Add best practices regarding sandbox refreshes

[mvogelgesang]

Salesforce allows you to store information in custom settings and other areas which does not pass down to sandboxes upon refresh. Strategies include identifying which Accounts to copy into a sandbox, custom settings, environment-based credentials, etc.

[mvogelgesang]

Considerations should include:

• How teams should identify parts of their application which do not transfer upon sandbox refresh
• How to toggle settings and data on a per-app basis for refreshes
• Granting access to users, does it make sense for all Admins to have access on all sandboxes?

[virtix]

@mvogelgesang More very good ideas. Thanks! Does SF have a list of the settings and other things that do not pass down on refresh?

[mvogelgesang]

@virtix I have found a partial list here, https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=data_sandbox_implementation_tips.htm&type=0&language=en_US. Some key findings include:

• "Customer Portal users aren’t copied. However, the copy process does copy the Customer Portal licenses, so you can create Customer Portal users in these sandboxes as needed." If teams want to have Customer Portal users on the sandbox, they will have to be created manually or by programmatic means.
• "User email addresses are appended with an example domain (@example.com), and the original @ sign is replaced with =. This modification ensures that the system ignores these email addresses. For example, a user email of awheeler@universalcontainers.com in production becomes awheeler=universalcontainers.com@example.com when migrated to sandbox."
• Custom Settings
• Custom Labels