The ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Workfront Preview Sandbox Environment
There are two testing environments for Workfront that are replicas of your Workfront production environment:
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The Preview Sandbox
The Preview Sandbox is a testing environment that serves as a replica of your live environment and is refreshed each weekend by Workfront. Data added to your live environment on Friday appears in your Preview Sandbox by the following Monday.
All support packages have access to the Preview Sandbox.
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The Custom Refresh Sandbox
The Custom Refresh Sandbox is a separate testing environment which is refreshed manually by you. There is an additional cost to obtain the Custom Refresh Sandbox. For more information about this environment, see The ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Workfront Custom Refresh Sandbox environment.
Preview Sandbox
The Preview Sandbox serves as an environment where users in your organization can safely test and work with data from the production environment without affecting the production environment.
The Preview Sandbox contains your actual production data; however, it refreshes every weekend so the data can be up to one week behind the production environment. Items created since the last refresh time are in the Preview Sandbox environment until the following refresh.
Data flows uni-directionally, from Production to Preview, and not in reverse. A refresh of the Preview environment is always scheduled by Workfront each weekend.
Preview Sandbox also allows Workfront to deploy new features in a safe environment, before they are ready to be deployed to Production. You can test the new features and give Workfront feedback on their functionality by accessing the Preview Sandbox. For this reason, the code of the Preview Sandbox is always ahead of the Production code, although your data is refreshed weekly.
The preview environment is ideal for running trainings, testing out new features, and determining setup functionality.
Accessing the Preview Sandbox
By default, as a Workfront administrator, you have access to the Preview Sandbox environment. If you cannot access the Preview Sandbox environment as described in this section, contact your Workfront administrator or our Customer Support team.
Accessing the Preview Sandbox from the Workfront Interface accessing-the-preview-sandbox-from-the-workfront-interface
As a Workfront administrator, you can access the Preview Sandbox via the Workfront interface.
To access the Preview Sandbox:
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Click the Main Menu icon in the upper-right corner of ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Workfront, or (if available), click the Main Menu icon in the upper-left corner, then click Setup .
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Click System > Preferences.
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In the Test Environments section, click Sandbox Preview.
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Log in with your Preview credentials.
These should be the same as your production credentials, unless you changed them in Production after the Preview refresh happened. The logins are synchronized only when a refresh occurs. They do not synchronize automatically.
Accessing the Preview Sandbox Using a URL accessing-the-preview-sandbox-using-a-url
You can access the Preview Sandbox using a URL.
Accessing the Preview Sandbox for Accounts on Cluster 1,2,3, and 5 accessing-the-preview-sandbox-for-accounts-on-cluster-1-2-3-and-5
The URL for the Preview Sandbox is: https://companyname.preview.workfront.com/
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To log into the Preview Sandbox using a URL:
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Navigate to this URL:
https://companyname.preview.workfront.com/
.If you are an EMEA customer and your account is on Cluster 4, see the section Accessing the Preview Sandbox for Accounts on Cluster 4 (EMEA Accounts) below.
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Log in using your Preview credentials.
note tip TIP Your Preview credentials should be the same as your production credentials, unless you changed them in Production after the Preview refresh happened. The logins are synchronized only when a refresh occurs. They do not synchronize automatically.
Accessing the Preview Sandbox for Accounts on Cluster 4 (EMEA Accounts) accessing-the-preview-sandbox-for-accounts-on-cluster-4-emea-accounts
To log into the Preview Sandbox using a URL:
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Navigate to this URL:
https://companyname.preview.workfront.com/
.You may also access the Preview Sandbox by going to .
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Log in using your Preview credentials.
Your Preview credentials should be the same as your production credentials, unless you changed them in Production after the Preview refresh happened. The logins are synchronized only when a refresh occurs. They do not synchronize automatically.
Receiving Emails from the Preview Sandbox
Workfront disables all email communication from the Preview Sandbox environment. If you want to receive email notifications from the Preview Sandbox environment, you must enable this functionality in your user settings. For more information about enabling email notifications in the Preview Sandbox environment, see Enable delivery of emails from the Preview Sandbox environment.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
If you are using SSO, work with our Customer Support team to ensure it is properly configured so that you can use your SSO credentials to log in to the Preview Sandbox. If your initial login fails, please contact your regular support contact or Workfront administrator for assistance.
For more information about Single Sign-On, see Overview of single sign-on in ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Workfront.
Configuring Single Sign-On in the Preview Sandbox
If you want to configure your Preview Sandbox to work with a Single Sign-On solution, you can do so by configuring it separately from your Production environment. The SSO configuration in the Preview Sandbox is independent from your SSO configuration in the Production environment.
When your Preview Sandbox refreshes (every weekend), the SSO information is not copied from your Production environment to overwrite the Preview Sandbox configuration.
The steps for configuring single sign-on in the Preview Sandbox are similar to those for configuring it in the Production environment.
For more information about configuring Workfront with SSO, see Overview of single sign-on in ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Workfront.
Automatic recalculation of project timelines
Recalculating timelines allows managers to see how forces outside of the project are impacting the project’s timeline. A project’s timeline refers to the planned and projected dates for the project.
As a Workfront administrator, you can configure when Workfront automatically recalculates project timelines. Workfront can recalculate project timelines either every night or when the project scope changes, or both.
For information, see Configure timeline recalculations for projects.
For the Preview environment, the nightly recalculation is disabled, and the project timelines are not recalculated automatically. You must manually recalculate the project timeline for the Preview environment. For information, see Recalculate project timelines.
Preview environment performance and availability
Workfront Preview environments are not intended for performance or load testing. Rather, use these environments to validate feature functionality with your organization’s existing workflows.
Workfront Preview environments are intended to be always available.
Any outage to a Workfront Preview environment during regular business hours will be a first priority immediately after any Production issues are resolved if any exist.
Any outage to a Workfront Preview environment on weekends (Saturdays and Sundays) will be addressed so that the environment is running for business hours on Monday.