Developer Sandboxes release notes
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Summary of Developer Sandboxes release notes
The ServiceNow Developer Sandboxes application, introduced in the Zurich release, allows administrators and delegated developers to request, access, and manage isolated development environments within the same underlying development instance. This setup enables developer isolation and parallel workstreams, preventing code and configuration changes from being overwritten mid-development.
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Developer Sandboxes is available through the ServiceNow Store and requires coordination with a ServiceNow account manager for installation.
Key Features
- Sandbox Management Dashboard: Provides visibility into total, available, and allocated sandboxes, along with detailed information such as status, data utilization, owner, last access, and allocation timestamps.
- Sandbox Templates and Data Generation Profiles: Allow delegated developers to reuse data to test changes efficiently without manual data entry. Data Generation Profiles enable statistical sampling of data from selected tables to populate sandboxes with relevant test data.
- Sandbox Allocation and Retirement: Administrators can allocate sandboxes to development teams and retire outdated sandboxes to free capacity.
- Automatic Backup of Update Sets: For instances with Developer Sandboxes installed post-Zurich Patch 5, update sets are automatically backed up during instance upgrades.
Important Changes
- Automatic backups for upgrades have been fixed as of Zurich Patch 10.
- Data generation profiles and templates will be deprecated starting with the Brazil release. Upon upgrade, all related metadata and records will be removed, and sandbox initialization will operate independently of data generation logic.
- ServiceNow recommends using the Now Assist Data Kit as a replacement for data generation profiles going forward.
Related ServiceNow Applications
- ServiceNow IDE: Facilitates source code development of scoped applications with enhanced team collaboration on the ServiceNow AI Platform.
- ServiceNow SDK: Supports application packaging and development APIs used in conjunction with the ServiceNow IDE.
- ServiceNow Studio: Offers a unified environment for development, allowing admins and developers to extend solutions and build custom apps.
- Workflow Studio: Provides integrated workflow authoring, configuration, and monitoring within a single interface.
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. Delegated developers can write and merge code and configuration changes without the risk of getting their changes overwritten on the instance mid-development. Developer Sandboxes is a new application in the Zurich release.
Developer Sandboxes highlights for the Zurich release
- Enable your administrators and delegated developers to request, access, and manage the isolated development environments on top of the same underlying development instance.
- Provide developer isolation and parallelism for customer development environments and instances.
- View the total, available, and allocated sandboxes in your instance by using the Sandbox Management home dashboard. The dashboard also displays information about each sandbox, including the status, data utilization, owner, when it was last accessed, and when the sandbox was allocated.
See Developer Sandboxes for more information.
Important:
Developer Sandboxes is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.
Developer Sandboxes features
- Exploring Developer Sandboxes
- View the total, available, and allocated sandboxes in your instance by using the Sandbox Management home dashboard. The dashboard also displays information about each sandbox, including the status, data utilization, owner, when the sandbox was last accessed, and when the sandbox was allocated.
- Using sandbox templates
- Enable your delegated developers to reuse the data so that they can test their changes without manually inputting the data every time.
- Create a Data Generation Profile
- Enable your customers to generate the data for testing within the context of developer sandboxes, but also independently of sandboxes.Note:Developer Sandboxes can't copy all the instance data. Data generation profiles enable a statistical sampling of data from selected tables with curated mappings to populate the sandbox with the data needed for building an application.
- Allocate a sandbox
- Allocate the sandboxes that were created to your development teams.
- Retire Developer Sandboxes
- Retire outdated sandboxes to make room for the new sandboxes in your instance.
- Automatically backed up update sets
- If you install Developer Sandboxes on an instance after Zurich Patch 5, update sets are automatically backed up when the instance is upgraded.
Changed in this release
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.