How to create and manage test environments?

Test environments can help large organizations fulfill strict design version control. If you have multiple database accounts, you can modify the design of your test environment and make sure everything works well before restoring it to your production environment.

For Enterprise Plan databases, we provide a free test environment, feel free to contact us if needed. For other databases on other plans, you can register the other account using the free trial period for testing purposes or purchasing at least one user account for long-term use.

Create Test Environment

Method 1: When creating a test environment, if you want to apply the same design as your production environment, you can download the backup database definition file of your production environment and restore it to your test environment. After restoring, you would need to manually add testing data to the restored database.

Method 2: If you have lots of sheets and don't want to re-create testing data in all of them, you can first restore the entire database to your test environment. But you need to keep an eye on reminders and remember to delete them after restoring. Otherwise, both your production and test environment will send reminders. In addition, don't forget to suspend the users that don't need to access the test environment, or they might receive notifications and see the test environment when switching accounts.

Managing Your Test Environment

In the future, if you would like to change the design of your database and sheets, we strongly recommend modifying the design on your test environment and making sure everything works well before restoring it to your production environment. Please don't change the design on both sides simultaneously as it might cause unexpected problems as described below.

When restoring the entire database, it will completely overwrite your original one. However, when restoring the database definition file, you will need to pay attention to the following.

When creating fields, the system will assign a unique field ID to each field and will not have duplicated IDs in each database account. But for two independent database accounts, the IDs might be duplicated sometimes. For example, the "0000001" field could be "Customer Name" in one database, but the "0000001" field is "Product Name" in another database. If the same ID fields in two databases exist in different sheets as different field types or for different purposes, restoring one database definition to the other might cause unexpected issues.