Introduction
Talking about Salesforce, it is a cloud-based software company that has headquarters in San Francisco, California. It provides an array of services for CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools for all the different business segments like sales, marketing, etc. These tools enable them to provide a personalized and smooth experience to all their customers as well as the leads.
Now, let’s discuss Salesforce Sandbox in detail.
What is Salesforce Sandbox?
A Sandbox is a known isolated testing environment wherein the users can execute or run programs and files without affecting either the application or the system on which they have their live data. It is mostly used by software programmers to run a new programming code.
So, a sandbox creating a developing and testing environment within Salesforce is further termed as a Salesforce Sandbox.
Why should I test in Salesforce Sandbox?
The benefits of testing through salesforce sandbox are as follows:
- With Salesforce, you can use the sandbox for testing, development, and research without the worry of losing data in your production organization.
- You can plan and schedule the upcoming releases in Salesforce according to your requirements.
- After the updates come, you have the option to test it properly before letting it change your production organization. This further gives a sense of data security too.
- Lastly, Sandboxes become easy to create while using Salesforce. Also, there are several ways to create it.
Different Salesforce Sandboxes Types
Salesforce provides majorly four types of Sandboxes. They are briefly discussed below:
1. Developer Sandbox:
A Developer Salesforce Sandbox provides an isolated environment to all applications and systems until they are ready to be shared. Further, it gives you 200 MB of storage for use. It is free of cost.
2. Developer Pro Sandbox:
A Developer Pro Sandbox provides the same functionality as the Developer Sandbox, with addition to increasing file and data storage. This one gives 1 GB of data storage to use. It can handle more tasks mostly based on development and quality assurance for testing and training. Further, it is also free of cost.
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3. Partial Copy Sandbox:
In simpler words, Partial Copy Salesforce Sandbox is actually Developer Sandbox in addition to the data you will include in the sandbox template. Partial Copy sandboxes provide 5 GB of data storage and are not free of cost.
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4. Full Sandbox:
This sandbox provides an exact replica of your entire production organization along with all the data. It is fully intended to be used as a testing environment. Furthermore, it provides data storage equivalent to your production organization and is also not free of cost.
The above-mentioned sandbox types are discussed in a tabular chart as follows:
Salesforce Developer Sandbox Considerations
Before the creation, developing, and testing in the new Salesforce Sandbox environment, you need to make sure of the below-mentioned considerations:
Customer Data:
In Partial or Full sandbox, it is very necessary for you to remember that the sandbox contains partial or full details of customer data. This could include bank-related information such as account details and credit card details. You need to keep an eye on them especially while making any updates.
Syncing:
The organization ID of the sandbox is different from that of the production organization. So, in turn, when a sandbox is created, the data does not get updated automatically or synced in the organization simultaneously.
Estimated Completion Time:
The estimated time for the completion of any project is driven by many factors. It can take hours, days, or even months to complete, depending on the size of data sets in the sandboxes. There are several factors that determine the estimated time until completion.
Refreshing:
While refreshing, you need to remember one important thing. When you refresh, a copy from the current production environment is made. This implies that you can lose the data and configuration if the current production organization doesn’t have it.
Email Deliverability:
Sandbox email delivery is set to “System Email-only” by default. You can easily change it to “All Mail”, in case you want to test specific email features in Sandbox.
Appending Email Addresses:
In all the user emails, a “.invalid path” is automatically appended or added at the end of the email. In case you want all users to receive system-generated emails from the sandbox, you can update their email addresses. This will remove the “.invalid” tag at the end of the emails.
Licensing the Application:
Wherever there is a requirement for user licenses, additional testing may be required during the testing phase. For the same, you should plan to add extra time to your schedule for such testing.
Batches and Scheduled Jobs:
Before moving further, you should make sure that there are no scheduled jobs running during your testing. Also, you should identify whatever is not required for the sandbox environment but still has been copied from the production organization.
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Payment Gateways:
You should always remember that all the payment gateway records are sent to “test payment gateways”. For the same, the checkbox “Test Endpoint” is always disabled.
Using Real Data for Testing:
You should always try to use real sample data while testing in the sandbox. This is to ensure that the sandbox systems will perform the same way as it would do in a live situation.
Conclusion
To sum up, Salesforce Sandbox would really prove as an asset to your business. You can make multiple copies of your production organization and that too in separate environments. The purpose of the same could be anything like testing, developing, or training. But, the important point is that you can do all this without compromising your actual work.
