Maybe I’m the only one who didn’t know, but there is a feature in Google Chrome that allows you to create personas and it may have just saved years of my life. The feature is intended to allow sharing between family members, for instance, and will store information specific to the person’s history of using the browser with a specific persona.

If you’re a Dynamics 365 or Office 365 Developer or Admin or Customizer that has more than one login for your 365 environment you’ve certainly dealt with this issue before. It’s particularly frustrating for sales reps and customer support representatives that need to login as a different user on the same computer. Chances are your go to solution is to start a new Incognito or In-Private browser in order to login as a different user. Other options include closing all browsers, clearing your cache and if all else fails using a different web browser all together.

The reason this is a game changer for Dynamics Professionals is you can create a persona for every environment of Microsoft 365 that you use as well as one for your self. No more need to login / logout / clear cache / go incognito. You can just create a new persona for the specific user you want to login as and then select it from the list. The next time you go back to that persona you will be logged in already and your session will be saved.

What this means, especially for me, is that I can demo multiple users, with different roles and security access, interfacing with Dynamics simply by launching a new browser session using their persona.

Here’s how you set it up and how to switch personas.

1. In Google Chrome click on your user’s Avatar in the top right of your browser
   
2. Click Manage People
   
3. Click Add Person
4. Give the Person a Descriptive Name and select an Avatar for that user
5. Click Add
6. A new browser will open with your new Avatar in the top right corner.
7. Now go login to Office or Dynamics as the user you want to associate with your new persona.

When you click the Avatar Icon in the top right corner you will see your new persona as well as your regular persona. The next time you come back to that persona you created you won’t have to logout / login. You’ll be authenticated automatically as the user you intend.

This is a really simple feature, but a huge time saver and a nice way for sales professionals, who have to imitate personas in their demonstrations, to tell the audience “now I’m going to switch personas to be Jane. Jane is the sales manager for my organization…”