Categories Community English Sign in Zendesk Help Zendesk help Admin Center Using Admin Center Managing accounts and billing Testing changes in your standard sandbox Charles Nadeau Edited 1 month ago Zendesk Documentation Team Follow Quick Look: Admin Center > Account > Sandbox > Sandboxes Zendesk accounts provide two help desk instances: a customer-facing production instance and a test environment instance known as the standard sandbox. Use the sandbox to test, learn, and make mistakes before making your changes public. For example, you can use the sandbox to test and fine-tune new templates and branding without affecting your customers. You can create a new sandbox anytime you want, but you can only have one sandbox at a time. If you want to replicate information from your production instance or need more than one sandbox at a time, you can upgrade to a Zendesk Suite Enterprise or Enterprise Plus plan to get Premium Sandbox. After you're done testing and deploying your changes, you can reset the sandbox for a fresh round of development. You manage your sandbox in Admin Center. This topic describes how to use Admin Center to create and work with your sandbox. This article contains the following topics: How the sandbox works Creating a sandbox Working in your sandbox Replacing your sandbox How the sandbox works The sandbox takes the following settings from your production instance of Zendesk Support. This matching ensures your starting point is as close to the current production instance as possible. Templates (standard emails, welcome emails, etc.) Branding (colors, account names, etc.) Settings (channels, agent permissions, etc.) Any changes you make in the sandbox are not copied to your production instance. Once you're satisfied with the changes, you must reproduce them manually in the production instance. If you need to configure additional syncing from production to your sandbox, you can do so using our REST API. You can start a trial in your sandbox for another Zendesk product, such as Chat or Talk. Any trial is subject to limitations and has a fixed time limit, as specified when you sign up for the trial. These trials are maintained as separate accounts. They are not included as part of the sandbox. The production instance owner is listed as the sandbox owner by default. This is true even if another admin creates or replaces the sandbox. The standard sandbox does not replicate the following items: Help Center content and customizations Zendesk Talk data Zendesk Chat data and customizations Security settings (including SSO) API tokens Apps and integrations Conditional fields Twitter user identities Zendesk Support triggers, automations and custom fields Sandbox replication does not include items like business rules, views, macros, groups, orgs, custom fields, users, user fields, and tickets. Creating a sandbox Before using your sandbox you must initialize it. The sandbox is created with settings from your current production instance of Zendesk Support. To create a sandbox In Admin Center, click the Account icon () in the sidebar, then select Sandbox > Sandboxes. Click the Create Sandbox button. Enter a Name that describes your sandbox. Click Create. You will see a message that your sandbox is being created. When your sandbox is successfully created, a message appears at the top of the page, and the status of the sandbox becomes Active. The sandbox has a unique URL with a ten-digit number after your domain name. Working in your sandbox Once you create your sandbox and it's active, you can start working in it. See Creating a sandbox above. Note: If you are using Zendesk messaging, you may need to take additional steps to include that functionality in your sandbox. See Using Zendesk messaging in your sandbox. To switch to the sandbox from the production instance of Zendesk Support In Admin Center, click the Account icon () in the sidebar, then select Sandbox > Sandboxes. Click the options menu (), then select Open Sandbox to launch the sandbox instance in a new browser tab. You can also bookmark the sandbox and access it from your browser. Sign in to the sandbox with your normal administrator credentials. Make changes, test, and fine-tune. Warning: Sandbox changes are not copied to the production instance. Once you're satisfied with the changes, you must reproduce them manually in the production instance. Replacing your sandbox After you're done with a round of testing and updates, you can create a new sandbox for a fresh round of development and testing. Creating a new sandbox is also useful if you mess up and want to start from scratch. You can have a single sandbox at a time. A typical procedure would be to delete the existing sandbox and create a new one based on the settings of your current production instance of Zendesk Support. See How the sandbox works. To replace your sandbox In Admin Center, click the Account icon () in the sidebar, then select Sandbox > Sandboxes. Click the options menu (), then select Delete Sandbox. Create a new sandbox using the steps in Creating a sandbox. A new sandbox is created with a new URL. Yes 4 No 8 Return to top 8 Comments Sort by Kim Nylander 5 months ago Comment actions @... It would be great to see that article you liked to. Unfortunately, I get an error message that says I don't have permission. Is there any update on being able to deploy from Sandbox to Production? Yes 0 No Dave Dyson 5 months ago Zendesk Community Manager Comment actions Hi Kim – I've updated the link in Jessie's earlier comment, as it was pointing to an older post that had been archived. Here's where to add your use case: Need functionality to move changes from Sandbox to Production Yes 0 No Kim Nylander 5 months ago Comment actions @... Thank you! Much appreciated. Yes 0 No Charlie 3 months ago Comment actions Hey @..., I don't seem to have permission to view the product feedback page - any idea why? We're preparing to refresh our sandbox now, and it's a big headache - a refresh option that would refresh business rules and ticket behavior settings without wiping URL, API tokens, OAuth clients, and all of these other things that various testing integrations depend on would really be great. Yes 0 No Dave Dyson 3 months ago Zendesk Community Manager Comment actions Hi Charlie, we often will archive old product feedback threads that haven't had any comments recently. I've un-archived it, so now's your chance! The link should work again. Yes 0 No Nathania 1 month ago Comment actions Our team is using Sandbox to build out a chatbot. We've been able to create an API client in the production environment but when we created a new sandbox the API client is not copied over. How can we use API in a Sandbox setting? Does the API not copy over or function in Sandbox? Yes 0 No Eric Nelson 1 month ago Zendesk Developer Support Team Comment actions Hey Nathania, When you're referring to an 'api client' are you referring to an api token or the ZAFClient? Appreciate the clarification! Have a wonderful day! Eric Nelson | Manager - Developer Advocacy Yes 0 No Oscar Alberto Guzman 1 month ago Comment actions Hello! I have an enterprise account and I just created a sandbox. The problem that I saw was that I wasn't able to access to Ticket Fields because that option doesn't appear. I know there are limitations, but if we want to replicate the same ticket structure, how I can do it? Yes 0 No Please sign in to leave a comment. Related articles Billing FAQ and resources Switching among Zendesk products I can't access the Sandbox account Contacting Zendesk Customer Support Best practices for removing agents Zendesk 989 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94103 Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | System Status Powered by Zendesk