTP/1.1 204 No Content  
OData-Version: 4.0  
OData-EntityId: [Organization URI]/api/data/v9.2/accounts(00000000-0000-0000-000000000003)  

Determine the actual user

When an operation such as creating an entity is performed using impersonation, you can find the user who actually performed the operation by querying the record including the createdonbehalfby single-valued navigation property. A corresponding modifiedonbehalfby single-valued navigation property is available for operations that update the entity.

Request:

GET [Organization URI]/api/data/v9.2/accounts(00000000-0000-0000-000000000003)?$select=name&$expand=createdby($select=fullname),createdonbehalfby($select=fullname),owninguser($select=fullname) HTTP/1.1   
Accept: application/json  
OData-MaxVersion: 4.0  
OData-Version: 4.0  

Response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK  
Content-Type: application/json; odata.metadata=minimal  
ETag: W/"506868"  
  
{
  "@odata.context": "[Organization URI]/api/data/v9.2/$metadata#accounts(name,createdby(fullname,azureactivedirectoryobjectid),createdonbehalfby(fullname,azureactivedirectoryobjectid),owninguser(fullname,azureactivedirectoryobjectid))/$entity",
  "@odata.etag": "W/\"2751197\"",
  "name": "Sample Account created using impersonation",
  "accountid": "00000000-0000-0000-000000000003",
  "createdby": {
    "@odata.etag": "W/\"2632435\"",
    "fullname": "Impersonated User",
    "azureactivedirectoryobjectid": "aaaaaaaa-0000-1111-2222-bbbbbbbbbbbb",
    "systemuserid": "00aa00aa-bb11-cc22-dd33-44ee44ee44ee",
    "ownerid": "00aa00aa-bb11-cc22-dd33-44ee44ee44ee"
  },
  "createdonbehalfby": {
    "@odata.etag": "W/\"2632445\"",
    "fullname": "Actual User",
    "azureactivedirectoryobjectid": "bbbbbbbb-1111-2222-3333-cccccccccccc",
    "systemuserid": "11bb11bb-cc22-dd33-ee44-55ff55ff55ff",
    "ownerid": "11bb11bb-cc22-dd33-ee44-55ff55ff55ff"
  },
  "owninguser": {
    "@odata.etag": "W/\"2632435\"",
    "fullname": "Impersonated User",
    "azureactivedirectoryobjectid": "aaaaaaaa-0000-1111-2222-bbbbbbbbbbbb",
    "systemuserid": "00aa00aa-bb11-cc22-dd33-44ee44ee44ee",
    "ownerid": "00aa00aa-bb11-cc22-dd33-44ee44ee44ee"
  }
}

See also

Impersonate another user
Impersonate another user using the SDK for .NET
Perform operations using the Web API
Compose Http requests and handle errors
Query Data using the Web API
Create a table row using the Web API
Retrieve a table row using the Web API
Update and delete table rows using the Web API
Associate and disassociate table rows using the Web API
Use Web API functions
Use Web API actions
Execute batch operations using the Web API
Perform conditional operations using the Web API