Usage of Sandboxes and Salesforce Partial Data Sandbox Pricing
There are different types of Sandboxes offered by Salesforce to suit to the needs of individual developers and corporate development teams. Usually, Partial data sandboxes may also include all the metadata of your organization and also a sample of the production org data as defined by the sandbox template. In order to create a Partial Copy sandbox, one must first apply a standard sandbox template at the time of creation.
Primarily, a Partial Copy sandbox is the metadata copy of production org, simply like the other options for Developer Sandbox and Developer Pro Sandbox. Adding to it, the copy engine may also sample the data from any production org based on the element defined by the sandbox template. In each of the selected objects in sandbox templates, this sampling may go up to about 10000 records for each sandbox.
- Say for example, if you use a template which consists of accounts to create Partial Copy sandbox, then about 10000 Account records could be copied into the newly created sandbox without copying any other records.
Sandbox copy engine also has a specific strategy to handle the creation of Partial Copy sandbox. This copy strategy can clearly understand data relationships which are custom defined in the production org’s standard as well as custom object schemas. Copy strategy will ensure that the sample records may maintain some valid relationships defined in the custom object and standard scheme of the production org.
- Say, for example, if someone creates a sandbox template which consists of two different custom objects which can be categorized as Master and Detail, then these objects maintain a relationship as Master-Detail, whereas the copy engine will make sure that each sampled Detail record point to a corresponding Master. Copy engine also may understand the relationship between the objects as to whether these are Master-Detail relationship. Copy engine further samples master records and then uses corresponding IDs of master records in order to sample the detail records accordingly.
While using the sandbox templates for the creation of valid subsets of the organizational data, one can most effectively use the Partial Copy sandboxes for development, application testing, or for the purpose of training. The primary task for which partial copy sandboxes are not well suited will be the load testing as well as full performance testing.
Other Uses of Salesforce Sandboxes
If you want to explore Salesforce with its new ideas, but don’t have to tamper the existing database, then the usage of Sandboxes as the test spaces is the ideal move. On Sandboxes, you can try developing new objects or fields or try the page layouts or workflow changes without the need to change your current configuration. However, as we have seen above, all sandboxes are not the same. Primarily, as you have seen above, any sandbox may act as a simple copy of your database to be used for testing.
Usually, when you are working with a Salesforce development consultant to add new functionality to your database, they may first demonstrate the change in a sandbox and test it before it becomes a real part of the live database. There are different sandbox types, which differ in functionality. Apart from the partial data sandboxes, you can find the following options too.
- Developer Sandbox – This doesn’t copy the records, but can easily store up to nearly 200 MB test records.
- Developer Pro Sandbox – It also doesn’t copy the records, but capable of storing nearly 1 GM of the test record data.
- Partial Sandbox – As we have seen above, it can have a sample of the actual database for development and testing purposes.
- Full Sandbox – This includes a comprehensive set of actual data.
When you approach the consultants offering Salesforce consulting, you may find that the Salesforce partial data sandbox pricing a full sandbox is higher than other services.
Which Sandbox to Use?
As we have read above, developer sandbox is a typical copy of the production database with its same configuration, but not the records. Therefore, it includes all the objects, user accounts, fields, page layouts, workflow processes, etc. However, all these without any data at all. You can ideally use these all in order to test innovative ideas to see what difference it makes from the current state of the database. The developer sandboxes can be simply a configured environment that could be set up the same as a real database.
If you want to test some new features or configuration but have the real data in hand, then you have to add it all manually or need to buy a Full or Partial premium sandbox. In this case, you have to decide whether you need to have a handful of records for the purpose or you need all the records available in the live database. So, altogether, unless you have a specific need in hand for actual data in the sandbox, one may just use the Developer sandbox for the testing purpose.
How to Set Up Sandbox?
Even though initially confusing, Sandboxes are actually so easy to set up; however, you may need the assistance of a system administrator to do it. To start with, just go to the Setup and enter “sandbox” at the quick search and you can view what all sandboxes are available to you. You may simply choose to refresh it or just create a new one. Just access the “New Sandbox” option to create new. You can also give it a short name and then choose the “Developer” option to start with. Doing it may take a couple of hours to complete, but you will get an e-mail alert when its created. In order to login to Sandbox, you may just use the Login link next to the name of the sandbox you created.
It is also important to understand the working of your Sandboxes as to how to refresh or sync it with the production database. Once on generating a new sandbox, you will get a copy of the configuration. As time passes, you may find your production database having many things added to it which are not there in the sandbox. The changes to the production database may not propagate automatically to the sandboxes. You may refresh the sandbox, but note that when you do it, you are replacing or erasing whatever exists in the sandbox.
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