Much of services organizations' objectives come down to optimizing project delivery and limiting project planning mistakes to protect margins and maximize customer satisfaction. Doing so requires accurate, accessible information and applications that can help these businesses run their operations better through automation and intelligent tools that allow for more precise business and project planning.
NetSuite OpenAir customers continue to receive new features and functionality twice a year to help them deliver on these goals. NetSuite OpenAir 2024 Release 2, the second new release of the year, introduces the Redwood design system, providing a more modern user experience that makes it easier for services professionals to get their work done efficiently. This new experience is a key component of OpenAir evolving into NetSuite’s next-generation professional services automation (PSA) solution.
Enhancements designed to boost the user experience include an all-new homepage and global search, enhanced to-do lists to help teams stay on top of numerous projects, and easier navigation that lets services professionals complete key tasks faster.
New homepage enhances project visibility and collaboration
This release delivers a completely redesigned homepage. Aside from the new look, the NetSuite team rebuilt the homepage from the ground up to guide consultants, project managers, and leaders to their most urgent and important work and make it easier to dive into the performance of specific projects or the business as a whole—all in the context of their role. They can view up to 12 items on one screen, such as lists and reports. With this update to the homepage, admins can now save a specific homepage setup as a “standard” homepage and use it for others across the company. From there, individuals can personalize homepages to meet their specific role or business needs.
New global search helps increase productivity
Stakeholders across your business will benefit from an all-new global search functionality in OpenAir 2024.2 that lets them search for any information they need in one place. The new search capability lets your employees discover and explore information without having to scroll or click through multiple pages, providing faster answers and saving your staff critical time that they can put toward delivering exceptional services to customers. The global search features typo-tolerant, synonym-matching functionality so your employees can use their own language or search general phrases to find what they need. The initial version of global search lets you:
- View suggested navigation items alongside your personal navigation shortcuts.
- Search for and quickly navigate to pages to create, update, or view project records, customer records, or lists, and open the tools or settings pages.
- Find details on a specific customer, project, employee, or resource.
- Find what you’re looking for even if you don’t know the specific terms with the help of autocomplete, synonym matching, and search hints that can help you form a query.
Keep your to-do list front and center
As part of the new homepage design, everyone across your business can view an up-to-date list of the timely tasks they need to complete from any portlet or page in OpenAir, putting important work in one highly visible place. Each entry in the to-do list shows the number of items, the type of tasks, and the action required. The to-do list will replace the Reminders and My Status portlets on the current homepage.
- With this initial launch of to-do lists, consultants and managers can:
- View any tasks or issues assigned to them that they need to move forward.
- View and open items such as timesheets or expense reports they need to submit for approval.
- View a summary of the items managers need to approve.
- Reject items that require additional verification and prompt a resubmission for approval.
- Complete authorizations to allow workers to submit expenses.
Save time recording hours on the go
OpenAir 2024.2 also marks the release of a new version of the OpenAir mobile app, version 5.2. The latest mobile app helps billable employees log their hours much faster with timecard templates that reduce time spent recording regular scheduled working hours. Consultants and other hourly professionals can now save existing timecards as templates and include prefilled fields and time entries to avoid entering information manually as much as possible. They can also view, modify, or delete timecard templates from the mobile app settings.
These are just a few of the highlights in OpenAir 2024 Release 2. For more information and a full list of features and how you can take advantage of them, be sure to tune in to the OpenAir 2024 Release 2 Preview webinar (opens in new tab) live on September 20 or on demand.
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.
