Hi team,
When creating a brand new Zendesk Sandbox, the existing production setup is not fully copied over, which can result in key configurations—such as messaging—being missing or incomplete. This creates a situation where a sandbox does not accurately reflect the environment it is intended to replicate.
In practice, this means that teams setting up a sandbox to test improvements or changes must first spend significant time manually rebuilding configurations that already exist elsewhere. For example, messaging and other carefully configured elements may need to be recreated from scratch, even though they are critical to the experience being tested. This undermines the purpose of using a sandbox as a safe and reliable testing space.
For organizations that regularly test workflows, messaging changes, or operational improvements, this behavior is counterintuitive. A sandbox is expected to closely mirror an existing environment so that testing focuses on validating changes, not on reconfiguring baseline settings. Manual replication increases effort, introduces the risk of inconsistencies, and makes it harder to trust test results.
It would be extremely valuable to have the ability to copy an already configured setup when creating a new sandbox—either by duplicating the full configuration or by allowing admins to select which components should be included. This would make sandbox environments far more effective, reduce setup time, and provide greater confidence when deploying improvements to production.
Thank you!
