DIY Salesforce partial copy sandbox using SandboxBerry

Salesforce partial copy sandboxes are expensive, but it’s possible to approximate one if you’re willing to spend a little time moving the data around yourself with a fantastic little tool called SandboxBerry, which you can get from here. Big thanks to Ian Finch for all his work on it!

Below are the steps I had to go through to get all my data imported. Please let me know if you have any suggestions that could make this easier or more effective!

  1. Make a new development sandbox and log into it
  2. Delete all outbound messages and workflows that relate to integrations with external systems
  3. Save a copy of /ExampleInstructionFiles/ExampleInstructionFile.xml, henceforth called InstructionFile.xml
  4. Decide which object types you want to migrate and add them as SbbObjects in InstructionFile.xml
  5. Deactivate validation rules, mandatory fields, lookup filters and autonumber fields for those objects (TODO: write a script to do this by exporting metadata, disabling them all programmatically, then re-importing the updated metadata).  For future reference we had to:
    • Deactivate validation rules on the following: Account, Contact, Charge, Product
    • Remove lookup filters on: Account.Business_Consultant, Charge.Base_Product, Charge.Contact, Charge.Account
    • Make the following fields no longer required: Charge.Account, Charge.Contact
    • Remove the restriction from picklist values for Charge.Billing_year
    • Deactivate the following in process builder: “Set fields on contact and parent account after lead conversion” and “Set dates for once-off charges"
    • Deactivate the following workflow rules: Set charge account LOB field
    • Change autonumber fields to text fields: Charge.Name
  6. If you’re using person accounts like we are (ugh), you’ll need to exclude the __pc fields as well as “MiddleName” and “Suffix”. In InstructionFile.xml, add an SbbFieldOptions section with an SbbFieldOption for each field as instructed in the wiki
  7. Run Sandboxberry, put in your details and click Start!

In general, I’d suggest doing a test run first on just a few records for each object, filtering by IDs like:
Account.where =  Id= ‘001900000123456'
Object_Name__c.where = Account= ‘001900000123456'
Then run the import and ensure everything shows up as expected for that account.