Testing changes in your sandbox (Enterprise)

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
• Creating a sandbox
• Working in your sandbox
• Resetting your sandbox

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.

You can start a trial in your sandbox for another Zendesk product, such as Chat or Talk. Any trial is subject to limitations and has a fixed time limit, as specified when you sign up for the trial.

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
• Twitter user identities

Tip: If you want to replicate more information from your production instance, you can purchase Premium Sandbox as an add-on. This extends the capabilities of the built-in sandbox to replicate additional items, including business rules, views, macros, groups, orgs, custom fields, users, user fields, and tickets. For more, see Testing changes with the Premium Sandbox. If you want to buy Premium Sandbox, contact your sales representative or email [e-mail].

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

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > Sandbox.
2. 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

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > Sandbox.
2. 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.

   

3. Log in to the sandbox with your normal administrator credentials.
4. 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

1. Switch to the production instance of Zendesk Support.
2. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > Sandbox.
3. Click the Delete all edits and reset sandbox.

   

4. 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.

   

Tip: If you're using the Premium Sandbox, you'll need to contact Zendesk each time you reset it to replicate the information from your production instance.