Netsuite Developer Toolbox
Netsuite Development
As a Netsuite consultant, most of my energy is spent in design and development. I work with clients seeking assistance with the various needs in their environment, and then I get to work getting things done. Nobody can work in a vacuum, though. Here are some of the tools offered in the greater community that help me help you, and hopefully some of these will prove useful to the casual reader!
Oracle Netsuite Resources
First off, the basics:
- SuiteAnswers: Netsuite’s “Help Center” and SuiteAnswers self-service portal is always helpful, but obviously requires a login to access the site. This is natural, being that you are most likely to be in an account seeking help regardless. Rarely are you working entirely outside of a particular environment (be it a Production account, Sandbox or even a Development/Test/Training account). Documentation could at times be lacking, though. Searching is also a challenge at times.
- Netsuite User Guides (SA #50287): Speaking of SuiteAnswers, there is a nifty listing of User Guides that NS publishes. The entire listing of PDF documents covers topics from Release Notes to Order Management, Administrator Guides and general or even very specific documentation surrounding all areas of ERP -and specifically Netsuite. All in the form of downloadable PDF documents, available for offline perusal. My personal “go-to” is the SuiteScript Reference Guide(s).
- NetSuite Support Community: This is an interesting one. Its origin was the epitome of all that a user forum should be. It had involvement of the pros, noobs, and everyone in between. Even Evan Goldberg could be found answering questions from literal newbies to the platform. (I even merited a response from Evan once upon a time, way back when I first started working with the software as an administrator – and found a glitch that they issued a fix for!) However, like all good things, this forum came to an end in its original form, and was replaced by this official “Oracle Community” forum. I’ve honestly spent little to no time on this site, as search became difficult, along with user involvement. Plus, this was essentially replaced and surpassed by the Slack forum I’ll review below.
- Netsuite Professionals Slack Channel: This semi-official Slack Workspace/Channel is definitely:
- recommended by Netsuite (at SuiteWorld, for example, speakers and instructors mentioned this forum repeatedly and encouraged attendees to sign up – which is actually precisely how I became involved), and
- well-regarded by the general community, with involvement from some real professionals who are outstanding and giving (some people must spend a lot of time simply helping others out for the sake of helping), as well as Netsuite employees (which is useful for official updates, hotfix requests or other privileged info)
- the go-to place for professionals on either side of the fence, whether a Netsuite customer or consultant, looking for help or to give assistance to those looking. If there were more time in the day, it would be spent here. Very active forum, with very intelligent people sharing ideas and challenges. Additionally, there are a number of Channels so that you can tailor your experience and filter out the noise (not everyone out there is a geek, after all). At the time of this writing, there are currently 49 Channels ranging from #general or #administration or #performance, to #accounting or #inventory, from #suiteql to #suitescript and more… For more info, visit netsuiteprofessionals.com. (I’ve seen mention of a Reddit handle as well, but have not honestly spent much time there myself to make an assessment.)
Now, in addition to the above un/official sites, there are a number of community members that share via blogs and other forums as well. One that comes to mind is a good friend, Marty Zigman of Prolecto Resources, Inc. His blog (blog.prolecto.com) was voted of the top three Netsuite-related resources in 2019. I agree.
Anderson Frank Annual #NetSuite Survey shows Prolecto Resources’ Blog is valuable to the community: pic.twitter.com/GBtfN7Th7h
— btc4erp (@btc4erp) April 1, 2019
That pretty much covers the bulk of the basic tools at your disposal as a Netsuite customer/administrator/consultant. Look out for future posts detailing other notable blogs to follow!