Introducing Multiple Sandbox Types and Support for Module's Data Population

Register here for the upcoming Focus Group webinar on Multiple Sandbox | Help documentation to learn more about the new enhancements

Hello everyone,

Sandbox in CRM is a testing environment for users to create and test new configurations like workflow rules, approval processes, blueprints, etc. and deploy them into the production account without interrupting the existing processes.

Until now we supported one sandbox environment.

However, this new update will allow users with Manage Sandbox permission to:

Create multiple sandbox environments with both CRM users and developers.
Create sandboxes with specific CRM configurations.
Populate data from CRM account to sandbox.

Creating Multiple Sandbox Environments

Creation of multiple sandboxes is now possible to carry on tests for different purposes. For example, the sales teams can create a sandbox to exclusively test the workflows. Whereas, a sales manager can use a dedicated sandbox account to test user roles and profiles. Besides, the marketing teams can use another sandbox environment, to test the importing of recent campaigns launched and associate it with the respective existing deals in CRM.

These sandboxes for workflows, administration, and campaigns lets the different teams in the organization to test, identify issues and fix them before taking to the actual working setup.

Depending on your requirements give sandbox access to the developers and CRM users to carry on testing. The sandboxes shared with the CRM users will appear automatically inside their account's Sandbox listing page.

As for the invited developers and users, the sandbox URL will be sent to their respective email, using which they can access the sandbox. When more than one sandbox is shared, it gets listed in a dropdown under their profile settings. From here, they can easily switch between multiple sandboxes and also choose to set a specific sandbox as default using the Manage option.

Sandboxes with specific CRM configurations

Earlier all configurations were available in the sandbox account by default, and the users didn't get to choose a particular configuration to test. Now, users can choose the configurations they want to test.

For example, to test only user related configurations, you can check the required ones under Users and Control, while creating your sandbox.

Data Population for testing

CRM data can be populated inside the sandbox environment which saves the time spent in creating new records and allows to test in real time with existing customer data.

Populating the CRM data can be done in two ways during the creation of sandbox accounts:

1. Sample CRM data population - This option populates 10 sample records for the Leads, Accounts, Contacts, Deals, Tasks, Calls, Meetings, and Notes modules.

2. Partial account data population - This option lets you test with your account's real time data by populating the recently created records. The modules and the count of these populated records needs to be mentioned at the time of creating the sandbox. As you choose modules the associated lookup up modules that are marked as mandatory will also be populated.

For example, a 100 recent records for Leads and Deals modules can be populated. While choosing Deals, it's mandatory look up Accounts will be automatically checked. Thus on creation, the sandbox will be populated with the 100 recent records of these three modules.

Note that during every sandbox rebuild, populated data will reload newly. Also, please make a note that changes made to the populated data cannot be moved to production.

In addition to the above updates, listed below are some UI changes.

Sandboxes will be listed with their details categorized and displayed as No. Of Changes, Accessible To, Created By and Status.
A Status toggle is introduced where you can activate or deactivate a sandbox. This is in addition to the Deactivate button inside the sandbox configuration page.
The Refresh Sandbox button is renamed as Rebuild Sandbox.

P.S: In the upcoming update for Sandbox, we are working to combine the Deployment Logs of multiple sandboxes into one and display them within a single view. We will keep you posted on this.

That's a wrap! Kindly read the help doc for more details.

Cheers,

Prasana

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