Sandboxes

Sandboxes provide safe environments for development and testing that are separated from the production environment. They allow object definitions and platform elements to migrate to and from the production environment, and between sandboxes.

About Sandboxes

When you log in to the platform, you log into your organization's tenancy. (Basically, your organization is a tenant in the platform.) When you set up a sandbox, you create a "sub tenant" that can interact with the main tenancy, and with other sub tenants.

In a sandbox, you can modify and test an application without changing the production version. When the application is ready, it can be migrated to a Q/A sandbox to further assure quality, before finally migrating to the main tenancy--the "production" system that everyone in your organization is using on a day-to-day basis.

To use a sandbox, you log into it, giving the username and password of a user defined in that sandbox. (The initial sandbox admin-user is created automatically. But you can change the name of that user anytime.)

Considerations

• Sandboxes can be created only when logged into the main tenancy. They cannot be created from a sandbox.
• All capabilities that are enabled in the main tenancy are enabled in the sandbox, when the sandbox is created. (After creation, changes made to either one do not affect the other.)
• Data does not migrate, only data structures (object definitions) and other platform elements. To copy data between sandboxes, use the Export and Import mechanisms.

Working with Sandboxes

Users that have the Manage Sandboxes permission can create and delete sandboxes.

Creating a Sandbox

Tip: Change the username so that the project name comes first. That way, your browser can auto-complete the username after the first few characters you type.

Using Your a Sandbox

When creating an application, you'll probably stay in the admin-user role, tacking on all of the required development permissions, so you can easily develop features and make any system-level changes that need to be made, without switching roles.

Deploying a Package

If you created the application in your sandbox, you'll need to create a Package that contains all of the application elements. On the other hand, if you acquired the Package from the main tenancy or from a development sandbox, you only need to make sure that anything new you've developed in the sandbox is included in the package.

Once the package is ready, you're ready to deploy it:

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Tip: Best Practice: When deploying to a development sandbox, make sure the package is unlocked, so its contents can be changed as needed. When deploying to a Q/A sandbox or the production tenancy, make sure the package is locked, to prevent the structure of the application from being changed accidentally.