Sandbox | Log In and Manage Accounts

Sandbox logins and user accounts.

Updated over a week ago

Logging in to the Sandbox

You will receive a unique URL to login to your sandbox instance. It will likely look like this:

Your username will be:

etosandbox_etoclient###/jdoe

Overview

Sandbox enterprises are just as much of a database as Live ETO enterprises and both exist in the https://secure.etosoftware.com environment.

We do not allow a unique email to exist twice in the https://secure.etosoftware.com environment.

You may have come across an employee who works at two organizations who use ETO. They likely use two seperate emails to login or they have a merge account. (More about merge accounts further down).

When a Sandbox is created all of the user accounts are copied. The Staff ID's in the Live and the Sandbox are identical. However, their email logins remain unique to the LIVE database.

For this reason, you need to use a special URL and username to login as yourself in to the Sandbox environment.

For Sandbox users who were copied from a LIVE enterprise, they must login at the database specific URL and use their designated username.

Any user account who is not a copy, and who is using their full email to login must login through the standard https://secure.etosoftware.com.


Which users are copied? What if I create new users in Sandbox?

If you navigate to Manage User Accounts and edit an account you will see a tab called "Linked External Accounts". For our Sandbox user this is an excellent place to find out if a user is copied and what their username is.

  • Sandbox copied accounts will have their username under linked external accounts

  • New, non-copied accounts will have a full email under linked accounts

Copied Sandbox users must login through the designated URL with their username.

New accounts must login through the standard URL with their full email.

Why?

Having two seperate logins for Sandbox and Live is a standard safety precaution. It prevents users from entering data in the wrong database.

It also allows the Live and Sandbox data to sync correctly. The sync can recognize the matching Staff IDs on both enterprises and match any new data.


Secondary Impacts?

Because the copied sandbox accounts are still using the users original email address to send password reset emails, they will use that email address to send any other ETO notification.

These notifications can be managed / turned off in most places across ETO.

Some admins choose to leave the emails on as they may have many users actively working in LIVE and SANDBOX databases.

Some admins may choose to manipulate the email addresses of all their staff in Sandbox to equal fake email addresses. This is only advised if you do not plan to ever refresh your database.


Merge Accounts

There is an option to merge some accounts across the Sandbox and Live Enterprise. Because of the syncing process this is only recommended for enterprises who do not plan on syncing their data.

A merge account would allow a user to have one email login at the standard ETO URL. From that login they could navigate between Live and Sandbox without having to log out and back in.

Please contact support if you'd like to set up a merge account between your Live and Sandbox account.

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