Imagine you’ve built a bridge and you need to test its strength. Should you roll a styrofoam wheel across it, or should you drive a car? The answer is obvious, and yet a surprising number of Salesforce developers end up conducting the equivalent of the styrofoam test.
When it comes to Salesforce, proper development and testing requires accessing realistic data & metadata in your sandboxes. While Salesforce does provide some basic sandbox seeding tools for its own sandboxes, there are limits on the frequency of refreshing, and fairly crude control over what data is seeded.
Luckily there are a range of solutions on the Salesforce AppExchange which tackle all aspects of these issues, enabling testing teams to populate developer sandboxes with high quality anonymized data, refreshing at a faster cadence and at reduced costs.
In this article, we are going to show you some of the best Salesforce AppExchange sandbox seeding tools that can automate and level up the way that you populate sandbox environments with data for testing development work. This is perfect for all types of companies, especially those who release frequent updates to the platform.
Salesforce provides its own tool to keep test environments secure through data masking to avoid leaking customers’ sensitive data. It is called Salesforce DataMask and it enables configuring different levels for data protection depending on the level of sensitivity through anonymization, pseudonymization and converting fields into empty datasets. However, it is a paid feature and it only solves one challenge of sandbox seeding. You cannot refine the subsets of data you want seeded to developer sandboxes and you are tied to Salesforce’s refresh limits.
With that out of the way, let’s discuss solutions that can elevate your sandbox seeding to a whole new level.
What it is: Formerly SFApex, Druva’s Salesforce solution provides an all-in-one solution for protecting your Salesforce.org. It is a tool for populating sandboxes
Who it’s for: Testing teams
Product features:
Pricing: $3.50 USD per user per month
What it is: 100% Native Full DevOps end-to-end Solution for Salesforce Customers offering various functionalities including downstream data deployment into Sandboxes.
Who it’s for: Developers, testers who already use the Copado suite
Product features:
Pricing: Starting at $250 per user per month
What it is: Cloud Data protection platform with a suite of tools including sandbox seeding.
Who it’s for: Developers, testers. Ideal if you have already invested in the OwnBackup suite
Product features:
Pricing: Starting at $2.75 per user per month
What it is: DataMAX is a Salesforce AppExchange app that enables users to quickly and easily populate sandboxes with a representative data subset based on production data while maintaining relationships.
Who it’s for: Development and UAT testing teams
Product features:
Pricing: 3-Tier pricing model depending on data hosting requirements.
What it is: Data migration tool built specifically for Salesforce to effortlessly allow developers to move relational data.
Who it’s for: Developers and testers
Product features:
Pricing: Starting at $1 per year
To make your decision easier, we have prepared a table that helps you compare the tools’ feature sets. As you can see, all products provide the same core functionality, but DataMax stands out from the rest thanks to its unique qualities.
Hopefully, this compilation will help you decide which sandbox seeding tool is the best match for you. These are all great platforms, especially Copado and OwnBackup who are our trusted partners. Your choice depends on your situation, number of developers, required volume of sandboxes, and whether you need a wider suite of tools to match your needs. However, we are partial to DataMAX, because our developers created it for developers, driven by our own need. The combination of templates, filters, automation and data manipulation tools separate it from other sandbox seeding apps, saving QA time, ensuring data regulation compliance, and reducing development overheads. If you need any additional expert advice, contact us and we will be more than happy to find the best option for you.
You can Download DataMAX now or Request a Demo.
Author
Mark Hartnady
Head of Architecture
VRP Consulting UK
Mark Hartnady is one of our global architecture leaders, based in our London office. Mark has been working with CRM solutions, with a particular focus on the Salesforce platform since 2012 and has been instrumental in transforming enterprises with scalable, extensible solutions in the Manufacturing, Automotive, Hi-tech and Media sectors.
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