Here at Prodly, we know that data seeding in Salesforce is the beginning of any Salesforce DevOps process. Here are seven benefits of sandbox seeding that will help you maximize your ROI from Salesforce.
1. Selectively Update Full Copy and Partial Copy Sandboxes in Salesforce With Fresh Data and Metadata—on Your Own Time.
Full Copy and Partial Copy sandboxes quickly lose their value as the last QA or UAT stop on the release train. Why? Because your production environment keeps changing, so a Full or Partial Copy sandbox consistently becomes less of a reproduction.
Sandbox seeding in Salesforce lets you update your orgs piecemeal to keep them in sync with production. That way, you don’t have to overhaul each sandbox every time you want to refresh.
With traditional Salesforce sandbox refresh requirements, refreshes are almost never convenient. The ability to do mini-refreshes significantly enhances your release process. As a result, you can more effectively utilize higher-level environments to drive your release process.
2. Move Faster—and Streamline Your Release Process
How often have you spent hours generating sample Account records and other Custom Object records one by one? Only to later run into problems because the data isn’t representative of your production environment?
With Prodly’s sandbox seeding, it’s easy to provision sandboxes in Salesforce. You can quickly select Objects to seed to up to five environments in one go. That means you can create five development-ready environments in just one click!
Prodly also provides prebuilt automation templates. They let you quickly seed an org with commonly-used Objects. And they even preserve complex data relationships in the process.
3. Unlock the Potential of Developer and DevPro Sandboxes in Salesforce, as Well as Scratch Orgs
Sandbox seeding lets you maximize your Developer and Developer Pro sandboxes, as well as your scratch orgs, as true development environments.
Your lower-level org should function as a ready-made playground. It’s an environment where you can can tinker with your ideas before pushing any changes up the release pipeline. If you start your projects with data seeding in Salesforce, you can sync configuration changes across all your sandboxes.
And you’ll never again face get confused and frustrated about your test working in your DevPro sandbox—but not in UAT.
4. Use Developer Sandboxes Like Full Copies
You can work in your Developer sandbox with all the data you need to move forward. At the same time, your team can still perform work in your Full Copy sandbox. Think about it: Do you really need 100,000 Account records to test with? Or will 100 be more than enough for unit testing?
Imagine being able to quickly populate your sandbox in Salesforce with real test data and get to work. It’s one less roadblock to deal with. This helps resuscitate any lagging business processes. It also ensures you can get new features to end users faster. And isn’t that what it’s all about?
5. Quickly Create a Hotfix Environment With Sandbox Seeding
Sometimes you need to quickly fix a bug in Salesforce that’s affecting a mission-critical business process. Of course, you shouldn’t try to do this in production.
Instead, use data seeding to quickly spin up a sandbox in Salesforce and populate it with the data you need to fix the issue. Use best practices for making hotfixes in Salesforce, and simply promote the patch back to production
6. Enhance Employee Satisfaction
Employees are happier when they don’t keep running into issues that slow them down and cause headaches.
In fact, according to a Salesforce survey, 89 percent of full-time workers are more satisfied thanks to automation. Moreover, an astounding 91 percent agree that automation saves them time and gives them a better Salesforce work-life balance.
By offering employees an automated sandbox seeding process, you can make their day-to-day lives much easier. And that leads to improved job satisfaction.
7. Improve Productivity in Salesforce
With happier employees and faster, more streamlined release pipelines, you can increase productivity by as much as 80 percent.
That means you have more time to take care of the day-to-day business of managing your business. Plus, you can take on more projects and work through them more efficiently.
Sandbox Seeding in Salesforce Is Critical to DevOps in Salesforce
The key principles of DevOps are ship often, ship small, build in isolated environments, and automate deployments.
To build in isolated environments, you need to maximize reproducible environments—in other words, your sandboxes and scratch orgs. So it’s key to have automated sandbox seeding capabilities like those provided by Prodly Sandbox Management.
Our sandbox seeding wizard lets you quickly and easily spin up mini environments that look like your production org. What’s more: They won’t affect other environments where the rest of your team is working.
Obstacles to Data Seeding in Salesforce
Sandbox seeding obviously offers many benefits—plus, it’s critical to Salesforce DevOps. So why aren’t more Salesforce customers doing it?
Some Salesforce customers aren’t yet aware of the power of sandbox seeding automation. They do know that manually populating sandboxes and scratch orgs with valuable testing data from production takes a long time. This is especially true if you run into issues when migrating relational data—which you probably will using legacy Salesforce tools.
And when a process becomes time consuming, it adds unnecessary expense to the project.
In addition, using Data Loader for seeding can cause concerns about security. Downloading data to a CSV before migrating it to the new environment isn’t secure and may violate security policies.
Features of Prodly’s Automated Sandbox Seeding
Prodly Sandbox Management automates the process of seeding your sandboxes in Salesforce with real-life test data—making it quick and easy. Here’s are some of the solution’s most important features:
Data Templates
We provide prebuilt templates of commonly used record types that let you move entire relational data schema at once. Easily move your entire Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Industries Cloud, or any other subset of your Salesforce schema. For example, migrate Accounts with all related Contacts, Opportunities, Quotes, and Cases with Case Comments and Attachments with a single click.
Select Data on the Fly
For custom data seeding needs, Prodly Sandbox Management gives you a lightning-fast way to move Objects you want to seed. Simply select what you’re interested in, and the wizard automatically migrates the related data with it.
Data Masking
Sometimes, you have sensitive data you want to protect in lower-level orgs. Prodly Sandbox Management provides data masking to prevent unauthorized parties from seeing it. This helps ensure you’re in compliance with relevant privacy regulations and legislation.
Ramp Up Your Release Management Process with Prodly
With Prodly to seed sandboxes in Salesforce orgs, you can minimize the upfront work on projects. In addition, you can ramp up your release management process. This one crucial step can give your team valuable hours back—and save your company significant resources.
Perhaps you’re facing some flak for lagging returns. If so, consider sandbox seeding as a fundamental way to enhance your processes and get a stronger ROI from Salesforce. It’s a tool to keep your team agile and to improve time to value for the business.
Contact us to request a personalized demo!
