How to create a Dynamics 365 Sandbox environment

Recently I have seen a lot of confusion around how to create a new Sandbox environment for Dynamics 365. A couple of things have provoked this: the constantly changing Power Platform; and recent changes to Power Platform and Dynamics 365 licensing.

It is really easy to create a new Common Data Service (CDS) environment but how do you create a Sandbox environment with all of the Dynamics 365 apps and components that you need? Until recently this has been confusing and challenging to achieve.

Read below to understand the simplest way to create a Dynamics 365 Sandbox environment.

This article covers:

• Background of Sandbox pricing and licensing
• Why creating a new Dynamics 365 Sandbox is confusing?
• How to create a Sandbox environment for Dynamics 365

Let’s start with a bit of history…

Background

A few years back, customers who had at least 25 Dynamics 365 / CRM user licenses got one free Sandbox instance. For customers with less than 25 users, or if additional Sandbox instances were needed, they had to be purchase. For around US$150, if I remember correctly.

Around the Dynamics CRM 2106 / introduction of Dynamics 365 era, all customers got one free Sandbox instance. Regardless of the number of user licenses they had. Additional Sandbox instances still came at a cost.

In early 2019, Microsoft announced that it would be changing the way it charged for database Capacity , effective April 1 2019. A knock on effect of this is that all Sandbox environments are free, as long as there is at least 1GB of database capacity available in the tenant. A lot of people think that the new capacity-based licensing means “free” Sandbox environments. They are not really free. Effectively, customers now pay for database capacity instead of buying Sandbox instances directly.

Why is / was creating a Dynamics 365 Sandbox environment confusing?

Documentation

First of all, the documentation is confusing. The Dynamics 365 documentation for Manage Sandbox Instances has recently been changed and now points the Power Platform documentation for Manage Sandbox Environments. This tells you how to provision a new environment but doesn’t mention Dynamics 365.

The Dynamics 365 documentation for Add an instance to your subscription talks about purchasing additional Sandboxes. Now that is confusing, given the new capacity-based licensing.

But I have recently found the one article that you need for Dynamics 365 Sandbox environments…

Create and manage environments in the Power Platform Admin center.

This article, which was only updated days ago, explains how to create a new Sandbox instance and enable the Dynamics 365 components. It also has a FAQ which explains a bit more about the nuances of Dynamics 365 environments.

Technology

Up until December 2019 you could not create a Sandbox Dynamics 365 environment through the Power Platform Admin Center. The Sandbox option for environment type did not exist. There were a few hacks suggested by the Dynamics community e.g. create a Production environment and then convert into a Sandbox, but it wasn’t straight forward.

But it is now very very simple…

How to create a Dynamics 365 Sandbox Environment

Navigate to https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/environments.

Fill in the details in the first step and ensure that Create a database for this environment? is set to Yes.

In the second step (Add database), set Enable Dynamics 365 apps to Yes. Under Automatically deploy these apps, choose the Dynamics 365 apps you want included in the Sandbox environment.

Click Save and you are done!

Once the environment has been created, click on the environment name to see the details. Notice that the URL begins with “org” and some random letters and numbers. Change this to something a bit more friendly by clicking on Edit.

Conclusion

With the previous documentation on creating Dynamics 365 Sandbox environments out of date, it took me a while to figure this out. I ended up raising a support case to Microsoft. It is awesome to see that the Microsoft documentation and Power Platform Admin Center has been updated recently. I hope this article points you in the right direction if you are having issues creating a Dynamics 365 Sandbox environment.

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