Zendesk Support Enterprise includes a standard sandbox instance where you can test changes, experiment with integrations, and provide training for your agents. However, the standard sandbox does not provide a replica of your production instance. It starts as a nearly empty instance with only a few things copied over from your production instance, including administrator level users, email templates, branding, and basic settings.
If you, as a Zendesk administrator want to test a change to a workflow, you must manually copy over all of your current ticket fields, forms, user and organization fields, triggers, automations, and so on. Additionally, if you want to test against ticket data, you must recreate the tickets in the sandbox, which can be time consuming and prone to error.
The Zendesk Premium Sandbox mirrors a production instance in configuration and, potentially, data. This allows you to:
This article contains the following topics:
For more information about creating and managing premium sandboxes, see Managing Premium Sandboxes. If you want to buy Premium Sandbox, contact your sales representative or Zendesk Customer Support.
What is Premium Sandbox?
Premium Sandbox is an add-on you can purchase for your existing Support Enterprise sandbox. The add-on enables you to copy content from the production instance to the sandbox instance when you create your sandbox. While Enterprise sandboxes limit you to copying only certain information such as settings and templates, Premium sandboxes allow you to copy the configuration and tickets from your production environment.
The Premium Sandbox add-on also allows you to create and run more than one sandbox at a time.
When creating a Premium Sandbox that you can choose from these setup options: metadata, partial, and production. The content copied for all levels includes the following:
- Brands
- Dynamic content
- Ticket fields
- Ticket forms
- User fields
- Organization field
- Targets
- Groups
- Custom roles
- Shared views
- Shared macros
- Triggers
- Automations
- Agent level users
- Group memberships
When you set up the partial or production versions of Premium Sandbox, the following objects can be copied:
- Users
- Organizations
- Tickets
Comparing the sandbox set up choices
This table describes the different choices for setting up your sandbox:
| Standard | Premium - metadata copy | Premium - partial copy | Premium - production copy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Templates and branding | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Settings | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Add-ons | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Roles and groups | Y | Y | Y | |
| Business rules: triggers and automations | Y | Y | Y | |
| Shared views & macros | Y | Y | Y | |
| Ticket forms | Y | Y | Y | |
| Custom fields: ticket, org, user | Y | Y | Y | |
| Tickets, end-users, orgs, data | Up to 10,000 tickets | Up to 100,000 tickets |
Most add-ons are copied to your sandbox. However, the Answer Bot add-on is not copied.
Understanding replication
Replication occurs automatically when you create a sandbox through Admin Center. The replication retrieves data from the production instance and then creates the configuration and content in the sandbox, creating a new subdomain. The process will not affect the performance of your production instance. Data is only retrieved from the production instance, so nothing will be added, updated, or deleted there. The configuration of your sandbox instance will change rapidly while the replication is occurring so it is best to not use it during the process.
The time to complete a replication varies depending on the amount of content involved. A simple metadata copy with a small amount of fields and business rules can take less time. A full copy with 100,000 tickets and their associated users and organizations can take a week or more to complete. When the replication is complete, the status of the sandbox changes to Active.
To complete the replication, Zendesk creates an internal copy of the data to be migrated. Once this migration is complete, this copy is deleted. A deleted Premium Sandbox is not recoverable.
Your choice of sandbox determines the maximum number of replications you can perform per month, as well as how long your sandbox and its data are persisted in the event you do not use your sandbox for a significant period of time. When you do not use your sandbox, the sandbox, and its data are deleted after a 30-day or a 90-day period of disuse.
This table describes the maximum number of replications you can perform per month for a sandbox, and how long sandboxes are retained:
| Standard | Premium - metadata copy | Premium - partial copy | Premium - production copy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maximum number of replications per month | 1 | 5 | 10 | 15 |
| Sandbox data retention | 30 days | 30 days | 90 days | 90 days |
Limitations on replicated data
The replication will be as close of an exact copy of the production instance as possible. However, there are several situations where the copy cannot be exact:
- Sandbox products apply to the Zendesk Support product and do not include, for example, Guide or Help Center content.
- Brands are replicated, but since brand names need to be unique across all Zendesk instances, they cannot be an exact match. The brand names will be modified to contain a unique string.
- User emails will be invalidated before being added to the sandbox instance by the use of the @example.com domain. This is to prevent emails from being inadvertently sent to your users. This includes both agents and end-users. An administrator can reverse the invalid emails for testing by editing the users' email addresses.
- APIs are enabled, but API tokens need to be recreated.
- Apps and EAP functionality are disabled within the sandbox.
- Open tickets are migrated, but archived closed tickets, linked incident tickets, and ticket sharing agreements are not.
- Targets requiring a password will be replicated, but they will have invalid credentials and be in a disabled state.
- Any objects that are broken in production will not be replicated. For example, a trigger with a condition which refers to an organization that no longer exists will not be replicated to the sandbox.
- External email addresses are not copied to the sandbox.
- Changes made within a Premium Sandbox are not copied automatically into the production account and must be manually reproduced within the production account.
- Only the items identified in this article are replicated.
11 Comments
Wondering why this is a separate product, and not just the "standard". Surely, everyone wants to test against a true representation of their instance?
Hi Chris,
Sandbox users do have the ability to test with settings similar to their Production site, however, unless you have the add-on you would need to manually configure this through the agent interface or the Rest API.
There are some cases where customers will use their Sandbox account to test account features without affecting their Production site. Therefore duplicating account settings may not be necessary in that scenario.
I understand the need for having this process automated but unfortunately this is only available with the Premium Sandbox add-on. If you're interested in having this feature available on the standard sandbox I would encourage you add your feedback to our Support Product Feedback forum for our Product Managers to review.
Appreciate you taking the time to share this with us!
This add-on feels more like it should be a standard feature or included at least on top tiers. Does these sandbox options allow to move instance from sandbox to production?
In todays world, ALL major providers provide a sandbox comprehensively, how you guys have not done this yet is beyond me.
We are having to look at other alternatives or build one if Zendesk don't get their act together. This fact alone could be leading many organisations to drop this service.
I find this utterly disappointing as a developer and its causing major issues with our system and your integration.
Hopefully Zendesk will sort this out before they start to loose a lot of customers.
Agree with Paul, this should be standard, especially given how much we already pay for our Enterprise Agent licenses. Pricing model from Zendesk actually forces people to look at alternatives and we will be doing exactly that next year.
How much does this cost? I can't find pricing anywhere! There's no way I'll talk with a Sales Rep either.
What about Conditions within Forms? How are those replicated/ copied from production to sandbox?
Not having this feature as standard stimys belief really. But then Zendesk know it would be useful, so charge for it. Simples.
Unfortunate that even a one-time copy of these settings requires a complete service level upgrade. There isn't even an individual price. I DO think that this should be standard but I'm even willing to pay for it once, if needed. I'm NOT willing to pay a significant increase to an ongoing fee for this, especially if all I need is the settings to be copied once. What I want doesn't seem to be an option. Subscription pricing equals a poor customer experience in this situation.
Is it possible to update a sandbox instance with production settings? I know it says that changes in production don't passively get synced into the sandbox instance, but is it possible to trigger this manually?
Hey Lanny,
There's no manual button that will allow for you to sync the data from your production account to the Sandbox account. This is a one time sync only that occurs when you create your Sandbox account.
The only other option you would have would be to use the Rest API along with a script to create those settings in your Sandbox account.
Let us know if you have any other questions!
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