1. Administering Planning
  2. Managing Sandboxes
  3. About Sandboxes

About Sandboxes

Sandboxes enable users to keep their work private (from other non-administrators) as they develop their plans (see Building a Plan Privately in Working with Planning). Users may want to privately experiment with various outcomes in a sandbox without having others see their numbers until they've completed their analysis. When they're ready to make their numbers public (to others having access to them), they publish the data in the sandbox.

Some basics about sandboxes:

  • Sandboxes are enabled at the cube level. You can select the Sandboxes option for block storage cubes that are seeded when you create the application. You can also enable sandboxes when you create a new block storage cube. You can’t later change the sandboxes option for existing cubes, including cubes created by default such as Plan1. See Enabling Sandboxes.

  • By default, forms and ad hoc grids are in base view. When a user starts working in a sandbox, the form switches from base view to sandbox view. In sandbox view, the user's data is saved independently of the application's data. When users are done privately modifying and analyzing data in the sandbox, they publish the sandbox. When published, the new and changed data is saved to the application. The form is then back in base view. See What Happens When a Sandbox is Published?.

  • To provide access to sandboxes for users with the User role, you must enable the Apply Security option for the Version dimension. See also Enabling Sandboxes and Enabling Version Members.

  • All access permissions are in effect in sandboxes, including security on approval units. For example, if the Version member is part of an approval unit that is in the approvals process, users have write access only when they are the current owner of the approval unit.

  • Users can have multiple sandboxes and switch among them.

  • Multiple users can simultaneously work in multiple sandboxes without affecting each other's work.

  • Service Administrators can see the names of (and data in) all sandboxes, which version member they're based on, who created each one, when they were last modified. Service Administrators can also delete anyone's sandbox. To manage sandboxes, from the Home page, click Application, then click Overview, then Actions, and then Manage Sandboxes.

  • Because dynamic members are automatically calculated, users can immediately see the effect of their changes.

  • When a cube is enabled for sandboxes, a dimension called HSP_View is added, with three members: BaseData, SandboxData, and ConsolidatedData. See How Sandboxes Work with HSP_View and Version Members.

  • When working in a sandbox, users can add members, but those members aren't added to the base version when the sandbox is published.

Videos

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Learn how to analyze data with sandboxes. video icon Analyzing Data with Sandboxes in Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud