Learn about the 4 types of sandboxes that Salesforce offers
Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2025 4:27 am
Having functional, user-friendly, and secure test environments is essential in any industry. You may be an administrator who configures different options and adds new features to an organization, a team that needs training, someone who needs to learn how to work with the software and practice, or a development team that is dealing with the emergence of new requirements or customizations. In any case, you need an independent work environment. In Salesforce, these environments are known as sandboxes.
What is a Salesforce Sandbox and how is it useful?
A sandbox is a copy of your production organization, completely isolated. Because they are created as separate instances, different types of sandboxes can be used for a variety of purposes, such as training, testing, or development, without risking impacting your production environment. Depending on the Salesforce edition you have, the number of each type of sandbox you have available by default will vary.
A copy of your organization in a separate canada whatsapp lead environment can be used for multiple purposes:
As development, testing, and pre-production or staging environments.
For testing new Salesforce versions.
To carry out training.
To develop or test new functionalities that, once ready, will be applied in production.
What are the different types of sandboxes that Salesforce offers?
Salesforce.com offers four types of sandboxes, the availability of which varies by Salesforce edition:
Developer Sandbox
Designed for developers, it provides an isolated environment for development and testing. It includes a copy of your production organization's configuration metadata and can be updated once per day. It can be considered a very basic type of sandbox and is available in all Salesforce editions, providing you with 200 MB of storage for both files and data.
Developer Pro Sandbox
Not included by default in all Salesforce editions and with a storage availability of 1GB, this sandbox is essentially very similar to the previous one. The advantage of the large storage capacity is that the Developer Pro Sandbox allows you to handle a greater number of tasks, whether development, quality control, integration testing, and user training.
Partial Copy Sandbox
Designed with everything needed to function as a test environment. In addition to a copy of your organization's metadata, it includes a sample of data and both standard and custom objects that you have previously selected. This preconfigured selection of data is known as a sandbox template. A Partial Copy Sandbox, which can be updated every five days, offers up to 5 GB of data and the same file storage capacity as your production organization.
Full Sandbox
Specifically designed for load testing, performance testing, and as a pre-production environment, such an environment can only be achieved by making, as the name suggests, a complete copy or replica of your production organization, covering all metadata and data. If you would like to use it for more specific tests that do not require all the data, you will need to apply a sandbox template.
When creating a Full Sandbox, you'll need to consider how to handle field history tracking and Chatter activity. If you have these enabled, you might consider the following options:
Leave the default settings, which ignore field history tracking and copying Chatter activity data.
From the period you have recorded for field history tracking, you can specify from which day you want to copy to your sandbox, a selection that cannot exceed 180 days. Remember to take into account the amount of data that this copy will consume.
Only copy Chatter activity data if it is essential for your testing, as it can take up a lot of space.
Useful information about Salesforce sandboxes
As long as they are available for editing, you can purchase more sandboxes.
You can match licenses you have in production with licenses in sandboxes. This process will remove all licenses in sandboxes and not in production and add licenses in production and not in sandbox.
You should frequently check the amount of storage available in your sandbox, as you will not receive any notifications when you reach the limits.
You can purchase multiple licenses for each type of sandbox. These licenses have hierarchical power. For example, with the Full sandbox license, you can create any type of sandbox.
As part of automatic maintenance of your system, Salesforce may delete any sandbox that has not been logged into for 150 consecutive days. You will receive a notification approximately 30 days before this period is reached.
The update interval for each sandbox is calculated from the time the copy process begins.
Sandbox templates control what data is copied into a sandbox.
What is a Salesforce Sandbox and how is it useful?
A sandbox is a copy of your production organization, completely isolated. Because they are created as separate instances, different types of sandboxes can be used for a variety of purposes, such as training, testing, or development, without risking impacting your production environment. Depending on the Salesforce edition you have, the number of each type of sandbox you have available by default will vary.
A copy of your organization in a separate canada whatsapp lead environment can be used for multiple purposes:
As development, testing, and pre-production or staging environments.
For testing new Salesforce versions.
To carry out training.
To develop or test new functionalities that, once ready, will be applied in production.
What are the different types of sandboxes that Salesforce offers?
Salesforce.com offers four types of sandboxes, the availability of which varies by Salesforce edition:
Developer Sandbox
Designed for developers, it provides an isolated environment for development and testing. It includes a copy of your production organization's configuration metadata and can be updated once per day. It can be considered a very basic type of sandbox and is available in all Salesforce editions, providing you with 200 MB of storage for both files and data.
Developer Pro Sandbox
Not included by default in all Salesforce editions and with a storage availability of 1GB, this sandbox is essentially very similar to the previous one. The advantage of the large storage capacity is that the Developer Pro Sandbox allows you to handle a greater number of tasks, whether development, quality control, integration testing, and user training.
Partial Copy Sandbox
Designed with everything needed to function as a test environment. In addition to a copy of your organization's metadata, it includes a sample of data and both standard and custom objects that you have previously selected. This preconfigured selection of data is known as a sandbox template. A Partial Copy Sandbox, which can be updated every five days, offers up to 5 GB of data and the same file storage capacity as your production organization.
Full Sandbox
Specifically designed for load testing, performance testing, and as a pre-production environment, such an environment can only be achieved by making, as the name suggests, a complete copy or replica of your production organization, covering all metadata and data. If you would like to use it for more specific tests that do not require all the data, you will need to apply a sandbox template.
When creating a Full Sandbox, you'll need to consider how to handle field history tracking and Chatter activity. If you have these enabled, you might consider the following options:
Leave the default settings, which ignore field history tracking and copying Chatter activity data.
From the period you have recorded for field history tracking, you can specify from which day you want to copy to your sandbox, a selection that cannot exceed 180 days. Remember to take into account the amount of data that this copy will consume.
Only copy Chatter activity data if it is essential for your testing, as it can take up a lot of space.
Useful information about Salesforce sandboxes
As long as they are available for editing, you can purchase more sandboxes.
You can match licenses you have in production with licenses in sandboxes. This process will remove all licenses in sandboxes and not in production and add licenses in production and not in sandbox.
You should frequently check the amount of storage available in your sandbox, as you will not receive any notifications when you reach the limits.
You can purchase multiple licenses for each type of sandbox. These licenses have hierarchical power. For example, with the Full sandbox license, you can create any type of sandbox.
As part of automatic maintenance of your system, Salesforce may delete any sandbox that has not been logged into for 150 consecutive days. You will receive a notification approximately 30 days before this period is reached.
The update interval for each sandbox is calculated from the time the copy process begins.
Sandbox templates control what data is copied into a sandbox.