Salesforce Sandbox Only Access for New User

Question

Is it possible to create a sandbox, a user, limit that user's access to only that sandbox, and then later if needed, switch the user from the sandbox only access to production access?

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UPDATE:

• No, the data/configs/etc created by the user in the sandbox does not need to be pushed to production; different topic, really.
• Yes, the user-profile data does need to move, meaning that there's no need for the user/admin to create/recreate user-data such as: role, password, email, etc.

Answer 1

No. Usernames have to be unique between production and sandbox orgs (but can be the same on pre-release orgs). So you'd be unable to do this with the exact same username.

You could create the user on the production org and keep it inactive. While creating a sandbox, the user will be copied to the sandbox and his name will be appended by ".sandboxname" to maintain uniqueness. You could activate the user on the sandbox, and after a while activate the user account on the production org, but they can't be the same login.

Answer 2

Yes, the simplest way is once you created your sandbox, login to it, create this user and when needed create it also in production org. For the switch you'll need to activate or deactivate the user in each environment.

don't forget to add the ".sandboxName" to end of the username.