The Support Enterprise plan provides two help desk instances: a customer-facing production instance and a development instance known as the sandbox. Use the sandbox to test, learn, and make mistakes before making your changes public. For example, you can use the sandbox to test and fine-tune new templates and branding without affecting your customers. You can create a new sandbox anytime you want, but you can only have one at a time.
After you're done testing and deploying your changes, you can reset the sandbox for a fresh round of development.
This article contains the following topics:
How the sandbox works
The sandbox takes the following settings from your production instance of Zendesk Support. This matching ensures your starting point is as close to the current production instance as possible.
- Templates (standard emails, welcome emails, etc.)
- Branding (colors, account names, etc.)
- Settings (channels, agent permissions, etc.)
- Customer lists
- Add-ons
Any changes you make in the sandbox are not copied to your production instance. Once you're satisfied with the changes, you must reproduce them manually in the production instance. If you need to configure additional syncing from production to your sandbox, you can do so using our REST API.
The production instance owner is listed as the sandbox owner by default. This is true even if another admin resets the sandbox.
The sandbox does not replicate the following items:
- Help Center content and customizations
- Zendesk Talk data
- Zendesk Chat data
- Security settings (including SSO)
- API tokens
- Apps and integrations
- Conditional fields
- Roles and groups
- Business Rules: Triggers and Automations
- Views
- Macros
- Custom Fields: ticket, org, user
- Tickets, end-users, orgs, data
For more information about the Premium Sandbox, see Testing changes with the Premium Sandbox.
If you want to buy the Premium Sandbox, contact your Zendesk sales representative, or email support@zendesk.com.
Creating a sandbox
Before using your sandbox you must initialize it. The sandbox is created with settings from your current production instance of Zendesk Support.
To create a sandbox
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Manage > Sandbox.
- Click the Create my Sandbox button.
When your sandbox is successfully created, a message appears at the top of the page, and new sandbox information appears at the bottom. The sandbox has a unique URL with a ten-digit number after your domain name.
Working in your sandbox
Make sure you initialize the sandbox before using it for the first time. See Create your first sandbox above.
To switch to the sandbox from the production instance of Zendesk Support
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Manage > Sandbox.
- Click the Copy button to save the new URL to your clipboard, or click Open in new tab. You can also bookmark the sandbox and access it from your browser.
- Log in to the sandbox with your normal administrator credentials.
- Make changes, test, and fine tune.
Sandbox changes are not copied to the production instance. Once you're satisfied with the changes, you must reproduce them manually in the production instance.
Resetting your sandbox
After you're done with a round of testing and updates, you can reset your sandbox for a fresh round of development and testing. Resetting is also useful if you mess up and want to start from scratch.
Resetting the sandbox deletes the existing sandbox and creates a new one based on the settings of your current production instance of Zendesk Support. See How the sandbox works.
To reset the Enterprise sandbox
- Switch to the production instance of Zendesk Support.
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Manage > Sandbox.
- Click the Delete all edits and reset sandbox.
- In the warning window, click Reset sandbox. Or, click Cancel to discontinue the process.
When the sandbox is successfully reset, a new sandbox is created, and a new URL is assigned to it.
71 Comments
Hey Karen,
Have you made a lot of changes in your Sandbox account that resetting it would not be an option? I did some digging and it looks like resetting the Sandbox account can fix this issue, however, all customizations options made to your Sandbox account would be deleted.
Let me know if this isn't an option for you.
Thanks!
I just created our sandbox today. My hope was to have the Guide portion mimic what is in our production Help Center site. Instead, it comes in with a blank slate. Is there a way to reset it to mimic what it is in our production Help Center site?
Hi Sandy,
No, there is not. You would need to manually re-create everything in your Help Center in your Sandbox.
I think it is really crappy that I pay 10k a year and don't have a sandbox.
I have some major integration that I have written but have to test it at 3am in the morning so I don't disturb the users. Maybe if there were a way to test the site without publishing would be ok as well.
Hello Chuck,
So you should be able to use the preview mode to see changes made as an end-user, so you don't impact your users while you make changes on your end. I've gone ahead and linked an article that breaks down this process in further detail.
Previewing Guide as an end-user in the old theming experience
Best regards,
Devan
Hello Chuck,
We can sync your instance to a second Zendesk dev environment if you're running Zendesk Professional
https://premiumplus.io/sandbox-syncing
It only requires a second Zendesk environment with a single license and allows for testing without disturbing the live setup
Sandy Inserra, you could use the API to copy content from your production instance to your sandbox. But you'd need to have some programming skills to do it.
Hi. For some reason when i go to Manage>... I can't see the Sandbox option to create a sandbox.
Is there anything special I need to define in order to see it?
Are you running Zendesk Enterprise?
I am not sure ( need to check with the account owner), but it was my understanding that there's a basic sandbox available for all accounts (according to the article).
Did I get it wrong?
Yair Abelson, you must have at least the Enterprise plan in order to have the sandbox. This article is only relevant to the Enterprise plan.
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