Comparing sandbox and production configurations

Seeing exactly where the two differ. The report that tells you whether your test proved anything at all, and it is worth reading first.

Seeing exactly where the two differ. The report that tells you whether your test proved anything at all, and it is worth reading first.

Compare them

1. Open Admin Center, then Account, then Sandbox, then Compare snapshots.
2. Compare the sandbox with production.
3. Read what differs.
4. Decide which differences matter for what you are testing.

Read it before testing, not after

Knowing that production has eleven triggers the sandbox does not tells you what your test cannot cover. Finding that out afterwards means repeating the work.

Differences fall into three kinds

• Drift. Somebody changed production and the sandbox never caught up. Usually the largest group.
• Your work in progress. Expected, and it should match what you think you built.
• Deliberate, such as email being disabled. Fine, and it should be written down.

Watch trigger order

Two environments can hold the same triggers in a different sequence and behave differently. This is the difference most easily missed and one of the more confusing to debug.

An unexpected difference is worth a pause

Something in production that nobody in the room recognises means somebody made a change that was not recorded. That is worth understanding before deploying anything on top of it.

Compare again before deploying

Production moves while you work. A comparison from last week does not describe what you are about to change.

See also

• Deploying a configuration from one environment to another
• Saving and managing configuration snapshots
• Syncing products and add-ons to a sandbox