Sandbox environments in practice

A sandbox is an environment where you can try things without touching production. Many companies have one but only use it when a consultant asks. The article goes through how many sandboxes you are entitled to, how a copy of production behaves and what is different from production, so that you can use them for testing, training and troubleshooting. There is a short list of good habits at the end.

How many you have

According to Microsoft Learn, each Premium or Essential subscription entitles you to one production environment and three sandbox environments at no extra charge. If you may need more production environments, they can be bought through a CSP partner, and each additional production environment comes with three additional sandboxes.

Check your own quota on the Capacity page in the admin center, as it depends on your licences and add-ons.

Two kinds of sandbox

A new sandbox gets demo data. A copy of production gets your own data and the same extensions. For testing updates, troubleshooting and training with real figures, you use a copy. To learn something new or try an app without your data, an empty sandbox can be enough.

Sandboxes can be created on preview versions when Microsoft opens for them. The preview and the sandboxes built on it are removed 30 days after the official release is available. Remember to give each sandbox a name that tells its purpose, so that nobody posts real figures in the wrong environment.

What is different from production

Microsoft Learn lists a number of precautions when an environment is copied. Jobs in the job queue are stopped. Outbound HTTP calls from extensions are blocked until they are approved per extension. Webhooks, the Dataverse connection and other integrations are switched off, and email accounts of the types Microsoft 365 and Current User are deleted.

You therefore cannot count on a sandbox sending emails or calling external systems without setup. That is deliberate, so that test data does not reach real customers.

Limitations and good habits

Microsoft Learn says that sandboxes run on a different performance tier in Azure than production. They are therefore not suitable for performance measurements. The sandbox database also cannot be exported. If you want data out, you can use Excel or a configuration package, or copy to a production environment.

A copy of production uses storage, which counts towards your total quota.

Use sandboxes actively, but keep them tidy.

Name them by purpose, for example Test and Training.
Refresh the copy from production when a test needs to be current.
Delete sandboxes that are not used.
Give access and permissions only to the users who need them.
Write down which integrations are switched on in each sandbox.
Never use real customer emails in a test without checking the setup.

Users and access

When users are created with a Business Central licence, they get access to all environments under the same licence by default. You can restrict that by changing their permissions or removing their access in that environment. Consider limiting access to a sandbox with real customer data to the people who will test.

Remember that personal data in a copy is covered by the same rules as in production.

If something goes wrong in a sandbox, you can delete it and start over. That is the whole point. If something goes wrong in production, you can use a sandbox to recreate the situation and try a fix before you correct production.

Help

Addverk is a new Business Central partner. See our upgrade service if you want help setting up and using sandboxes.