Question:

How to determine if a Veeva Sandbox is on a Salesforce Release Preview Instance?

Answer:

Salesforce release upgrades go into Veeva Sandboxes using a different mechanism than Veeva upgrades. With Salesforce releases, a Sandbox must either get on or get off a preview instance in order to get the upgrade.

Salesforce typically has three Releases per year. The names are connected to a season as well as a year.

Example:

1. Spring 'XX - First 2 weekends in February
2. Summer 'XX - First 2 weekends in June
3. Winter 'XX - First 2 weekends in October

To get onto a preview instance, the Sandbox should be on the preview instance at the time of the Salesforce release or Sandbox upgrade. Or, create a new Sandbox or refresh an existing Sandbox before a hard date is specified by Salesforce. If the date is missed, Salesforce will upgrade the Sandbox. This occurs automatically on the 2nd release weekend of a given Salesforce release.

To determine if a Veeva Sandbox is already on a preview instance, the admin must know the Sandbox instance location and must review the Salesforce preview instructions article that is posted with each Salesforce release.

To find a Sandbox location, complete the following steps:

1. Log into a Production environment.
2. In Setup, use Quick Find and search for Sandboxes.
3. Review the Sandboxes that are created and specifically review the Location column. For purposes of this example, let's assume the FULL/TEST Sandbox is on Location aka instance CS97.

To determine if the Sandbox located on the CS97 instance is already on a preview instance, complete the following steps:

1. Search for Salesforce Sandbox Preview Instructions in a browser.
2. Locate the article for the Salesforce release that is coming up. Example: Summer '19.
3. Navigate to the portion of the article called Refresh? Or don’t refresh? Or do nothing?
4. Review the table displayed and note that CS97 is already on a preview instance and therefore no action needs to be taken.  The Sandbox gets the Summer '19 upgrade.

Related Documentation:

Vault Documentation:  Vault Help