Unified Sandbox – A Simplified approach for Customization

Unified Sandbox – A Simplified approach for Customization

Oracle has come up with wide variety of tools to effectively address the Business needs. Unified Sandbox is one among them which is released in R13 (19C) update. From 19D update, it becomes a delivered feature in Oracle HCM Cloud.

How to Access:

  • Click on Navigator>>Configuration>>Sandboxes to access Unified Sandboxes.
  • While creating, provide a name for the sandbox, select “Yes” for the option publishable and check of the required Tools.
  • Click on Create and Enter.

The Publishable field differentiates the usage of the sandbox. If Publishable is Yes, then one can publish the unified sandboxes with mainline environment. If Publishable is No, then one can use this option for testing purpose in the System.

Figure 1: Creating Sandbox and Activating it

Prerequisite:

Privileges required to Edit, View and Publish the sandboxes as follows:

S.No Sandbox Privileges Required Access
1 FND_ADMINISTER_SANDBOX_PRIV Can Preview, Edit and Publishes the sandboxes
2 FND_MANAGE_SANDBOX_PRIV Can Edit but not Publishes the Sandboxes
3 FND_VIEW_SANDBOX_PRIV Can view sandboxes in Read Only Mode

Key Features:

Unlike Classic Sandboxes, Unified Sandboxes have tools required to perform the customization in one place collectively as shown in the figure 1. While creating sandbox, we will be able to view what layer the tool is associated with. All the tools are associated with Site level except Page Composer. Page Composer has access to multiple layers.

Figure 2: select layer for Page Composer

While choosing page composer tool, we need to select the layer to which page composer associates with. Tick the check box of page composer, then click on pencil symbol in source context to decide the associating layer for it. The three categories as below

• Customer Relationship Management

• Human Capital Management

• Default

Figure 3: Available Categories for Page Composer Tool

Another advantage of using Unified Sandboxes is that it has preview option. While in the Sandbox, developer will be able to view how the result will be published. This helps the developer to avoid any undesired results.

Figure 4: Preview as if Published option

By default, we can create up to 20 sandboxes. We can control the max count of sandboxes in the system, by changing Profile values. We need to use “Maximum Number of Sandboxes” Profile option in Manage Applications Core Administrator Profile Values.

Developers can create multiple sandboxes in parallel and if any of them get published, it will ask others to refresh in order to get the recently published sandbox to get updated in the mainline environment.

But in Application Composer Tool, object is locked automatically when you create it in the sandboxes. Only via one of the sandboxes, can an object be edited or modified. This feature makes sure that changes in object are captured in only one sandbox at a time.

Another notable feature is that Download All option while publishing Unified Sandboxes. Download All option helps to download the changes performed in that Sandboxes and it will help to resolve the issues if anything occurs in the futures.

Benefits:

  • Unified Sandboxes increase the productivity
  • More Efficient and less time consuming
  • All the Tools are collectively available in one place
  • User based access can be defined without any additional script
  • Object locking makes sure the security and avoids the conflicts.
  • During parallel implementation, Sandboxes has refreshed option to get recent details of mainline environment.

Author
Sriranjani Rajendran
Kovaion Consulting

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