Salesforce B2C Commerce 24.7 > Administering Your Organization > Import and Export > Overview of the Import/Export Process

Import/Export for Sandboxes

During site development, each developer uses a separate sandbox. You can create an initial sandbox as a template for other sandboxes, so that the work of configuring the site is only done once. Import isn't used for code upload into sandboxes.

You transfer data files from your local machine to the instance before importing them into the instance database. Files can't be imported unless they are stored on the instance you want to import them into. You can use WebDAV or FTP to push files for import to the cartridge manually. You can also use a custom pipeline with Salesforce B2C Commerce scripts to pull files automatically into the instance.

When you have moved the import files to your instance, you can import them into the instance database using Business Manager. When you are confident that your first sandbox has the configuration and data you want your development team to use, you can use Site Export to export the contents and configuration of the site and download them to your developer machine.

Note: There are various objects that can only be imported using Site Import/Export. Make sure that these objects exist before performing Site Import/Export. Don’t export the users or permission settings of the site. You don’t want to override the user and password information for sandboxes you are importing into.

Any other sandbox can then use Site Import to get the configuration and contents of the exported site. Use this process to create initial sandboxes and whenever you need a new sandbox so that you can branch your code.

During development, new product and price feeds can be imported directly into each sandbox using the Import/Export feature. Each sandbox uses the same import files, but must independently use the Import feature to import files. You can also create custom pipelines to automate the import of data. This step is done to support automatic import of data for staging and production systems.