Within Salesforce, you have three releases per year: Spring, Summer, and Winter. During each release, there is a sandbox preview window to ensure sandboxes receive the new updates first.
In this article, we’ll discover what this means, as well as the advantages, drawbacks, and alternatives to sandbox preview.
What Is a Sandbox Preview?
During each release, Salesforce announces a sandbox preview. This is the deadline to refresh or create sandboxes to get new features and updates before other environments.
Ahead of time, Salesforce announces the deadline by which sandboxes need to be refreshed or created to get the sandbox preview. For example, if the deadline is August 30th, then sandboxes have to be active on a preview instance by August 29th to take part.
If you get your dates in a muddle, Salesforce provides the Salesforce Sandbox Preview Guide to work out when to refresh sandboxes.
The sandbox preview runs for six weeks ahead of each Salesforce release, after which other sandboxes are upgraded.
After each sandbox preview, new or refreshed sandboxes route to a non-preview instance until the next preview window starts. So, if you missed the window to get a sandbox preview, your sandboxes remain on the existing instance until the release goes live.
From Salesforce Setup, you can view sandboxes with their Release Type in a production org. If this shows as “Preview”, then that environment is on the sandbox preview and will be upgraded first.
Advantages of Sandbox Preview
A sandbox preview is a great way to get your hands on key features first and try these out in an environment that already reflects your metadata. Personally, I find it very useful to get hands-on with new features to understand how they work, what to look out for, and any considerations before planning and implementing for a real-world use case.
As a sandbox preview happens before other environments are upgraded, this gives you plenty of time to test out the new release and make sure that any customizations continue to work as expected. With each release come Salesforce release updates that you can enable and test in the safety of sandboxes ahead of time.
Disadvantages of Sandbox Preview
As with most things in Salesforce, there are points to consider around the sandbox preview. Remember, you may have opted for a sandbox preview willingly or spun up a sandbox, which was then routed to sandbox preview based on its creation date.
A sandbox preview is one of the first tests for the latest release, where it’ll be rolled out to all preview sandboxes and put through its paces. As a result, there will be bugs that Salesforce will need time to patch or fix. These could be minor UI issues to errors preventing you from using parts of the system.
There are typically 100s of bugs identified each release. Although a sandbox is not a live system, these could impact you and whoever else has access. While not all bugs are related to the release directly, it may make you think twice before you decide to opt for a sandbox preview!
Once issues are acknowledged as bugs, you can track these at issues.salesforce.com.
During a sandbox preview, it can be tricky to deploy between different environments because not all functionality is available everywhere yet. Salesforce adjusts the structure of Lightning Record Pages and Flow regularly between releases, so these types of metadata are more prone to deployment issues during a sandbox preview.
Let’s look at the above example. We have a Developer Sandbox and Developer Pro Sandbox on the sandbox preview running API version 64.0. As a result, deployments between these environments run smoothly. We also have a Partial Copy Sandbox, which was not refreshed in time for the preview and is currently on API version 63.0 – this could, therefore, lead to issues when deploying from lower environments on a higher API version. While this isn’t guaranteed, issues are likely, so you may be better off pushing back deployments until after the sandbox preview.
As helpful as it is to try the newest features first, considering when you need to deploy can help avoid issues if environments are on different releases. As a Salesforce Admin, you could inherit a sandbox pipeline that uses sandbox preview, which can cause issues when metadata is not deployed elsewhere.
Alternatives to Sandbox Preview
As well as the sandbox preview, there are other ways to get your hands on the newest features first.
During each release window, Salesforce offers pre-release orgs. These are often available before the sandbox preview starts, and so are the first way to get hands-on with everything new or updated. If you signed up for a pre-release org in a previous release window, then this will remain active as long as you use it regularly. Personally, I’m on a pre-release org from 2021, with existing pre-release orgs usually updated a few days before the sign-up opens.
A scratch org is another way to get your hands on new features first. These are temporary environments that can last up to 30 days before being deleted. They are typically used for developing packages for internal use or the AppExchange, so their setup and management tend to lean into more of a developer skill set. As scratch orgs are on sandbox instances, the preview window is the same as the sandbox preview. Define the release as “Preview” in your CLI Command or Scratch Org Definition file.
Something to consider with both these options is that, by default, they will not include your specific configuration or setup. If you wanted to deploy your metadata into these orgs, this is possible but would require additional effort once you’ve spun up the org itself.
Summary
The sandbox preview is great, and if you create or refresh your sandboxes in time, it is a nice way to get your hands on new or updated features first.
However, these environments can come with bugs and deploying between environments on different releases can create a headache for release planning, so be sure to make an informed decision before opting for the sandbox preview.
Resources
- What Is a Salesforce Sandbox?
- Advanced Sandbox Concepts for Salesforce Admins
- Select the Salesforce Release for a Scratch Org
- Salesforce Release Readiness Strategies
