A sandbox is a test environment with varying degrees of similarity to your production environment. You can use the sandbox to learn about new features and experiment with new settings without affecting your production environment. Zendesk has two types of sandbox environments: standard and premium. This article describes how to create and use standard sandboxes.
This article contains the following topics:
Support customers who want to replicate information from their production instance, deploy tested triggers and automations to production, or need more than one sandbox at a time, can upgrade to a Zendesk Suite Enterprise or Enterprise Plus plan to get Premium Sandbox.
Creating a standard sandbox
To use a standard sandbox, you must initialize it. The sandbox is created with settings from your current production instance of Zendesk Support. Before you initialize your standard sandbox, make sure you're familiar with the key facts about sandboxes and understand what data is and isn't replicated for standard sandboxes.
To create a standard sandbox
- In Admin Center, click
Account in the sidebar, then select Sandbox > Sandboxes.
- Click the Create Sandbox button.
- Enter a Name that describes your sandbox.
- 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.
![](https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/ac_account_sandbox_create_3A.png)
Working in your standard sandbox
To open the sandbox from the production instance
- In Admin Center, click
Account in the sidebar, then select Sandbox > Sandboxes.
- Beside the name of the sandbox you want to open, click the options menu (
), 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.
- Sign in to the sandbox with your normal admin credentials.
- Make changes, test, and fine-tune.
Replacing your standard 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.
You can have a single standard sandbox at a time. 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. See About Zendesk sandbox environments.
If you aren't ready to replace your sandbox, but want it to reflect changes to your Zendesk subscriptions, you can sync product and add-ons.
To replace your sandbox
- In Admin Center, click
Account in the sidebar, then select Sandbox > Sandboxes.
- Beside the name of the sandbox you want to open, click the options menu (
), then select Delete Sandbox.
- Create a new sandbox using the steps in Creating a standard sandbox.
A new sandbox is created with a new URL.
43 comments
Gabriel Manlapig
Creating a Sandbox only copies the owner and all existing administrators' credentials. In this case, the owner or any administrator who has access to the Sandbox will have to manually add you as a member of the Sandbox account.
Ask the owner or an admin of your account to open the Sandbox link and follow the steps in Adding agents and administrators.
For more information, please see article below:
I can't access the Sandbox account
I hope that helps!
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Rich Andersen
Jahn Thanks Jahn,
Is there any way to preview changes made to Ticket Forms? I've edited one of the fields in one of our forms and want to see how it's going to look and work before replicating on the live instance.
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Jahn
Yes, same on the previewing Help Centre.
![](/hc/user_images/J71y4JuNhp4sxA8cDNoXQg.png)
![](/hc/user_images/3_Ipxegkj-NZgxUIClD25A.png)
Change the preview role to End User then click the "Submit a Request" and this will pretty much show you how the form will look like for end users.
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Rich Andersen
Hi Jahn, Unfortunately I can't see the changes. When I click Customize should that be on the live version of Help Centre or in Sandbox?
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Jahn
Hey Rich Andersen - where did you make the changes with the ticket form? Sandbox or Live Environment?
If Sandbox then it should be in Sandbox and likewise with the live environment.
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CJ Arevalo
Hi - I created a Premium Meta Sandbox but when I went to Guide, to preview the changes, it says that its not available. How can I preview the changes in Sandbox?
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Jahn
CJ Arevalo - you need to enable Guide in your sandbox. If you are the account owner then it's much easier but if not you need to ask the account owner to enable it.
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4408868866970/comments/4408862485402
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Deke Marquardt
Hi! If I made some changes in the Sandbox that is different from the current testing environment and I go live with a new support form that is integrated with the online support form and Salesforce, would all new production happen within the current production environment or whatever is created in the Sandbox?
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Noly Maron Unson
Hi Deke,
I may need more clarification on your question but the main rule is that 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.
Also, any changes made to the production instance are not carried over to the Sandbox after it is already created.
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Efrat Barak Zadok
Can I create a new sandbox out of my current Premium sandbox?
My use case:
I want my premium sandbox to be updated with my production data.
But I want to make sure all the settings and configurations I have done on it are kept.
So since I need to delete it in order to create a new and updated premium sandbox - I dont see another way how to do that
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Destiny
Thank you for your message. I grasp that you are looking to establish a new sandbox by making a replica of your existing Premium Sandbox.
Regrettably, as it stands, such an action cannot be undertaken. Cloning is limited to the production environment. In the event that your production environment mirrors your Premium Sandbox, this would faithfully replicate all elements, including the subscription and any additional features.
Your feedback is important to us, hence I suggest to initiate a discussion under the General Product Feedback forum within our community. This enables you to connect with other users who may have similar requirements and to brainstorm potential alternatives. Topics that gain significant traction are often highlighted for our product managers' attention during roadmap discussions. This initiative gathers customer insights to inform our product development teams.
We deeply appreciate customer insights. Your engagement and advocacy in our forums play a pivotal role in shaping the future functionalities of Zendesk.
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Nicole Orbe
I wish this were available to non-enterprise plans. You have a standard and premium sandbox option so why not make standard available to lesser plans?
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David Hall
Hi Nicole, thank you for the feedback. We will take into consideration when we next review our plans.
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