One common scenario you need to solve as a Salesforce consultant is populating data in a new pre-production sandbox. After all, there’s not much use in developing something without testing it with some data.
You can always use a full copy sandbox each time, but prices for those are comically high. Partial copies are also available in limited quantity and they require a purchase.
Here are some viable alternatives:
1. Manual
This is not the usual recommendation for large datasets. However it’s a reasonable option if you just need a handful of data to perform some basic development in a small sandbox.
2. Salesforce Data Loader
This usually involves a tedious process, but it does work. Extract from one sandbox into .csv, and insert into another. You’ll need to be careful about the order of execution, and before inserting, you’ll need to update foreign keys with the new Salesforce Id.
3. Prodly
Although this is a paid product, Prodly is great option if you’re using CPQ, Field Service, or any other data intensive app. This is because Prodly can copy data from sandbox to sandbox while maintaining master/detail and lookup relationships between objects. They even have pre-built recipes to help accelerate this process.
Note: In full transparency, I’m a Prodly partner, and have chosen to be one because I believe in its power and usefulness.
4. SFDMU
This is the new option I learned about in last week’s Salesforce conference in Spain. Intended for developers using VS Code, SFDMU is extremely powerful in being able to also maintain object relationships. In addition, it can easily randomize data such as names, phone numbers, and email addresses.
The takeaway
There are many free and paid tools to help migrate data from one sandbox to another or to deploy into production. Depending on your needs, you may use more than one tool.
Which is your tool of choice?