--- sourceDocument: Australia Build or modify applications sourceDocumentLink: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/australia/application-development Release : - australia ft:locale : - en-US ft:publication_title : - Australia Build or modify applications ft:clusterId : - cadev bundleId : - cadev workflow : - Development, Data, and Analytics --- # Explore # Exploring Developer Sandboxes {#ariaid-title1} Release version: Australia Updated October 26, 2026 ![](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/portal-asset/ico-clock) 4 minutes to read Summarize ![AI sparkle icon](https://servicenow.com/docs/portal-asset/ai-sparkle-icon) Summarized using AI This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete. ## Summary of Exploring Developer Sandboxes Developer Sandboxes provide isolated, on-demand development environments that enable multiple developers to build and test independently on a shared base instance. This isolation minimizes code conflicts, accelerates delivery cycles, and enables safe testing without impacting others' work. Each sandbox includes the full metadata of the base instance and supports assignment to specific stories, developers, or test plans. Show full answer Show less These sandboxes address challenges in managing parallel workstreams, such as urgent defect fixes and feature enhancements, by preventing code conflicts and configuration overlaps common in shared environments. They improve development agility, reduce rework, and support concurrent workstreams efficiently. ## Key Features * **Isolation:** Independent environments ensure developers' changes do not affect others. * **Faster delivery:** Parallel development reduces cycle times and speeds up fixes and enhancements. * **Safe testing:** Developers can test configurations, workflows, and integrations securely within their sandboxes. * **On-demand provisioning:** Sandboxes can be quickly created for specific tasks without waiting on shared resources. * **Source control integration:** Supports Git and merge tools to reduce conflicts and enable smoother parallel development. * **Sandbox management dashboard:** Provides visibility into sandbox status, ownership, usage, and allocation. * **Support for Build Agent:** Enables automation and CI/CD workflows within sandboxes. * **SSO support:** Single Sign-On enabled on the base instance extends authentication to sandboxes. * **Sandbox templates and aliases:** Facilitate reusability and easy sandbox allocation. ## Practical Considerations * Work in sandboxes is isolated and does not appear in other sandboxes until changes are promoted. * Changes can be promoted either through source control (recommended) or update sets. * Sandboxes are automatically retired after instance upgrades or clones; preserving work before these operations is essential. * Admins and sandbox managers control lifecycle management, while delegated developers can request sandboxes for their work. ## Key Outcomes * **Parallel Development:** Enables multiple developers to work on different features simultaneously without interference. * **Reduced Merge Conflicts:** Integration with source control tools improves collaboration and reduces integration issues. * **Improved Development Agility:** Faster provisioning and isolated testing accelerate delivery and reduce risk. * **Centralized Management:** Admins and sandbox managers can efficiently allocate and retire sandboxes, maintaining control over development environments. Developer Sandboxes provide isolated development environments that enable parallel building and testing on top of a shared development instance. Use sandboxes to reduce code conflicts, accelerate delivery, and safely test configurations without affecting other team members' work. Figure 1. How Developer Sandboxes work * Developer Sandboxes are isolated environments for parallel building and testing. * Each sandbox is provisioned on demand and fully isolated from others. * Every sandbox contains the full metadata of the base instance. * Sandboxes can be assigned to specific stories, developers, test plans, or custom criteria. {#exploring-sandboxes__ul_zw4_r3m_13c} ## Developer Sandboxes overview {#exploring-sandboxes__cf-exploring-parent-overview} Developer Sandboxes aim to provide lower-cost developer isolation and parallelism for customer development environments and instances. Developer Sandboxes are workflow-agnostic and are broadly applicable across workflows for both smaller and larger companies. Organizations can face challenges when addressing urgent defects and critical feature enhancements simultaneously in applications. Traditional shared development environments introduce risks such as code conflicts, configuration overlaps, and deployment delays, making it difficult to manage parallel workstreams efficiently. Development teams struggle to deliver urgent fixes and new features concurrently without disrupting each others' progress. The absence of isolated, independent development environments slows down delivery, increases rework, and hampers overall agility. Developer Sandboxes enables better development in the following ways: * Isolation: Each developer works in an independent sandbox, ensuring changes do not affect other team members' work. * Faster delivery: Teams can work concurrently, reducing development cycle time and enabling faster turnaround for urgent fixes and enhancements. * Safe testing: Developers can test configurations, workflows, and integrations within their sandbox without risking system stability. * On-demand provisioning: Admins and developers can quickly provision sandboxes for specific tasks or experiments without waiting for shared resources. {#exploring-sandboxes__ul_hc5_q4c_hgc} Note: Personal Development Instances (PDIs) are still available, but they don't have a controlled baseline configuration like Developer Sandboxes do. The Sandbox Management home dashboard displays the total, available, and allocated sandboxes in your instance. The dashboard also displays information relevant to each sandbox, including, the status, data utilization, owner, last accessed date, and when the sandbox was allocated. Check your entitlements to determine whether you have access to Developer Sandboxes. For more information, see [Developer Sandboxes entitlements](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/z44OpXdvOXuh7RBHYFqAyw "Your company's entitlements determine whether you have access to Developer Sandboxes."). Warning: Because sandboxes are retired automatically after an upgrade or clone, ensure any work that you want to keep is preserved before upgrading or cloning. * For upgrades, you can restore work from the remote update sets that Developer Sandboxes automatically created from prior sandboxes. * For clones, you must manually save and restore all work in sandboxes. * Any custom table configuration changes or fixes must be reapplied after an upgrade. Contact Now Support to open a case. For details, see [Cloning and upgrading considerations for Developer Sandboxes](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/W~hr6snSYcCMrUjP~qT3Vg "You should understand how plugins and sandboxes work before you clone or upgrade an instance with Developer Sandboxes. Always back up your work in a sandbox before any clone or upgrade, either by exporting the update sets or committing to source control."). Build Agent is supported in Developer Sandboxes. For more information, see [Build Agent](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/uPGWJkjDyp1tG_cmu3eF3Q "The ServiceNow Build Agent application is an autonomous AI agent that creates and updates ServiceNow applications from natural language prompts. You can also use Build Agent to get answers to general ServiceNow development questions."). ## Integrate sandboxes with source control {#exploring-sandboxes__section_lcq_5hg_ggc} Developer Sandboxes provide an isolated environment that integrates with source control, such as Git. Using merge tools helps eliminate conflicts and enables parallel development. For more information, see [Source control and Developer Sandboxes](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/y~WASxZ1VxWQrZAIauSFKQ "Use source control with Developer Sandboxes to enable parallel development and help avoid merge conflicts."). ## Developer Sandboxes users {#exploring-sandboxes__cf-exploring-parent-users} {#exploring-sandboxes__table_cw5_sqm_bcc__entry__2} | User | Description | |-|-| | Delegated developers | Delegated developers can request sandboxes from an admin or sandbox manager. | | Admins | Admins can allocate or retire sandboxes. | | Sandbox managers | Sandbox managers can administer the lifecycle of all sandboxes without full admin privileges. | | Sandbox users | Sandbox users can request and view Developer Sandboxes. | [Table 1. Users] {#exploring-sandboxes__table_cw5_sqm_bcc} Sandbox users use the same login credentials for their sandbox as the base instance. If you use Single Sign-On (SSO), enabling it on the base instance also authenticates Developer Sandboxes using the same credentials. For information on enabling SSO, see [Single sign-on for Developer Sandboxes](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/1AMU7_VdIIoM6sK3CO6AEw "Sandboxes use the same login credentials as the base instance, including single sign-on (SSO) when it's enabled there. Set the required properties on the base instance so developers can use SSO to access sandboxes."). Note: Instances with vanity URLs support SSO. ## Developer Sandboxes workflow {#exploring-sandboxes__cf-exploring-parent-workflow} The delegated developer or admin of a sandbox would procure a sandbox, make changes or experiment with development, test their changes, push their changes, and wait for an admin to clone the instance. 1. A sandbox manager or admin allocates a sandbox to start story work. 2. The developer makes development changes and tests them out in their fully isolated sandbox. Note: The work done in one sandbox doesn't appear in other sandboxes or other instances. 3. Once the developer is content with their work and ready to promote their changes to a shared, integrated environment, they push their changes to the desired upstream shared instance. For example, a `test`/`QA` instance. There are two ways to promote changes: 1. Using source control (preferable) or exports through Git 2. Using update sets and imports (supported, but not as easy to merge changes) {#exploring-sandboxes__ol_o44_3sf_dgc} 4. Further testing can be done on the shared instance. 5. The admin of a sandbox instance clones changes from the `test`/`QA` instance to make those changes the default for all future allocated sandboxes. {#exploring-sandboxes__cf-exploring-parent-workflow-ol} ## Developer Sandboxes benefits {#exploring-sandboxes__cf-exploring-parent-benefits} {#exploring-sandboxes__table_fw5_sqm_bcc__entry__3} | Benefit | Feature | Users | |-|-|-| | Enable parallel development | Enable multiple developers the ability to work on different stories or features at the same time using the same starting source code, all while keeping the non-production baseline instance clean. | * Admins * Delegated developers {#exploring-sandboxes__ul_gqt_sjc_hgc} | | Reduce merge conflicts with source control | Enables integration with source control for more successful co-development. For more information, see [Source control and Developer Sandboxes](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/y~WASxZ1VxWQrZAIauSFKQ "Use source control with Developer Sandboxes to enable parallel development and help avoid merge conflicts."). | Delegated developers | | Reuse sandbox templates | Enables the optional setup of a repository configuration. You can create a template once, and reuse any existing templates when creating sandboxes. For more information, see [Using sandbox templates](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/b~0CJ8CSuX68EkB024fE9A "Developer Sandboxes templates are being deprecated, and should no longer be used."). | * Admins * Delegated developers {#exploring-sandboxes__ul_n5h_zgc_hgc} | | Sandbox alias | Enables you to easily reference the sandbox you want to allocate. | * Admins * Delegated developers {#exploring-sandboxes__ul_nc3_w54_ghc} | | Allocate to | Enables you to allocate a sandbox to yourself, or for an admin to allocate a sandbox to someone else. | * Admins * Delegated developers {#exploring-sandboxes__ul_ibv_z54_ghc} | [Table 2. Developer Sandboxes benefits] {#exploring-sandboxes__table_fw5_sqm_bcc} ## What to explore next {#exploring-sandboxes__cf-exploring-parent-links} To learn more about installing and configuring Developer Sandboxes, refer to [Developer Sandboxes installation and configuration](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/afqu_r8W_DwCSfNg_kj7vQ "Developer Sandboxes installation and configuration covers Developer Sandboxes on your instance. Review entitlements, install the plugins, and look up the roles, tables, and properties that control how sandboxes work.").