Nearly all NetSuite customers use SuiteCloud to customize the suite to support the unique needs of their businesses. Chances are you, or someone on your team, has already done this using a visual tool to create custom records and fields in your account.
Standard and custom records, fields and properties form the foundation for how the information in your account is organized, tracked and secured. However, over time customizations accumulate as your company grows, processes evolve and different departments and roles call for more data. This can make it challenging to keep all of your information neatly organized and readily accessible at scale.
And, because NetSuite records and fields are typically referenced across multiple user interfaces (UIs) and application programming interfaces (APIs) such as SuiteScript, workbooks, workflows, REST integrations and forms, the same record and its fields may exhibit slightly different characteristics depending on its surrounding context. For example, you may have noticed that fields common to the same record are visible in some forms but not in others.
The SuiteCloud product team has been working on a new feature called customization manager, now available in beta status with NetSuite 2020 Release 2, that will help simplify the management and understanding of custom records and fields.
Customization manager delivers these key benefits:
- NetSuite developers and administrators can more easily manage and customize the suite with a consolidated, transparent view into all standard and custom records
- Improved visibility into how record-level customizations impact the NetSuite data model
- A simplified administrator experience by separating customization of views (UI) from customization of underlying records and fields
- Streamlined and centralized administration of mandatory field settings and access controls, ensuring consistent and secure functionality across all UI’s and APIs within the product
Let’s take a look at an example where customization manager (referred to as Record Customization in Help documentation) can help you understand all of the records, fields and associated properties maintained within your account.
In this hypothetical scenario, the A Wolfe company requires that all purchase order (or PO) fields be set to mandatory, meaning that valid data needs to be entered prior to saving, on every form, script, or REST and CSV interface where the field is referenced. In the case of A Wolfe, this property is not set consistently for each of these. However, this can easily be addressed using customization manager.
Note that you need to first enable customization manager in your account by going to Setup > Company > Setup Tasks > Enable Features (Administrator). On the SuiteCloud subtab, check the Record Customization (Beta) box. To navigate to Record Customization, go to Customization > Lists, Records, & Fields > Record Customization (Beta).
The main user interface provides an overview of all standard and custom records available in the account as shown below. Here, individual records can be searched for and discovered by expanding the left navigation or via keyword search. In this example, the user selects Sales Order Record.
Upon selection, NetSuite displays a summary view of primary information such as name and ID, and the customization overview information appears, and contains descriptive content about sublists, fields and access control settings pertaining to the record. Note that it is also possible to rename the record itself in this view.
The fields and sublists tab can open a view of all the fields on sales orders. By entering “PO” into the search box, all matching fields are displayed, including their type and mandatory property settings. In this example, the setting is not defined consistently for all of the places where the record is referenced, as indicated in the overlay.
Checking the enforce on the record box ensures this field property is set as mandatory on all forms, scripts, workflows, REST and CSV interfaces where it’s been defined, without requiring the administrator to having to visit each individual management interface to update the property. This saves time and effort and ensures consistency of field properties.
Next, the A Wolfe administrator would like to see who has access to data contained in profit margin, a newly created custom field in Sales Order, and verify which employees can make actual edits to data maintained in the field. In this simple example, we can see that any employee can view and run searches.
We can now see that edit-level permissions are only available to users (specifically sales representatives), as NetSuite shows, when the administrator selects users from the sales department dropdown list.
You can try out the Customization Manager in NetSuite 2020 Release 2 by enabling the feature in your account. Take a moment to discover how this powerful new functionality can help you better organize, secure and manage all of the records, fields and properties that exist throughout your NetSuite instance.
For more specifics on the complete list of new features, be sure to read the Release Notes(opens in new tab) and access the help page(opens in new tab) on your account.
New to the release process? Learn more about it here(opens in new tab).
The preceding is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, timing, and pricing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products may change and remains at the sole discretion of Oracle Corporation.