The Adobe Workfront Custom Refresh Sandbox environment
The Custom Refresh Sandbox is an environment where you can test and work using data from your production environment. It’s also ideal for running trainings and determining setup functionality.
- New features are introduced to the Preview Sandbox before they become available in Production.
- New features are not introduced to the Custom Refresh Sandbox before they become available in Production.
Access requirements
You must have the following access to perform the steps in this article:
| table 0-row-2 1-row-2 2-row-2 layout-auto html-authored no-header | |
|---|---|
| Workfront package | Prime or Ultimate |
| Workfront license |
Standard Plan |
| Access level configurations | You must be a Workfront administrator. |
For information, see Access requirements in Workfront documentation.
Refreshing the Custom Refresh Sandbox
The Custom Refresh Sandbox contains your actual production data, and it does not refresh until you schedule it to do so. You can schedule a refresh any time is convenient for you, as frequently as once a week.
- You cannot schedule a refresh for the current day. For example, if today is June 1, the earliest day when you can schedule a refresh is June 2.
- The scheduled refresh occurs sometime during the night, based on the user’s cluster (US clusters refresh during night in the US). The specific time is unpredictable due to other customers in the queue and how much data is refreshed. If the queue has many large customers, your refresh may not run until later that day, or the next day.
- Your Custom Refresh Sandbox always has the same product features as your production environment. However, when you refresh your Custom Refresh Sandbox, it preserves branding only for the login screen background color. The login screen and navigation bar logos are reset to Workfront defaults, and any branding images you modified prior to the refresh do not display.
Adobe cloud storage in the Custom Refresh Sandbox
Adobe cloud storage is available in the Custom Refresh Sandbox so you can test it before enabling it in production. However, the Frame.io viewer is not available in sandbox environments, so the full unified review and approval experience must be validated in production.
After you upgrade to a version of Workfront that supports Adobe cloud storage, you must refresh your Custom Refresh Sandbox to access Adobe cloud storage functionality in the sandbox. Once the refresh completes, you can begin testing Adobe cloud storage. For more information, see Enable Adobe cloud storage for your organization.
Access the Custom Refresh Sandbox from your Production environment access-the-custom-refresh-sandbox-from-your-production-environment
As a Workfront administrator, you can access your Custom Refresh Sandbox from your production environment.
To access your Custom Refresh Sandbox:
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Click the Main Menu icon
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Click System >Preferences.
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In the Test Environment section, click Sandbox 1 or Sandbox 2.
Your support package specifies whether you have access to one or two Custom Refresh Sandboxes.
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Log in using your Custom Refresh Sandbox credentials.
Your Custom Refresh Sandbox credentials are the same as your production credentials, unless you have changed your production credentials since you last refreshed your Custom Refresh Sandbox. The logins are synchronized only when a refresh occurs. They do not synchronize automatically.
The Custom Refresh Sandbox shows the version as well as the last refresh date in the banner at the top of the screen. All information from production is available and ready to work with after a refresh completes.
Access the Custom Refresh Sandbox using a URL access-the-custom-refresh-sandbox-using-a-url
Any user can access the Custom Refresh Sandbox by using a URL.
Access the Custom Refresh Sandbox for accounts on Clusters 1,2,3, and 5 access-the-custom-refresh-sandbox-for-accounts-on-clusters-1-2-3-and-5
Depending on your Support package, you should have access to one or two Custom Refresh Sandboxes.
To access your Custom Refresh Sandbox using a URL:
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Navigate to this URL if you only have one Custom Refresh Sandbox:
https://companyname.sb01.workfront.com(old URL:https://cr1.attasksandbox.com/.)Or If you have two Custom Refresh Sandboxes, in addition to the URLs above, you can also go to the following URL to access your second Custom Refresh Sandbox:
https://companyname.sb02.workfront.com(old URL:https://cr2.attasksandbox.com/) -
On the login screen, log in using your Custom Refresh Sandbox credentials.
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Your Custom Refresh Sandbox credentials are the same as your production credentials, unless you have changed your production credentials since your Custom Refresh Sandbox was last refreshed. The logins are synchronized only when a refresh occurs. They do not synchronize automatically.
Access the Custom Refresh Sandbox for Accounts on Cluster 4 (EMEA Accounts) access-the-custom-refresh-sandbox-for-accounts-on-cluster-4-emea-accounts
If your Workfront account is on Cluster 4 (EMEA cluster), you can access your Custom Refresh Sandbox only using a URL. To find out what cluster your account is on, contact our Customer Support team.
Depending on your Support package, you should have access to one or two Custom Refresh Sandboxes.
To access your Custom Refresh Sandbox using a URL:
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Navigate to this URL if you only have one Custom Refresh Sandbox:
https://companyname.sb01.workfront.com(old URL:https://cr3.attasksandbox.com)Or
Go to either one of these URLs if you have two Custom Refresh Sandboxes:
https://companyname.sb01.workfront.com(old URL:https://cr3.attasksandbox.com)https://companyname.sb02.workfront.com(old URL:https://cr4.attasksandbox.com) -
On the login screen, log in using your Custom Refresh Sandbox credentials.
Your Custom Refresh Sandbox credentials are the same as your production credentials, unless you have changed your production credentials since your Custom Refresh Sandbox was last refreshed. The logins are synchronized only when a refresh occurs. They do not synchronize automatically.
Schedule a refresh of your Custom Refresh Sandbox
After you schedule a refresh of your Custom Refresh Sandbox, you can cancel it by clicking Cancel at the top of the page. You can also reschedule it for a later time.
To schedule a refresh of your Customer Refresh Sandbox:
- Log in to your Custom Refresh Sandbox.
- Click Schedule in the banner at the top of the screen and select a date from the calendar.
- Select a date for when you want the refresh to happen, then click Schedule Refresh.
Switch to Production from the Custom Refresh Sandbox
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Log in to your Custom Refresh Sandbox.
For more information about accessing your Custom Refresh Sandbox, see Access the Custom Refresh Sandbox from your Production environment or Access the Custom Refresh Sandbox using a URL.
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Click Go To Production in the banner at the top of the screen.
Remember that work done in the sandbox will not be visible in the production environment, as the transfer of data is unidirectional, from production to your Custom Refresh Sandbox, and not in reverse.
Receive emails from the Custom Refresh Sandbox
Workfront disables all email communication from the Custom Refresh Sandbox environment. If you want to receive email notifications from the Custom Refresh Sandbox environment, you must enable this functionality in your user settings. For more information about enabling email notifications in the Custom Refresh Sandbox environment, see Enable delivery of emails from the Preview Sandbox environment.
For more information about report deliveries for the production environment, see Report delivery overview.
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 Custom Refresh Sandbox environment, the nightly recalculation is disabled, and the project timelines are not recalculated automatically. You must manually recalculate the project timeline for the Custom Refresh Sandbox environment. For information, see Recalculate project timelines.
Intended use and availability
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Workfront Custom Refresh Sandbox environments are not intended for performance or load testing. Rather, use these environments to validate feature functionality with your organization’s existing workflows.
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Workflows involving documents should focus on process not on load testing. Large files aren’t supported in Sandbox environments.
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Workfront Custom Refresh Sandbox environments are intended to be always available. Any outage to a Workfront Custom Refresh Sandbox 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 Custom Refresh Sandbox environment on weekends (Saturdays and Sundays) will be addressed so that the environment is running for business hours on Monday.
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Proofing is not available in the Custom Refresh Sandbox environments.
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The following notifications are not available for use in the Custom Refresh Sandbox environments:
- Reminder notifications
- Automatic late or early reminder notifications
Note on Business Rules
Business Rules are intentionally excluded from Workfront Preview and Sandbox environment refreshes. Unlike most data, Business Rules are treated as environment-specific configuration, similar to Users. Each environment can maintain a distinct set of rules tailored to its purpose (for example, testing, development, or production).
Including Business Rules in a refresh would overwrite these configurations, potentially disrupting rules that administrators have intentionally set up in non-production environments.
If you need to move Business Rules between environments, use Environment Promotion, which allows you to selectively transfer configuration objects with control over timing and scope. For more information, see Overview of moving objects between Workfront environments.