Sandbox seeding vs. sandbox management

Many of our customers ask whether they need Prodly sandbox seeding vs. sandbox management. The answer is that each tool offers significant advantages for the DevOps stages of the Salesforce ALM process, which is why we recommend using them in tandem.

Sandbox seeding (or data seeding) lets you quickly populate dev environments with data that you replicate from production. Sandbox management, on the other hand, allows you to sync the metadata and data in your environments whenever you like. Both have additional capabilities, as well as a host of benefits, which we discuss more in depth below.

Sandbox seeding vs. sandbox management at a glance

Prodly sandbox seeding

Key features:

• Instantly replicate production data
• Populate up to 5 sandboxes at a time
• Data masking, anonymization, and obfuscation
• 1-click scratch orgs with managed packages, metadata, and data
• Enhanced filtering capabilities
• Field-level manipulation
• Pre- and post-fixed values on fields

Business benefits:

• Real-world testing
• Higher-quality code and configurations
• Accelerated environment setup time
• Reduced risk
• Faster hotfixes
• Cost-efficiency

Ease of use:

• User-friendly UI
• Low-code/no-code
• Accelerated go-live time
• Exceptional support

Prodly sandbox management

Key features:

• Multi-directional data deployments
• Create and reuse deployment plans
• Automatically maintain object relationships
• Cross-org record ID mapping
• Multi-directional metadata deployments
• Dependency management
• Easy org comparison for metadata

Business benefits:

• Easy environment sync
• Streamlined release pipeline
• Improved visibility
• Enhanced velocity

Ease of use:

• User-friendly UI
• Low-code/no-code
• Accelerated go-live time
• Exceptional support

The difference between sandbox seeding and sandbox management

To explain the difference between sandbox seeding and sandbox management, we first need to take a closer look at each concept.

What is sandbox seeding?

Sandbox seeding is the process of instantly reproducing your production data in a sandbox or scratch org for development use. With Prodly’s sandbox seeding tool, you replicate actual real-life data and move it into a test environment—in just a few clicks.

What are the advantages of sandbox seeding?

There are several distinct advantages to Prodly sandbox seeding:

• It allows for realistic testing. Sandbox seeding provides you with data that’s identical to the data in your production environment. This makes the testing scenario as close to prod as possible. As a result, you can more easily identify bugs and issues you might not catch if you test with artificial test data or dummy data.
• You can create higher-quality code and configurations faster. When you use production-grade data in the development and testing stage, it’s easier to create configurations and code that work the way you want them to in production.
• It saves a ton of time with environment setup. Our automation does everything for you, so all you have to do is click—and your org is ready to go! Then you can focus on the good stuff—development work.
• Sandbox seeding lets you identify and address potential issues in a safe, non-production environment before deploying changes to production. This significantly reduces the chances of introducing new issues when you release new features.
• Hotfixes are easier and faster. Because the data in your sandbox mirrors the data in production, you can quickly pinpoint and tackle bugs.
• You can save money. With data seeding, you can quickly and easily recreate parts of production in low-level environments. That means you don’t have to spend as much on Full and Partial Copy sandboxes.

What is sandbox management?

Sandbox management encompasses a range of processes and tools you can use to optimize development, testing, and training by performing these activities in non-production environments. Think of sandbox management like creating and maintaining a safe playground where you can experiment, learn, and grow—without causing disruptions in the real-world production environment.

What are the benefits of sandbox management?

Prodly sandbox management can really make your job easier. Check out these benefits:

• You can keep all your environments fresh—all the time. With our sandbox management tool, you can sync environments at your own pace. You never have to wait for a refresh again!
• It streamlines the release pipeline. Because everyone can easily sync their environments, you don’t run into the same issues with integration as when everyone’s using a different version.
• Save hours on mapping complex relational data. Work smarter and faster—and enhance velocity.
• View metadata differences between orgs in the blink of an eye. Get full visibility of all metadata differences with our easy-to-use org compare feature. Prepare for deployments faster, quickly review new builds, and instantly see what’s causing an issue so you can fix it right away.

Integrate sandbox seeding and sandbox management into your Salesforce ALM

Prodly sandbox seeding and Prodly sandbox management are two distinct yet powerful tools that each play a critical role in Salesforce application lifecycle management. Sandbox seeding lets you create accurate, real-world testing scenarios, which contributes to higher-quality changes. Sandbox management facilitates a synchronized pipeline, which minimizes risk and optimizes efficiency.

By combining both these tools, you can create a robust, resilient, and efficient ALM process. This in turn enhances velocity, making your business more agile and enabling your sales team to respond quickly to each opportunity that arises.