Today i want to give some tips to create Salesforce users under a simple names policy.

One Salesforce user is created using : name + @ + domain
(As you can see in the picture)

It means, name can be the same for different domains. In the case of Salesforce different domains means ORGs (formally Organizations).

Organizations means Salesforce single instance.

Usually an architecture is based on the model production/pre-production/developer. In this case Salesforce architecture is based into :

1) Production ORG .- Called Company ORG or ORG
2) Pre-production ORG .- Full Sandbox
3) Developer ORGs .- Sandbox

As you have read, any ORG different to production is called Sandbox. At Salesforce there are differents types of sandbox. All details at this link.

Into my project i´ve used simple convention for ORGs and users. The name of an ORG is the name of domain as part of your username. It means that you can use the same user with different domains, to connect to different ORGs. It's the same for production or non production ORGs.

But there is a little trick here, you have to use different login URLs :

For production ORGs, Salesforce login URL is allways : http:\\login.salesforce.com

For non production ORGs, Salesforce login URL is always : http:\\test.salesforce.com

Note : If you are already using another connection url is because you can use DNS names and company domains to rename Salesforce connection URL at your company wishes.

My advice for ORG and user names policy :

- Production ORG : This name is usually assigned by Salesforce at the first day, or it is a trial ORG moved to production. As an example we suppose "companyname.com" (or in case you have several Salesforce instances by departments you can use "companynamedepartment.com")
- Production Users : "username@companyname.com"

- Preproduction ORG : I usually called "pre". Salesforce use your domain + sandbox name to create your domain, at this example your new domain will be "companyname.com.pre"
- Preproduction Users : "username@companyname.com.pre"

- Developer ORG : I usually use "dev" or in case you have several developer sandbox you can use dev1, dev2, dev3...or if these are based on features you can use : devData, devMobile...
At this example your new domain will be "companyname.com.dev"
- Developer Users : username@companyname.com.dev

Enjoy & have fun !!!