This article describes how to use and manage a premium sandbox. For more information about premium sandboxes, see About Zendesk sandbox environments.
This article contains the following topics:
Working in your premium sandbox
After you create your premium sandbox and it's active, you can start working in it.
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 icon (
) 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. If you create or update automations or triggers in your sandbox, you can deploy them directly to production when you're ready. All other changes must be manually recreated in your 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.
- The sandbox URL changes
- 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
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 premium sandbox.
A new sandbox is created with a new URL.
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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