Documentation forService Desk

Sandbox

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Introduction

The Service Desk Sandbox is a powerful feature designed to provide users with a secure, isolated environment for experimentation and learning. It allows teams to test configurations refine workflows, and explore new capabilities without affecting their live service desk operations. Your organization might be preparing for a major update or simply looking to innovate. Using a sandbox offers you the flexibility and confidence to make changes safely and effectively.

The Service Desk Sandbox is exclusively for creating and testing configurations in a non-production environment. While it offers a space to safely experiment with workflows and settings, it does not currently support syncing changes from or back to your live instance of Service Desk.

  • If you want any updates or modifications made within the sandbox to be in your production environment, you need to manually replicate them there.

  • If you have a sandbox environment and make changes to the production environment, and you want to see those changes in your sandbox environment, you need to delete the sandbox and create a new one.

SolarWinds plans to add the ability to sync to and from your production environment as a future enhancement. .

Navigation

Setup > Account > Sandbox.

Create a sandbox

You can have only one sandbox at a time, but you can create and delete sandboxes as often as you need to. ESM customers can create one sandbox at the Organization level, and each service providers can then create their own sandbox independent of one other.

  1. Navigate to Setup > Account > Sandbox.

  2. Click Create Sandbox.

    Service Desk begins creating your sandbox. The process can take a couple of hours to complete, depending on the size of your account.

    • If you stay on the sandbox setup/creation page, it will auto-refresh when the sandbox is available.

    • You can leave the setup page without affecting the creation of your sandbox.

    • Service Desk notifies you via email when the sandbox creation is complete.

    • When the sandbox creation is complete, two buttons display:

      • Open Sandbox
      • Delete Sandbox

  3. Click Open Sandbox to open a new tab in your sandbox account.

    • If you are not auto-logged into the sandbox, you need to use your native Service Desk email and password to log in.

    • If you don't have a Service Desk native login, you can reset your password by going to app.samanage.com/login and clicking the Forgot Password link.

    • You can identify the sandbox account two different ways:

      • The banner at the top of the page states:

        Attention: This is your sandbox environment. Return to Live App

      • The URL contains {{youraccountname}}-sandbox.samanage.com.

What to expect to see in your sandbox

Some features are copied to your sandbox from your production account, while others are not.

Items copied from your production environment

The following items are copied from your production environment to the sandbox environment.

Setup

  • Organization & Sites
  • Business Hours
  • Roles & Permissions
  • Users
  • Groups
  • Queues
  • Service Portal
  • Custom States
  • Service Desk Settings
  • Notification Settings
  • Email Sections
  • Categories
  • Custom Forms
  • Custom Fields
  • Field Dependency
  • Dynamic Form Rules
  • Automation Rules
  • Runbooks
  • Global Response Templates
  • Service Level Management

Service Desk

  • Change Catalog
  • Service Catalog

Items not copied from your production environment

Setup

  • Single Sign On
  • Credentials
  • Process Integrations
  • Domain Management
  • Certificate Management
  • Email Settings (Email Authentication)
  • Audit
  • Login History
  • All Integrations
  • Procurement Settings
  • Gen AI Settings
  • Attachment Settings
  • Satisfaction Surveys
  • Notifications
  • CMDB Settings
  • Discovery & Assets

Common questions

Questions Answers
How do notifications work in the sandbox? Notifications are sent to the creator of the sandbox to avoid any unwanted notifications going to users who are not testing in the sandbox.
Where are all my tickets, changes, problems, and other objects? They are safe and sound in your production environment. In your sandbox, you can create tickets, changes, service requests, and other items to test any new configurations you make.
Do changes made on production sync to my sandbox? No, any changes made to production while a sandbox exists are not reflected in the sandbox.
Who has access to my sandbox? Any of your administrators or service agent users can access the sandbox.
Does SolarWinds plan to support syncing changes made in my sandbox account to my production account? Yes, SolarWinds plans to add that ability soon.
If I delete a sandbox, can SolarWinds retrieve the data?

When you delete a sandbox, it is permanently deleted and there is no way for SolarWindsto retrieve the data.