Zuora Testing Environments
Zuora environments represent private tenant access to the Zuora application, APIs, and supported integrations and payments gateways. This article describes the following information:
Testing Environments Currently Offered
Zuora offers the following testing environments:
-
API Sandbox
Intended for integration testing and release preview testing. Does not come with any data. Zuora application version is one week ahead of the main production environment.
-
Zuora Central Sandbox
Provides additional capabilities on top of API Sandbox. Zuora Central Sandbox copies production data securely and supports production-like performance. Zuora Central Sandbox can be utilized for integration testing, end-to-end production testing, user acceptance testing, and performance testing with guidelines. See Getting started with Zuora Central Sandbox for more information.
Zuora has stopped offering the Legacy Testing Environments, including Production Copy, enhanced Production Copy, and Performance Test environments. See Notice of PCE, ePCE, PTE End of Life.
API Sandbox
The API Sandbox is Zuora's "release preview" environment. It is a customer facing, multi-tenant environment that gets code deployed to it before Zuora's production environment. How early code gets deployed depends on the type of release: Major releases are usually deployed a week in advance, whereas minor releases and emergency patches get deployed days, hours or minutes before production. Zuora customers can purchase any number of tenants in this environment for a recurring annual fee.
API Sandbox is co-located in the same data center as the production environment, running on bare metal, but on a smaller footprint, offering less capacity.
The main use cases for API Sandbox include:
- Basic implementation configuration and integrations
- Training
- Integration testing
- Regression testing
- Release preview testing
This environment is located at:
- US Cloud Data Center 1 - https://sandbox.na.zuora.com/
- US Cloud Data Center 2 - https://apisandbox.zuora.com/
- EU Cloud Data Center - https://sandbox.eu.zuora.com/
Zuora Central Sandbox
Zuora Central Sandbox combines the capability to copy production data along with production-like performance into a single test environment tenant. While Zuora Central Sandbox always comes with a snapshot of scrubbed production data, it can also be utilized for a brand new implementation in case the production tenant has no data at that time. The use cases for Zuora Central Sandbox include everything that an API Sandbox does, and more:
-
Basic implementation configuration and integration
-
Training
-
Integration testing
-
Regression testing
-
Performance testing (with guidelines)
-
Pre-production testing
-
User acceptance testing
Zuora Central Sandbox is hosted on a production-like AWS infrastructure, allowing our customers to test the API response time, the bill runs and payment runs with production-level data loading. It provides a more realistic view of performance than API Sandbox.
While the Zuora Central Sandbox is designed for production-level performance, Zuora recommends you to contact Zuora Global Support if you plan to test over a certain amount of volume in a 24 hour period in the Zuora Central Sandbox. See Performance guidelines for the details.
In addition, the testing results can still vary from Production since both the Zuora Central Sandbox and Production are distinct multi-tenant environments, the performance of which are based on the overall usage across all your customers.
This environment is located at:
- For the US Data Center customers: https://test.zuora.com
- For the EU Data Center customers: https://test.eu.zuora.com
Zuora Central Sandbox has the following limitations:
- Beta or Early Adopter features might not be supported. Contact Zuora Global Support or your account manager for more information.
- While Zuora Central Sandbox supports the capability to create and save reports in the Reporting tool, the saved reports in the production environment are currently not copied to Zuora Central Sandbox.
For more information, see Support for Zuora Features, Add-ons, Integrations.
Contrasts Between API Sandbox and Zuora Central Sandbox
See the following contrasts between API Sandbox and Zuora Central Sandbox:
General Information
API Sandbox | Zuora Central Sandbox | |
---|---|---|
Does this sound like you? |
|
|
Suitable for |
Previewing and functional testing new Zuora features before they are released to Production. |
Functional testing with cloned configuration and data. Heavy-load performance and stress testing ([with guidelines]) |
Not Suitable for | Performance and load testing | Testing beyond Zuora’s standard concurrent request limits and application limits. |
Data Migration Testing |
Yes Suitable for less than 100,000 records |
Yes |
An example of 100,000 records would be 50,000 accounts + 50,000 subscriptions. | ||
Infrastructure Mimics Production | No | Yes, fully hosted on AWS. |
Includes Environment Monitoring | Yes | Yes |
Rollback Policy | Rollbacks are not supported on any environment. Zuora recommends that you revert changes yourself – if possible. Reverting changes are possible before posting transactions on a bill run. | |
Hardware | AWS cloud | AWS cloud |
Location |
https://apisandbox.zuora.com/apps https://sandbox.na.zuora.com https://sandbox.eu.zuora.com |
https://test.zuora.com https://test.eu.zuora.com |
Supported API Authentication Schemes | OAuth 2.0 (recommended), username and password, authorization cookie, single-use tokens for CORS-enabled operations | OAuth 2.0 (recommended), username and password, authorization cookie, single-use tokens for CORS-enabled operations |
Refresh Policy
Zuora performs two types of refreshes: A refresh for a new Zuora version and a data snapshot refresh.
To request a refresh or get more info on Zuora's refresh policy, submit a request with Zuora Global Support and include ENVIRONMENT in the subject heading.
API Sandbox | Zuora Central Sandbox | |
---|---|---|
Code base Refresh with Latest Zuora Version |
Yes API Sandbox is also automatically refreshed for maintenance releases. |
Yes Automatically refreshed. Refreshes follow the API Sandbox release schedule. Maintenance releases also occur in this environment, following the same production release schedule. Note that release for Zuora Central Sandbox may occur a few days prior to, or following the production release. |
Data Snapshot Refresh (Includes Scrubbed Data Copied from Production) | No
You are responsible for loading your data, including creating user logins and global tenant settings. |
On-demand. Refresh limited to once per monthly. Scrubbed data includes user logins, emails and global settings. |
Historical PDF-generated Invoices |
No You must generate PDF invoices from scratch. |
No You must generate PDF invoices from scratch. |
Scrubbed Data
The following table provides a summary of the data that is scrubbed.
API Sandbox | Zuora Central Sandbox | |
---|---|---|
Commerce | ||
Zuora for Salesforce - 360 Sync | N/A | Salesforce Credentials |
Commerce Portal | N/A |
|
Customer Catalog | No information needs to be scrubbed. | |
Promotion Codes | No information needs to be scrubbed. | |
Billing & Payments | ||
Customer Account | N/A | Bill To and Sold To Contact information:
|
Avalara Integration | N/A | Avalara credentials |
Notifications and Callouts | N/A | N/A |
Payment Method | N/A | After a Zuora Central Sandbox is provisioned, the previous payment methods are no longer available in the Central Sandbox environment. You have to create new payment methods. |
Finance | ||
NetSuite | N/A |
NetSuite integration credentials |
Additional Add Ons | ||
Workflow | N/A |
|
Collections (All Apps) | N/A |
|
Appstore Connector | Account Name | |
Tax Connector | N/A |
|
Support for Zuora Features, Add-ons, Integrations
Zuora features, add-ons, and integrations are generally supported except where noted in the following table:
API Sandbox | Zuora Central Sandbox | |
---|---|---|
Notifications | Yes | Yes |
Callouts | Yes | Yes |
Single Sign-on | Yes | Yes |
Two-factor Authentication | Yes | Yes |
Reporting | Yes | Yes |
New Invoice File Generation Service | Yes | Yes |
New Quote File Generation Service | Yes | Yes |
Orders UI, including creating Orders through the UI | Yes | Yes |
Settings API | Yes | Yes |
Data Query | Yes | Yes |
Analytics | Yes | Yes |
Custom Objects | Yes | Yes |
Events and Triggers | Yes | Yes |
Add-ons and Integrations | ||
Yes | Yes | |
Zuora requires a 1-to-1 relationship with Salesforce for each Zuora environment. | ||
Zuora 360 | Manual, on-demand and scheduled | Manual, on-demand and scheduled |
Zuora 360+ | Real-Time Sync | Real-Time Sync |
Z-Suite | Yes | Yes |
Avalara Connector | Yes | Yes |
Payment Gateways | Yes Includes any gateway that is supported in production |
Yes |
Insights | No | No |
Collections | Yes | Yes |
Limits Policy
API Sandbox | Zuora Central Sandbox | |
---|---|---|
Concurrent Request Limits | Bounded by Policy | Bounded by Policy |
If Customer’s use of the Service exceeds the usage limits in the applicable contracts or as described in this Knowledge Center article for any products provided, Customer must either purchase additional usage, if applicable, or move to the next edition of the Service. If Customer does not choose either of the options, Customer shall be considered out of compliance with such Service.
Security
API Sandbox | Zuora Central Sandbox | |
---|---|---|
PCI-compliant | Yes | No |
SOC 1 and SOC 2-compliant | Yes | Yes |
HIPAA-compliant | Yes | Yes |
IP Whitelist | Yes | Yes |
Two-factor Authentication | Yes | Yes |
Zuora is committed to safeguarding the security, confidentiality, integrity, and availability of all physical and electronic information assets of the Company to ensure that regulatory, operational, and contractual requirements are fulfilled. Zuora's internal controls are benchmarked against industry standards such as ISO27001, ISO27018, PCI DSS Level 1, SOC 1, SOC 2 and HIPAA. Zuora Central Sandbox will be included in future ISO27001, ISO27018, PCI DSS Level 1, SOC 1, SOC 2 and HIPAA assessments starting in the fall of 2020.
Provisioning and Refreshing Your Data
Zuora provides the following guidelines for provisioning and data refresh turnaround times for Test Environments. We continuously strive to optimize performance and provide the best possible turnaround times for you.
When a Zuora Central Sandbox is provisioned, it will execute a data copy process that brings over a snapshot of your production data, with sensitive and PII data scrubbed. Subsequently, every data refresh request will take a new snapshot of your scrubbed production data. In both cases, the complete snapshot of your production data are as of the date and time when the request is submitted, as the data copy process will be triggered at a time after your request is made. Note that the scheduled runs, including Bill Run and Payment Run, are not copied from your production environment to Zuora Central Sandbox during the provisioning or refreshing process.
While the data copy for most tenants can be completed within less than 3 business days, it can take longer time to complete the data copy for large tenants. In addition, the process may also take longer during the first week of a month, a peak time of data refresh requests to get a full data snapshot of the previous month.
API Sandbox | Zuora Central Sandbox | |
---|---|---|
Provisioning Turnaround
(includes the copy of production data) |
None Immediate with logins |
Yes 2-3 business days Turn around is the best effort, and it may be longer for large size tenants. |
Data Copy Request Method | None | Global Support |
Data Copy Frequency | None | Once every 29 Days |
Data Copy Requests |
None Immediate with logins |
Yes 2-3 business days Turn around is the best effort, and it may be longer for large size tenants. |
Order Form or SOW Required |
Yes |
Yes |
Included with Platform Fee? |
Yes Number of instances depends on Zuora Edition |
No Contact Zuora Global Support or your Account Contact for more information. |