Change Management and Sandbox
What is Application Change Management?
Application change management includes a set of processes specific to designing and making changes in a Quickbase application. An application management strategy can help you plan how to safely change your application as business requirements change without disrupting end users. A proven strategy for these changes can also provide confidence to IT, builders, and end-users that changes are made in a safe area and without business disruption.
What are the best practices of Change Management in Quick Base?
Best practices include establishing a governance strategy early in the application building process regarding application changes. It is much easier to follow a change management strategy as you start to build and modify an application rather than later in the build process. A successful strategy also includes processes, tools, and individuals all working towards the same goal, including using Quickbase Sandbox as a tool to execute while building and collaborating on applications.
What is Sandbox?
Sandbox is a Quickbase tool that provides a safe area to build, change, verify, and release your application outside of the production environment. Sandbox is an integral part of any governance strategy regarding change management of an application. Sandbox allows builders to make their necessary changes outside of the production environment and then promote those changes after they have been tested successfully. Ultimately, Sandbox answers the question: “Have you ever made a change in production for a business-critical application and made a mistake?”. With Sandbox, you can avoid any unintended changes by first developing in this safe area and promoting to the production environment when you are ready.
Why use Sandbox?
Sandbox provides a safe area for builders to build, minimizing the risk of potential unintended errors and without disrupting business-critical applications. Sandbox also allows for collaboration during the change management process, as builders can grant access to stakeholders so they can provide input and verify application changes before they are live. Lastly, Sandbox helps create a process that works for you, your teams, and your IT stakeholders. As mentioned, a proven process is integral for a successful change management strategy.
Where to use Sandbox.
We recommend you use Sandbox on business-critical applications. Many of our customers use Sandbox to modify applications that are essential to running their businesses. We also recommend Sandbox is used on applications that are complex enough to warrant modifying in a safe environment. A simple change in an application may not warrant the use of a Sandbox. Ultimately, we recommend implementing Sandbox on applications that make sense for you and that can benefit the building process. See more about the most effective ways to use Sandbox here.
For more information on how to access your Sandbox, see this Help Document or contact your Account Manager.
