Discover the Sandbox Seeding Solution
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe Own Sandbox Seeding.
- Summarize the six steps of Sandbox Seeding.
- Explain the business benefits of using Sandbox Seeding.
Own Sandbox Seeding
Own Sandbox Seeding is a powerful and intuitive solution for Salesforce that lets you define, fine-tune, and automate the seeding of perfectly sized data sets to Developer, Developer Pro, or Partial-Copy sandboxes from production environments or other sandboxes.
With Sandbox Seeding, you solve common seeding challenges by:
- Maintaining data relationships: Select one or more root objects and immediately view all its related objects without needing to confirm the data relationships in your source environment. Include any number of relationships up or down the hierarchy, and those relationships remain intact once seeded.
- Ensuring data relevancy: Seed data directly from production or any sandbox and further refine your ideal data set with filters. Confirm your seed data by viewing a sample of records with a single click. Confirm your seed data size as you build your template and before seeding to ensure it will fit in your sandbox.
- Preserving data freshness: Create reusable templates that define the precise data you’d like to seed in each project. Update template filters with a few clicks to add or remove data based on new requirements, and then reseed to update the destination.
- Protecting data confidentiality: Apply anonymization templates by object and field to mask sensitive data such as Personal Identifiable Information (PII) or Protected Health Information (PHI) before it’s seeded to its destination.
Ready to populate your Salesforce sandboxes with Sandbox Seeding? It’s a cinch when you follow six simple steps.
Sandbox Seeding Success in Six Steps
Step 1 | Create your seed templates. Use seed templates to define the exact objects and records to seed to your sandbox. Create a new template, or clone and edit an existing one, to anonymize and seed data from your production org or another sandbox. Create and name templates like Account-Contact with account and contact records so they can be easily reused in the future. |
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Step 2
| Define your test data. Identify the root object and add any number of parents, children, or additional roots to your template. |
Step 3
| Fine-tune your test data. Refine your seed template to include exactly the seed data you need. |
Step 3a
| Filter records. Hone the number of records, limit to the newest records, or sample for coverage by selecting any number of each record type for a given object. |
Step 3b
| Review your seed template. See the exact data that will be seeded and make any necessary adjustments. |
Step 3c
| Optimize the size of your data. Monitor the seed data size at each step to ensure it will fit within the target sandbox destination. |
Step 4
| Anonymize your data. Create an Anonymization template starting with your root object. Replace field values containing sensitive personal data with the recommended anonymized value or random text, or simply blank it out. |
Step 5
| Seed your data. Select your destination and choose from a variety of seeding methods to give you more control over what’s in your sandbox. |
Step 6
| Reuse your templates. After you’ve created your ideal template, reuse or clone it to accelerate your development and testing process. Even better, reuse the same template repeatedly to establish the same training environments at the start of each onboarding process for new hires. |
To learn more about how Own Sandbox Seeding works, watch this short video.
If you’re an admin or dev, following these six steps allows you to innovate quickly with less risk… but the benefits of Sandbox Seeding don’t stop there. Your business as a whole will see a big boost.
The Business Benefits of Sandbox Seeding
Own Sandbox Seeding:
- Shortens release cycles. Admins and devs can quickly create ideal development and testing environments with intuitive, easy-to-use dropdown menus, and automated processes get teams up and running fast.
- Improves code and configuration quality. Admins and devs can focus on building the best solutions with production-like data in sandboxes, which means fewer bugs and errors down the line.
- Enables safe scaling and innovation. Admins and devs can reduce errors and privacy risks with anonymized data and precision seeding of development, testing, and training environments.
If you want to further safeguard your innovation, pair Sandbox Seeding with Own Recover, a backup-and-recovery solution that proactively protects deployments before and after critical releases with on-demand backups and Smart Alerts. To learn more, take the Backup and Recovery with Own module on Trailhead.
Resources
- Video: Own Sandbox Seeding Demo
- Data Sheet: Own: Sandbox Seeding
- Trailhead Module: Backup and Recovery with Own
