Learn about Atlassian organizations
New to administering Atlassian cloud products? Learn about Atlassian organizations and what it means to be an organization admin.
Manage product sandboxes
A sandbox is an isolated environment where you can test and experiment before making changes to production. This feature is available for Jira Software, Jira Service Management, and Confluence with Premium and Enterprise plans.
Your sandbox URL is created based on the production site URL at the point the sandbox is created. For example, if your production site URL is acme.atlassian.net, your sandbox site URL would be something like acme-sandbox-123.atlassian.net. Learn more about changing URLs
Sandboxes have the same user limits as their linked production environments.
Because your sandbox is not a production environment, we don’t guarantee sandbox performance or data retention if it is destroyed. Your sandbox will not be covered by the SLAs that cover products. For these reasons, we recommend not using a sandbox as the sole location of your data.
If your production environment is downgraded to a Standard or Free plan, your sandbox will be deleted.
While the cloud sandbox is primarily used to test Atlassian changes, you can also create a sandbox to test a migration from server to cloud. Sandboxes can be easily deleted and recreated, and any change made within a sandbox won’t affect production.
There is no performance and speed difference between the production environment and its sandbox.
To test a migration using a sandbox you can either:
Create a backup and use Jira site import. Learn more about Jira site import
Use the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant or Confluence Migration Assistant. Learn more about the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant or Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant
We recommend that if you want to test your server import multiple times, you delete and recreate your sandbox. We don’t recommend testing multiple import files at the same time, as it's likely it won’t work.
Currently, you can only create one sandbox for each linked product. For example, if you have a Jira Software production environment, you can only create one Jira Software sandbox. If your team would also be interested in having more than one sandbox, let us know through the multiple sandboxes feature request.
Create a sandbox
You can create a sandbox if your production Jira Software, Jira Service Management, or Confluence are on Premium or Enterprise plans. You can also create a sandbox if your production Jira Work Management is on a Premium plan. To create a sandbox, you must have organization admin permissions. To become an organization admin you’ll need to reach out to an existing organization admin. Once created, you can give all admins and users access to sandboxes the same way you do for production environments. Learn more about admin permissions and groups and product access
To create a sandbox:
Go to admin.atlassian.com. Select your organization if you have more than one.
Select Products > Sandbox.
Select Create sandbox.
Choose a product.
Select Create.
We’ll notify you through email and your Sandbox page when your sandbox is ready. If you refresh the page while we’re creating your sandbox, your sandbox will continue creating in the background.
In some cases, it could take up to 30 minutes to create your sandbox. If the sandbox isn’t ready after 30 minutes, contact us.
Access your sandbox from your products table on the overview page or from the Sandbox page.
Make changes to a sandbox
Make changes to your sandbox the same way you would to your production environment.
View when production data was last copied into your sandbox under the Last data copy column on the sandbox overview table.
The billing and technical contacts for a sandbox are automatically set to the admin creating the sandbox, so it may not be the same billing and technical contacts for the product. Users can’t access Manage subscriptions from a sandbox.
Copy data to a sandbox
The data copy process won't work if the uncompressed XML file size for your Jira product is over 40GB. If your Jira product is over 40GB, you can copy production data once a month. Contact support if you want to copy files over 40GB for Jira products.
To copy data from your production environment to its sandbox:
Go to admin.atlassian.com. Select your organization if you have more than one.
Select Products > Sandbox.
Under Actions in the product table, select Copy production data.
Choose copy with media files or without media files, select Copy data.
(Copying without media files can decrease the time it takes to copy data into your sandbox)
When you copy data from your production environment to its sandbox, keep in mind that we'll replace any existing data in your sandbox with the new data that gets copied over. Every new data copy will overwrite any existing data in your sandbox.
Currently, not all data types are able to be copied from production into sandboxes.
✅ Data that can be copied into a sandbox | ❌ Data that can't be copied into a sandbox |
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Although automation rules aren’t automatically copied into a sandbox, you can manually export and import automation rules
When you copy new data into a sandbox, users and groups merge with the data you have in the sandbox
To ensure that your production environment and your users are not impacted, we don’t copy webhooks or OAuth tokens. We also disable app links, external email notifications, and integrations with Bitbucket and Slack.
It could take up to 2 days for Jira products and 13 days for Confluence to copy data from production into your sandbox. The larger size of the data being copied over, the longer it will take. We'll send you an email when it's complete.
If you have Jira Software, Jira Work Management, and Jira Service Management sandboxes linked through the same URL, data will copy for all the Jira sandboxes (excluding features powered by Opsgenie) because they are built on the Jira platform. This could result in incident links not displaying like they would in production.
If you create a new Jira sandbox, and you already have a Jira sandbox linked through the same URL, your new sandbox will create with your production data.
We're working on a more streamlined data copy for sandboxes, and we’d appreciate any feedback on what is important to you with data copy to sandboxes. Leave feedback at sandbox environment for cloud
If you are doing a manual data copy, we don’t recommend using Confluence site import/export or Jira Software CSV import as they have high failure rates for sandboxes.
Granting user access to sandbox
Depending on whether you are on centralized user management or original user management, your experience of granting users and groups access to sandbox will differ. Find out which user management experience you have
Understanding the sandbox access
Access to the sandbox environment is not granted by default, as it is a product testing environment.
For centralised user management
In the production site, the users and groups exist in the organization level, so they don’t need to be copied to the sandbox. After creating a sandbox, only the org admins are given access to the groups. The group names in your sandbox will be similar to the product group names. For example, a group named jira-software-users-test would be named jira-software-users-test-sandbox-123 in the sandbox.
To grant access to the sandbox:
Go to admin.atlassian.com. Select your organization if you have more than one.
Select Products from the header.
For the sandbox you want to provide access to users, select Manage access.
Add people to the appropriate sandbox groups.
Learn more about adding users to groups
For original user management
When you copy data from the production site to the sandbox, users and groups are copied separately. However, users will not be automatically added to the sandbox group and must be manually added by inviting them to the sandbox.
When you copy data from the production site to the sandbox, the users and groups are also copied, but users are not automatically added to any groups. The group names in your sandbox will be similar to the product group names. For example, a group named jira-software-users-test in the production site would be named jira-software-users-test-sandbox-123 in the sandbox.
To grant access to the sandbox:
Go to admin.atlassian.com. Select your organization if you have more than one.
Select Products from the header.
For the sandbox you want to provide access to users, select More actions (…) > Manage users.
Select Groups from the sidebar.
Add people to the appropriate sandbox groups.
Learn more about adding users to groups
Clear data from a sandbox
Currently, the only way to clear all data from a sandbox is to delete it and create a new one.
Manage Marketplace and Atlassian apps in your sandbox
For apps with a paid subscription on a linked production environment
Apps with a paid subscription on a linked production environment can be added to a sandbox for free. These apps will be added on a free trial and continue to be free after the trial period.
To add an app to your sandbox for free:
Navigate to your Jira Software, Jira Service Management, or Confluence administration section of your sandbox
Go to Apps > Find new apps
Choose the app you want and select Add to sandbox
For apps without a paid subscription on a linked production environment
Apps without a paid subscription on a linked production environment can be added on a free trial with the option to add payment details at the end of the trial period. This means you can install apps from the Atlassian Marketplace or through the Manage apps screen from within your Jira Software, Jira Service Management, or Confluence administration section of your sandbox and try them out.
We’ll send you email notifications about your trial period ending. Once the trial ends, you’ll need to add your payment details to purchase a subscription to keep using the app in your sandbox. Subscriptions for apps in your sandbox are available monthly, and the price for apps is calculated on the number of users with access to your sandbox, not your production environment. Currently, we don’t support annual subscriptions for apps in a sandbox.
Remove apps from a sandbox
If you trialed an app on your sandbox and don’t want to be billed for it once the trial ends, you need to stop the trial and remove the app from your sandbox.
To remove an expired app from your sandbox:
Navigate to your Jira Software, Jira Service Management, or Confluence administration section of your sandbox. To ensure that you’re on your sandbox environment, check your URL. If your production site URL is acme.atlassian.net, your sandbox URL could be acme-sandbox-123.atlassian.net.
If you’ve manually changed your sandbox URL, follow these steps to make sure that you’re in your sandbox:
Go to admin.atlassian.com. Select your organization if you have more than one.
Select Products.
From your list of products, select your sandbox. Sandboxes are indicated by the label ‘sandbox’.
Select and open your sandbox.
2. Go to Apps > Manage your apps.
3. Choose the app you want to remove and select Stop trial if you have an app that is still being trialed. Select Unsubscribe if you’re trying to remove an app with a paid subscription.
4. Select Uninstall to remove the app.
Selecting Uninstall before unsubscribing or stopping your trial from Manage apps will not stop the app from being counted towards your bill. Select Stop trial (for apps that are still being trialed) or Unsubscribe (for apps with a paid subscription) to ensure that you’re not billed for the app.
If you have expired apps on your existing sandbox, you won’t be able to create a new one until you remove these apps. Once you remove these apps, you’ll need to wait for 24 hours before creating a new sandbox.
For more details on apps, see Managing Confluence apps and Managing Jira apps.
Delete a sandbox
This will erase all data, configuration, apps, and app licenses. It can’t be undone, but you can create new sandboxes at any time. Deleting your sandbox will not delete your product.
To delete a sandbox:
Go to admin.atlassian.com. Select your organization if you have more than one.
Select Products > Sandbox.
Under Actions in the product table, select Delete sandbox.
When you delete a sandbox, it transitions into an offline state that can be restored within 30 days.
After 30 days in the offline state, the sandbox is permanently deleted with all its data.
When you create a new sandbox for a product, you can choose a product that already has a sandbox in an offline state. The offline sandbox will be immediately deleted and overwritten by the new sandbox. For example, when you create a Confluence sandbox and then delete it, it will go into an offline state. Then, if you create a new Confluence sandbox, it will overwrite the existing offline sandbox.
All Jira products are linked together as they are part of Jira family. Hence, when you create a new Jira sandbox, all the offline Jira product sandboxes are deleted. For example, if you have a Jira Software offline sandbox, and you want to create a new Jira Service Management sandbox, then creating the new sandbox will overwrite the offline Jira Software sandbox. Learn more about the Jira family of products
Your sandbox lifecycle is linked to your production environment lifecycle, so if your product is destroyed or is no longer on a Premium plan, your sandbox will be destroyed. Sandbox data and configuration can’t be restored after it is deleted.
The Jira Cloud product family is built on top of the Jira platform, for this reason when you delete any Jira sandbox, all Jira sandboxes associated with your site URL will be deleted.
Restore a sandbox
If you didn’t want to delete a sandbox, then you can restore it while it is in the offline state by selecting Restore located under Actions. We will automatically restore the sandbox with all its data.
When creating a new sandbox, all the offline sandboxes will show up as available products. Choosing an offline sandbox will overwrite the existing sandbox.
Manage Jira Cloud sandboxes
The Jira family of products are built on the same platform. This means that Jira Software, Jira Service Management, and Jira Work Management share a common Jira framework. As a result, changes you make will affect all Jira products with the same URL. For example, if you delete your Jira Service Management sandbox from acme-sandbox-123.atlassian.net, you’ll also delete your Jira Software sandbox from acme-sandbox-123.atlassian.net.
Jira Service Management sandboxes can be accessed through your Opsgenie URL and your Jira Service Management URL.
There are different sandbox creation options when you have different Jira product plans.
If you have any Jira product on Premium or Enterprise plan with another Jira product that is on Free or Standard plan (excluding Jira Product Discovery, as we current don’t support this product in Sandbox), then you get a free sandbox for the Jira product on free or standard plan.
Example: As a user with a Jira Software Enterprise plan, you have access to a Jira Software sandbox. If you choose to add another Jira product such as Jira Work Management on a free plan, we give Jira Work Management sandbox for free since you already have a Jira product under the Enterprise plan.
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