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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.netLearn 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:

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. 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.

Sandbox screen under the products navigation

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:

  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)

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

  • Jira product data

    • Advanced roadmaps

    • Board and sprint data

    • Comments

    • Jira issues and field content (including system and custom fields)

    • Media files (including media attachments, avatars, and logos)

    • Project configuration data (including workflows, global permissions, schemes, screens, custom field configuration, issue types, and board configuration)

    • Portal-only accounts for Jira Service Management

    • Users and groups

  • Confluence data

    • Comments

    • Media files (including media attachments, avatars, and logos)

    • Space configuration data (including space settings, permissions, and user-created templates)

    • Users and groups

  • Jira product data

    • Automation rules

    • Jira Service Management features powered by Opsgenie, (including all content accessed through the Opsgenie URL, as well as alerts and on-call schedules)

    • Insight for Jira Service Management

    • Product access settings (you’ll need to add users to groups for permissions to apply)

  • Confluence data

    • Private spaces

    • Product access settings (you’ll need to add users to groups for permissions to apply)

  • Third-party apps and app data

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 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

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.

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.

If you’ve manually changed your sandbox URL, follow these steps to make sure that you’re in your sandbox:

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

  2. Select Products.

  3. From your list of products, select your sandbox. Sandboxes are indicated by the label ‘sandbox’.

  4. 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:

  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.

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.

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 products inside a Jira box with the same sandbox URL

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.

Production

Sandbox options

Jira Software with a Premium or Enterprise plan, and Jira Service Management with a Free or Standard plan

Create a Jira Software Premium or Enterprise sandbox and you’ll get a Jira Service Management sandbox with Free or Standard plan functionality

Jira Service Management with a Premium or Enterprise plan, and Jira Software with a Free or Standard plan

Create a Jira Service Management Premium or Enterprise sandbox and you’ll get a Jira Software sandbox with Free or Standard plan functionality

Jira Software and Jira Service Management, both with Premium or Enterprise plans

Create a Jira Software Premium or Enterprise sandbox or a Jira Service Management Premium or Enterprise sandbox at any time

 

Additional Help