Note: This article is on Freshservice's current Sandbox version. Click here to learn more about its phase-out plan. The new Sandbox is now enabled for Enterprise plan customers. Learn more about the new Sandbox here.

Note:  Refer to the below solution article for the sandbox created after Jan, 2023. 
           Refer to this solution article to know about sandboxing in workspace. 


As an admin, making changes to automation rules and configurations in your production account can be tricky. However, you don’t want to be restricted from trying out new ways or improve existing configurations set up in your service desk. This is why we’re bringing Sandbox to Freshservice.


With Sandbox, you can create an out-of-the-box environment to test out workflows and configurations before syncing them to your Freshservice account (a.k.a your production account) while keeping away from ramifications. Though Sandbox is a mirror of your Freshservice account, tickets, customer data or contact will not be copied.

What are the modules that get copied to your Sandbox account?


Business Hours, Departments & department fields, Requester Fields, Roles & Permissions, Agents, Groups, CAB, Locations, Form Fields(Tickets/Problems/Changes/Releases), Service Catalog, SLA policies, Workflow Automators, Change lifecycle, Asset Automations (Deletion of asset types and fields, product, vendor, and domain is not possible), Business Rules, Custom Objects.


What are the modules that do not get copied to your Sandbox account?


Tickets data, Ticket list views, Portals - logo, favicon, customization, Gamification, Apps and integrations, SSO and SSL settings, Asset Data, Knowledge Base.


How to set up your Sandbox account?


1.Navigate to Admin -> Account Settings -> Sandbox.


2. In the Sandbox Details tab, click on Create Sandbox and once the Sandbox account is created, admins will be notified via email. This will take some time based on your service desk configuration.


3. Click on Open Sandbox to log in to your Sandbox account in a new tab. Here, you can test out configurations before syncing them to your Freshservice account


Note: The banner on top of the screen will indicate if you’re in your Sandbox account. Also, the URL of your sandbox account would look like this https://companyname-fs-sandbox.com.



How to sync changes from Sandbox to my Freshservice account?

  1. Once you test out the configurations in Sandbox, go to your Sandbox account, navigate to Admin -> Account Settings -> Sandbox.

  2. Click on View Changes to fetch all the changes made in your Sandbox account.





3. You can then click on Regenerate Change List -> Regenerate to ensure all the changes created are included in the change list before syncing them.

4. The generated change list captures the real time differences between the sandbox and production. With the help of this realtime change list you can choose to advance the changes from the sandbox or keep the production version as the sync source.

5.  Use the Select all dropdown to bulk-select the sync source (production or sandbox) for the individual changes in the change list. 


6. After selecting the sync source, click on the Confirm changes button to save the selected options in the change list.



Note:  The change lists generated (change difference in sandbox and production) will be calculated in real-time. For e.g: If a workflow’s state is modified in the sandbox, it will be compared with the live status of the corresponding workflow in production, as opposed to the state of the workflow at the time when the sandbox was created. 







Note: If you click the Regenerate Change List before Test sync, you will need to repeat steps 4,5 and 6 mentioned above



7. Now, go ahead and click on Test Sync to ensure there aren’t any errors while syncing the sandbox data.


8. In case duplicate entities are created with the same name in both your Sandbox account and your Freshservice account, they’ll be shown as Warnings in your Sandbox account.


To address a warning,

  • You can manually change the name of the duplicate entity either in your Sandbox account or Freshservice account

  •  You can proceed with Sync Now (this will automatically discard the name of the entity in your Sandbox account)

9. Once test sync is successful, you can click on Sync now to sync your changes to the Freshservice account, and your sandbox account will automatically get destroyed. If your sync was unsuccessful after all conflicts and warnings being resolved, please do reach out to support@freshservice.com.


Note: The sandbox account created will automatically be destroyed in 180 days



Tips:

1. Ensure you or other admins do not make any changes in the production environment when the sandbox is active. 

2. Always regenerate changes: with the latest data in the sandbox account once you fix the conflict errors. 

3. Make sure other admins have finished making all changes before you sync your changes to your production account so that all admin changes are copied. 

4. Keep your sandbox account live for short periods of time. This prevents differences from adding up between your two accounts.
5. Plan your sync from the sandbox to the production account during off-peak hours.



Where can I view all the sync history?


  • You can navigate to Admin -> Sandbox -> Sync History tab in your Freshservice account and check the sync history for any particular date.


How to deactivate my Sandbox account without syncing changes?


As admins, you might not always want to sync the changes to your Freshservice account. In that case, you could also directly destroy the Sandbox created by navigating to Admin -> Account Settings ->Sandbox -> Destroy Sandbox from your Freshservice account.


What are the changes skipped in Sandbox?


Few cases such as deletion of an Agent/ CAB/User/Group/Location/Department/Service item/ Service category are not captured in the change list and will not be synced to your Freshservice account as deleting such key entities would have a huge impact on existing tickets in your Freshservice account.