Primo VE Sandbox
Introduction
The Primo VE sandbox environment is designed to provide a means for you to develop, test, and train without making your changes visible to patrons and compromising the data in your production environment. The Primo VE sandbox environments are completely isolated from your Primo VE production environment so that any actions performed in the sandboxes do not affect your production environment and any actions performed in your production environment do not affect the sandboxes.
As part of Primo and Alma standard offering, Ex Libris provides a standard sandbox for both Alma and Primo VE. The standard sandbox contains a significant amount of data (about 70,000 records) provided by Ex Libris that you can use for staff training and testing business scenarios, new enhancements, and integration with other systems, without affecting your production environment. Changes in the Alma sandbox are seen within the Primo VE sandbox.
Premium Sandbox
Sites may choose to upgrade to a premium sandbox, which contains the library configuration from your Alma and Primo VE production environment and holds the full amount of records as per your production environment license. With the February 2019 release, Ex Libris introduced a new premium sandbox policy. Premium sandboxes are automatically refreshed by Ex Libris twice a year, in February and August, on the Sunday after the Alma release on production environments. For information on the new policy, see Ex Libris New Premium Sandbox Policy: Frequently Asked Questions.
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You cannot mix grades of sandboxes. For example, if you have an Alma premium sandbox, you must also have a Primo VE premium sandbox.
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You cannot have both a standard sandbox and a premium sandbox simultaneously.
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The cloud sandbox environments are updated with the new Primo VE release two weeks before the general release to the production environments. For details, refer to the Alma Release Schedule.
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For collection discovery testing, the premium sandbox is required.
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For more details on working with your sandbox and Alma, see Alma Sandbox Environments.
Multiple Sandboxes in a Collaborative Network
For a collaborative network, Ex Libris provides two Primo VE and two Alma standard sandboxes as part of a standard subscription to allow testing between two member institutions. If your collaborative network implements a Network Zone, Ex Libris provides an additional Alma and an additional Primo VE standard sandbox for the Network Zone, which is linked to the two sandbox members. A collaborative network acquiring the premium sandbox option can choose the number of premium sandboxes to acquire (based on sandbox guidelines noted in the Alma Sandbox documentation). Typically, a collaborative network implementing a Network Zone purchases a Network Zone premium sandbox (a copy of the Network Zone), and several premium sandboxes to serve as copies of selected representative member institutions. If any member institution opts to acquire a premium sandbox, you must purchase a Network Zone premium sandbox as well. Standard and premium sandboxes cannot be mixed within a collaborative network (they must be all standard or all premium). If one institution member opts for a premium sandbox, all of the other entitled sandboxes in the network, including the Network Zone, must upgrade to premium as well. Similarly, decisions regarding the number of member sandboxes are relevant for both Alma and Primo VE.
Additional Information
To simulate production-like results in an Alma and Primo VE sandbox when performing a search, holdings of all members are included, including the holdings of members that do not have a premium sandbox.
Preview Sandbox
The preview sandbox view enables network member institutions that did not acquire a premium sandbox to test new functionality two weeks prior to the new monthly production release. The data and setup for the institution's preview sandbox are copied from the member institution's production environment (which is updated twice a year with the premium sandbox institutions).
Only member institutions with a premium sandbox are permitted to make configuration changes.