This article describes how to use Admin Center to create a premium sandbox, work in your sandbox, and create a new sandbox when you need to start a new round of testing. For more information about premium sandboxes, see About the Premium Sandbox.
This article contains the following topics:
Creating a premium sandbox through 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. 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 as little as an hour. A full production 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 create a sandbox
- Before creating a new sandbox, make sure you've configured a default group for your account.
- In Admin Center, click
Account in the sidebar, then select Sandbox > Sandboxes. - Click the Create Sandbox button.
- Enter a Name that describes your sandbox.
- Select your preferred sandbox to set up. You can only select sandbox types that are available in
your plan or that you've purchased as an add-on.
- Blank - A standard sandbox with none of your settings, business rules, or tickets.
- Production copy with no ticket storage - A copy of your production settings and business rules, but no tickets
- Production copy with ticket storage - A copy of your production settings, business rules, and tickets.
- If you selected Production copy with ticket storage, you must also select
the number of tickets to copy to the sandbox.
- Up to 10,000 tickets - The maximum number of unsolved tickets you can copy with the Zendesk Suite Enterprise plan. This is referred to as a partial copy.
- Up to 100,000 tickets - The maximum number of unsolved tickets you can copy with the Zendesk Suite Enterprise Plus plan. This is referred to as a full production copy.
- Click Create.
- You will see a message that your sandbox is being created. When your sandbox is successfully created, a message appears at the top of the page, and the status of the sandbox becomes Active. The sandbox has a unique URL with a ten-digit number after your domain name.
- (Optional) Activate the Zendesk Agent Workspace on your sandbox. It's disabled by default in new sandbox environments.
With your newly-replicated sandbox, you will have an environment that closely mirrors your production instance. This enables you to test out new workflows, give your agents a safe place to train, and provide a high-quality environment for development purposes.
Working in your sandbox
Once you create your sandbox and it's active, you can start working in it. See Creating a premium sandbox through replication above.
To switch to a sandbox from the production instance of Zendesk Support
- In Admin Center, click
Account in the sidebar, then select Sandbox > Sandboxes.
- Click the options menu (
) next to one of your sandboxes, then select Open
Sandbox to launch the sandbox instance in a new browser 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.
Replacing your sandbox
After you're done with a round of testing and updates, you can create a new sandbox for a fresh round of development and testing. Creating a new sandbox is also useful if you mess up and want to start from scratch.
A typical procedure would be to delete the existing sandbox and create a new one based on the settings of your current production instance of Zendesk Support. When you do so, you should consider the effects of creating a new sandbox. To learn more details, see Considerations when creating a new sandbox.
To replace your premium sandbox
- In Admin Center, click
Account in the sidebar, then select Sandbox > Sandboxes.
- Click the options menu (
), then select Delete Sandbox.
- Create a new sandbox using the steps in Creating a premium sandbox through replication.
A new sandbox is created with a new URL.
Considerations when creating a new sandbox
When you create a new sandbox, you need to be aware of the following:
- The sandbox URL will change
- All object IDs in the sandbox will change, for example, ticket field IDs will be different
- Any custom Guide themes will be lost, though they can be exported
- All apps will be removed
- Any sharing agreements will be removed
Remember to coordinate with your internal development teams before you create a new sandbox. If they have an integration with your sandbox, they will likely be making reference to the unique object IDs in the sandbox. You won’t want to surprise them with a deletion and break all of their integrations.
Managing premium sandboxes when upgrading to Zendesk Suite
If you have a premium sandbox and upgrade to a Zendesk Suite Enterprise or Enterprise Plus plan, your sandbox instance remains unchanged until you decide to delete it. After it is deleted, you can create a new premium sandbox of the type included in your Suite plan (metadata, partial, or full). If you've been using metadata premium sandboxes, the Suite Enterprise and Enterprise Plus plans offer you an upgrade to more realistic testing environments using data from your production Zendesk Support environment. For example, if you have a metadata premium sandbox when you upgrade to Suite Enterprise, that sandbox environment remains a metadata premium sandbox. However, after you delete the metadata sandbox, you can create a new partial premium sandbox, which also includes some ticket data. For more information about Premium Sandbox types, see Premium Sandbox set up options.
9 Comments
When a sandbox is created, is the information on what is copied across (along with the new IDs created for all objects copied) retained anywhere?
For example, if I have three Brands in my production environment, the process of creating a Sandbox will copy all three Brands but give them unique subdomains. Is this relationship stored anywhere for reference? As in "myprodbrand.zendesk.com" => "myprodbrand1234.zendesk.com"
And this would apply to any info copied but transformed to keep it unique, as per the considerations above.
It certainly would be extremely useful if it was! It would also mean that there would be a way for any existing sandbox integrations to be kept up to date - the records of the relationships would allow devs to build integrations that can be maintained even if the Sandbox is deleted and re-created (which is inevitable!).
Hey @...! At this time, we don't have a clone (sandbox creation) report like that. However, we do have this recorded as a feature request.
We have Enterprise Suite plan and we have unlimited brands add-on. We have created a premium Sandbox by replicating, and now want to add a brand for testing directly in the Sandbox. We are unable to add a brand, and get the error message "Your account has reached the maximum number of brands for your plan. To add a new brand, you’ll need to remove an existing one or upgrade your account." Why would this be happening? Is there a different limitation for number of brands in the Sandbox vs. Production instance...?
We have the Enterprise Plus Suit plan along with unlimited brands. When making my first premium sandbox replication only 6 brands are replicated.
Is there a way to get all brands replicated or to at least be able to select which brands to replicate?
James Beniston and Sally Ann Dishong.
Contact your sales rep to match unlimited multibrand in your sandbox. It doesn't match the production subscription but can be amended easily.
Hope this helps
Anthony
Can you rename the generated URL in the sandbox?
I'm afraid it's not possible to change the URL of a sandbox account.
Another question along the lines of renaming.
Can you rename the name of the sandbox as displayed in the Admin Center? We have a sandbox called "testing" for example, which I'd like to rename to something more descriptive.
You can rename the subdomain of a paid or trial account, but not a sandbox account. You can check this article for details Renaming your subdomain.
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