Since I wasn't alone in needing this slightly-obscure trick in the last couple weeks, I thought I'd share this for discussion with everyone.
Every so often, you will get a user asking for help because they're seeing something like "An error has occurred and we are working..." or "Whoops...something went wrong...". Alternatively, they may run into issues with something just refusing to render correctly, as I did this week with a user's 'My Projects' widget that just showed the grey loading bars forever. In my experience, this usually relates to a filter or grouping issue where whatever item the page is trying to use is corrupted or unreachable somehow. I've done it to myself trying to be clever in text-mode and managed to effectively lock myself out of the Portfolios screen completely for awhile.
In those instances where absolutely nothing else works, that's when you can try the 'resetUser' URL trick here. Reset a User's Preferences
When logged in as the user, you can use that command in your browser to force-reset all of their preferences to clear out whatever item is causing the issue. This is an option to use carefully, and with warning to the user before you do it when possible. The command will reset all views, filters and groups back to the system defaults, clear recent items, and clear their global nav options back to either their layout template or system defaults.
Most critically it will set their email notification preferences back to the system defaults as well, which is the dangerous part as it can cause them to miss notifications they had been expecting. When I have to use this to help someone, I get a screenshot of their email notification settings first so I can put those back. I don't consider that something reasonable to expect them to fix, especially when the error they were having was something totally unrelated in the first place.
Hope this reminder helps someone else too.
