Developer Sandboxes release notes

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 3 minutes to read
  • The ServiceNow® Developer Sandboxes application enables your administrators and delegated developers to request, access, and manage the individual sandboxes on top of the same underlying development instance. Developer Sandboxes was enhanced and updated in the Australia release.

    Developer Sandboxes highlights for the Australia release

    • Upgrading an instance recreates sandboxes and backs up any update sets.
    • A new plugin supports clone preservation when cloning an instance with sandboxes.

    See Developer Sandboxes for more information.

    New in the Australia release

    New granular roles for administration
    Several new granular roles enable developers to complete administrative and configuration tasks without requiring the full admin role.
    Support for separate indices for AI Search
    AI Search (AIS) now maintains separate indices for each sandbox environment, ensuring development activities that rely on AIS are correctly supported.
    Note:
    The AIS integration with Developer Sandboxes is supported only on non-production environments.

    UI changes

    Clarified sandbox initialization status
    An error status message now appears on the instance home page when there’s an initialization error when allocating a sandbox.
    Developer Sandboxes home page hidden when product is inactive
    The Developer Sandboxes home page is unavailable when Developer Sandboxes is inactive on an instance.

    Changed in this release

    Australia Patch 3
    Upgrade enhancements
    Automatic backups for upgrades are now working correctly. This issue is related to PRB2017438.
    Australia Early Availability
    Upgrade enhancements
    After an upgrade, Developer Sandboxes now recreates the sandboxes on an instance and automatically backs up update sets to the base instance.
    Queuing for successive sandbox creation
    To improve performance, Developer Sandboxes has implemented queuing when multiple sandboxes are created in succession.
    SSO support for vanity URLs
    Instances with vanity URLs can now support Single Sign-On (SSO).
    Schema change for shared tables isolates the table
    To ensure configuration consistency, if you make a schema change, such as adding a column, to a shared table, the table now becomes an isolated table on the sandbox that initiated the schema change.
    New vibe coding documentation
    Documentation is now available that introduces vibe coding, which is a natural language approach to application development in ServiceNow, including how to get started, when to use it, and how it fits within the broader suite of AI-powered development tools.

    Deprecated features

    Data generation profiles and templates will no longer available in Developer Sandboxes as of the Brazil release. When you upgrade, the following will happen:
    • All data generation metadata and non-metadata records are automatically deleted.
    • The data generation plugin is no longer discoverable.
    • All references to data generation will be removed from sandbox templates.
    • Sandbox initialization will operate independently of data generation logic.
    Note:
    You can use the Now Assist Data Kit instead of data generation profiles.

    Activation information

    Contact your ServiceNow account manager to install Developer Sandboxes.

    Plugin information

    New plugin

    The following plugin is new in Australia:

    Dev Sandboxes CC (com.glide.dsb.cc): A new plugin is available for clone preservers, which preserve settings when you clone an instance.