Seeding a Salesforce Sandbox

Salesforce provides a sandbox that you can use for testing and demo purposes. You can populate (seed) the sandbox with a Commvault backup from your production Salesforce data or another Salesforce sandbox. Data is restored from a local (sync) database.

Perform granular or bulk seeding by configuring rules or templates that specify the objects that you want to seed and the object records to use for the seeding. If you want to seed multiple objects that are not related, these objects need to be included in the seeding template. The seeding templates will be saved for immediate or future use, consistent reseeding of development or training sandboxes, or to be edited to create new templates.

You can specify any of the following records:

All records
Records that are returned from a user-defined SQL query
Records that have been backed up in the last N number of days
The most recently backed up N records

Tip

Due to the complexity and nature of Salesforce, some objects and records might not restore successfully. Issues that can block records from being restored include API limitations, data integrity, complexity in hierarchical relationships, and automation processes that utilize triggers, flows, and rules. To avoid errors or for faster results, disable the validation rules, Apex triggers, flows, and workflows. For the same benefits for managed packages, uninstall the packages. (Managed packages cannot be disabled using APIs.)

Before You Begin

Verify that the Salesforce user who performs the restores has the required permissions.
In Salesforce, create a destination Sandbox that contains the same metadata as your source organization. The Commvault software does not restore metadata as part of a Sandbox restore.

For information about creating sandboxes, go to the Salesforce help site, Create a Sandbox.
Add an app for the destination organization.
Review the objects that are not supported for restores.
Verify that you have enough free space (it must be the size of the data that you want to restore):
- If you restore from media, then the free space must be available on the staging database.
- If you restore from the database, then the free space must be available on the catalog database.
- You must have enough data and file storage space on your destination Salesforce environment.
Verify that the profile, users (communityNickName), and RecordType are the same on the destination and the source.
Verify that the objects exist on the destination organization.
If you want to mask sensitive data during the restore, configure data-masking policies.
Verify that you have the following database information:
- The type of database
- The client that hosts the database. The access node is able to connect to the database instance using JDBC URL.
- The database name
- The credentials for a user who meets the following criteria:
  - Microsoft SQL Server: Owner permissions and if the database does not exist, has the dbcreator role
  - PostgreSQL: Super user permissions
Verify that the Web Server can communicate with the sync database by opening the necessary default ports.

Procedure

From the navigation pane, go to Protect > Salesforce.

The Salesforce page appears.
For the organization that contains the data that you want to restore, click the action button , and then clickRestore.

The Select restore type page appears.
Select Sandbox seeding.

The Sandbox seeding page appears.
To determine which objects are used for seeding the Salesforce sandbox, create the seeding rules:
1. From the Object name list, select the object that you want to seed.
2. Click Pick rule/enter query.
  
  The Add rule dialog box appears.
3. Next to Selection criteria, choose the records that the software adds to the sandbox:
  - To add all records, select All records.
  - To define a filter by using SQL, select SQL where clause.
  - To define a number of days, select Records updated in the last N days, and then in the Last N days box, enter the number of days.
  - To define the number of records, select Most recently updated N records, and then in the Number of records box, enter the number of records.
4. To include parent objects in the restore, from the Parent objects to restore list, select All parents.
  Important
  
  Including parent objects has the following effects:
  - Data integrity is maintained. If parent objects are included and some parents do not exist or some parents have incorrect values, the restore still completes.
  - When objects such as User objects are updated, end users receive notifications, which might not be desirable.
5. To include child objects in the restore, from the Child objects to restore list, select the child objects.
  - To exclude some child objects, select the Exclude children check box, and then in the Children to exclude box, select the child objects that you want to exclude.
6. Optional: To view the records, click Preview.
7. Click OK.
Optional: Create seeding rules for additional objects.
After all of the seeding rules are created, click Restore.

The Restore options dialog box appears.
Under Destination details,from the Destination organization list, select the Salesforce destination.
To disable the Salesforce triggers and rules, under Options, select the Disable triggers and rules check box.

After the restore is complete, the workflows and triggers are automatically enabled.
To apply data masking, select the Apply masking on destination check box, and then from the Select data masking policy list, select the data-masking policy.

Note

Data masking can be applied when a cross-instance restore is run and data masking policies are defined.
Click Submit.

Result

After the operation completes, the destination sandbox contains the records that meet the rules that you configured.

SQL WHERE Clause Examples for Salesforce Restores
To troubleshoot errors that occur during a restore operation, see Troubleshooting Salesforce Restore Operations.