Switch user from within embedded SharePoint form?

Question

I work at a university where we're using SharePoint forms for much of our workflow for students and faculty. A large problem arises when the user's browser automatically logs them in to SharePoint for the embedded form based on who is logged into the computer. Students end up submitting forms while logged in as a different user, so we need a way to easily switch the user from within the embedded form's webpage.

• We cannot disable the automatic authentication from Internet Options as that is used thoroughly in many other capacities on campus.
• I have tried using a hyperlink to the _layouts page [sharepointserver]/_layouts/closeConnection.aspx?loginasanotheruser=true&source=[externalpage], but it appears SharePoint does not like redirecting to external, non-SharePoint pages. The external page is the same URL as the page with the embedded SP form.
• The form is embedded through our CMS via an iframe. CMS has many restrictions and does not allow things like javascript.

Do you have any creative solutions to enable switching users (or prompting for login) from within an embedded form? Thanks for your time!

Answer 1

If you are explicitly listing sites that you can pass credential too via your intranet zone - you can exclude just SharePoint - which will then prompt to logon the user. Now if you have multiple students come in and browser cache is not cleared - the next user will still be signed in as the previous student.

If that is not the case - then you can run IE as a different user. This may not be possible, because if it was I assume you could just have the students log on directly with their accounts.

For 2013 there is not really another option, when using SP forms directly.

An alternative depends on what you use the workflow for. Does it really need to be run in that specific users context? If not - you can create a column/field on the form that has the student select them selves. You can then update the workflow to work with this value, thought it will still run under the context of the other user.