Every Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations (D365 F&O) administrator has faced this nightmare scenario: you refresh a sandbox from pre-go-live Gold, and suddenly real customers start receiving test emails.
Maybe it’s an invoice that was never meant to go out. Maybe it’s a workflow approval routed to the wrong executive. Either way, the damage is immediate — lost trust, embarrassing explanations, and potential compliance violations.
At Ryse Technologies, we’ve seen this happen too many times. That’s why we built Clone Commander, an automation tool that ensures your test environments are safe, silent, and compliant.
The Problem With Test-to-Pre-Go-Live-Gold Email Leaks
When you refresh a non-production environment from pre-go-live Gold, you inherit everything:
- Live email addresses tied to real customers, vendors, and employees.
- Configured SMTP servers that can still send outbound mail.
- Automated workflows that trigger communications by default.
If you don’t intervene, your test scripts, training exercises, and workflow tests can easily generate real-world communications.
The Risks
- Customer Confusion: Customers get duplicate invoices or “test” messages.
- Reputation Damage: Stakeholders lose confidence in your systems.
- Compliance Violations: Sensitive information could leak unintentionally.
- Wasted Time: IT teams scramble to contain the fallout instead of focusing on innovation.
Why Manual Fixes Aren’t Enough
Some teams try to solve this with manual cleanup after every restore:
- Rewriting or blanking out email addresses.
- Turning off SMTP servers.
- Disabling workflows temporarily.
The problem? It’s inconsistent and easy to forget. One missed configuration, and your test system is blasting out emails before anyone realizes it.
How Clone Commander Stops Accidental Emails
Clone Commander automates the entire process of “de-risking” your non-production environments.
1. Email Obfuscation Recipes
- Replace all email addresses with dummy Gmail-style accounts (e.g., customer123+test@gmail.com).
- Preserve formatting so workflows still function, but no real emails are sent.
2. Communication Control
- Disable all workflows that send messages, including expense, invoice, and purchase order approvals.
- Reroute workflows to safe internal test users instead of external contacts.
3. Safe Integration Endpoints
- Repoint Power Platform, Azure, or third-party integrations to non-production endpoints.
- Eliminate the risk of triggering real-world transactions.
4. Repeatable Automation
- Apply these rules automatically during every environment refresh.
- No human intervention required, no checklist to remember.
The Business Benefits
- Protect Your Brand → Avoid the embarrassment of “test” invoices hitting real customers.
- Ensure Compliance → Keep sensitive communications contained to safe environments.
- Save IT Time → No more manual email rewrites or SMTP hacks.
- Confidence in Testing → Developers and testers can run workflows freely, knowing no real-world communications will leak.
Conclusion
Test environments are supposed to be safe spaces for development and experimentation, not ticking time bombs waiting to send a test email to a real customer.
With Clone Commander, you can:
- Obfuscate every email address automatically.
- Disable or reroute risky workflows.
- Ensure non-production environments never communicate with the outside world.
Contact Ryse Technologies today to see how Clone Commander prevents accidental emails and protects your Dynamics 365 environment from costly mistakes.
