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 your production site URL. For example, if your production site URL is acme.atlassian.net, your sandbox site URL could be acme-sandbox-123.atlassian.net. Learn more about changing URLs

Sandboxes have the same user limits as their linked production environments.

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.

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.

Create a sandbox

You can create a sandbox if your production Jira Software, Jira Service Management, or Confluence are on Premium or Enterprise plans. 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:

1. Go to admin.atlassian.com. Select your organization if you have more than one.

2. Select Products > Sandbox.

3. Select Create sandbox.

4. Choose a product.

5. 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.

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

To copy data from your production environment to its sandbox:

1. Go to admin.atlassian.com. Select your organization if you have more than one.

2. Select Products > Sandbox.

3. Under Actions in the product table, select Copy production data.

4. 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)

Currently, not all data types are able to be copied from production into sandboxes.

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

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 and Jira Service Management sandboxes linked through the same URL, data will copy for both 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

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

Add apps to a 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:

1. Navigate to your Jira Software, Jira Service Management, or Confluence administration section of your sandbox

2. Go to Apps > Find new apps

3. 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:

1. 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.

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.

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:

1. Go to admin.atlassian.com. Select your organization if you have more than one.

2. Select Products > Sandbox.

3. Under Actions in the product table, select Delete 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.

There are different sandbox creation options when you have different Jira product plans.