Customize NetSuite Your Way

00:05Hi everybody. Thank you guys so much for joining. Um so today we want to take you guys through um a lot of different areas of NetSuite um related to navigation. So just to give you an idea of the agenda, we're going to go through a brief introduction of myself um the objective of today's session. um the main meat of today's session in the overview uh some key takeaways. We'll also be giving you like a takeaway sheet um because some of the things uh will have some nice uh like lists and things and it's going to be hard to take with you or write that down.

00:40So don't worry about it. You won't have to write it down. You'll get something to take with you as well as the recording. And then of course a big thank you from us here at Luxent. So a bit of background about myself. Um so my background is in finance and operations. Um I started my career in finance in nonprofits. I then started working in finance and operations in a toy company kind of overseeing supply chain distribution and a little bit of product development. Um and likely due to that background my specialties in NetSuite are on the inventory side procure to pay order to cash supply allocation that kind of thing and also in finance.

01:19So reporting, record to report and intercompany. And then my personal favorite thing to do is workflows. That probably goes back to my love of if then statements in Excel. So um and I have been with Luxent for about six months now. And prior to that I worked with NetSuite directly in their ACS or advanced customer support center as a solutions consultant. All right. So now let's talk about what we want to get out of today's session. So um we really want to the overarching goal of this session is to give you small insights to make you a better NetSuite user.

01:59So some of these things may be familiar to you but the idea behind the session is to present you with tips that you can ideally take back to your organization to make NetSuite more familiar and your day-to-day more productive. So no matter kind of like what level of NetSuite user you are, you can likely take something away from this session. That is the goal. And we're going to do that by focusing on three areas. The dashboard, the global search, and preferences. So each of these areas have tricks that you can apply and ways that you can optimize them to get the most out of NetSuite to become a power user.

02:39All right, with that, let's get into it. So the first area is the dashboard. The dashboard is the homepage of NetSuite and it can be organized to drive how you approach your responsibilities and your role. So that is the ideal way to use the dashboard and the goal of the dashboard should be to make it as useful as possible to focus you around your tasks and reporting. So some practical ways to approach that are to use shortcuts. So these are links to pages and records in that you can control for easy access in NetSuite.

03:18So these can be accessed at any time from the ribbon in NetSuite. So you can see that little star from any page that you are on in NetSuite and they can also be accessed as a tile from um the uh as a tile on the dashboard itself. And you can add anything here by clicking on the star from the page that you're on. And then one thing you can also add um links to pages outside of NetSuite. So this can be really useful. So for instance, if your payroll is outside of NetSuite and you want to link to you know where you want to see your payub, you can add a link to that to your shortcuts and then easily get to that from your dashboard.

04:01So that's a way that you can like actively use that shortcut link um so that you know to trigger something for your dayto-day to make your life easier. All right, the next thing that you can use are reminders. So this is a really powerful tool that's powered by save searches to drive to-dos or tasks. Um NetSuite comes with many that are right out of the box, but Luxent can also help you design custom reminders for your role or department. And you can also customize the look of reminders through color coding.

04:33So you can see how these are kind of colorcoded on this example I have here. And also the headline tool. So some of these can be bolded essentially and made larger than some of the ones that are at the bottom and maybe in a smaller font. Um, and one of the ways that I've utilized the headline tool in the past is you can use your own reminders as headlines. So like make it larger and in bolder font. um and also use that as a maybe a different color for the ones that you're responsible for. But then if you also want to see ones that are that are for your direct reports, people in your department, and you want to know, hey, how are they doing on the things that I've assigned to them, you can make them not headlines.

05:14Um and so you can still see them, but they're not as large and important on your dashboard. So you can still monitor them, but not draw as much attention to it. Um, but the key thing about reminders is that if there's something that you want to know that you have to do, approve something, bill something, etc., then you can make it a reminder, right? The next is recent records. So, this is a really cool tool. So, this is a tile like shortcuts that's also always available on the ribbon, but you can also add it to your dashboard.

05:49And so at any time on the ribbon or in your recent records uh tile, you can see 12 records you recently viewed or edited. And then from the dropdown, you'll also have the ability to see um all recent records, which is the most recent 100 records that you've looked at. And this can be really useful to pick up work on something that you were doing like maybe the day before or you want to reference a record that you were just looking at that you accidentally closed. So that can be really useful since NetSuite is a you know cloud-based tool.

06:24You can pick that up right where you left off. All right. Next we have the add new. I've heard some people in Luxent call this the magic bar. So this is also available at any time um from any page in NetSuite. So it is um in the upper right hand corner and it can be found above the ribbon in NetSuite and this is where you can add new records through like a shortcut. And the very cool thing about this is that it can be personalized to what you most commonly do in your role.

07:04So if you never enter bills or checks then you can remove those. Or if you never enter items for instance that's not part of your responsibilities that can be removed. Or if you do that all the time that can be moved to the top. So through this personalize section you can move these all around and put the things that you most commonly do at the top or move things that you never do or put them at the bottom if you sometimes do them. So, this has the ability to really kind of like customize and and make this your own and get to the things that you need to like enter really quickly um very fast.

07:44All right. And then analytics and KPIs or key performance indicators. So, this is what you most commonly think of probably when you're thinking of a NetSuite dashboard. Um and this is where we have the most flexibility in terms of portlets that are available to you. And what's important is that the KPIs and graphs that are available to you and and that are used are able to help you make decisions in your role or evaluate the performance of the department or business. And this is where Luxent can really help by working with you and your team to um decide like what are the measurements that you want to take a look at?

08:24What are the things that you what are the metrics that you want to measure and then designing these scorecards and KPIs that that are based on exactly that so that you can share them among your team and among your department or among your entire company so that you guys are all looking at the same thing and getting the same metrics. Um and we can really help from a consulting standpoint of saying like hey what kind of business are you in and what do you want to look at? Um, and that is one of the things that NetSuite is really great at because all of these things can be um based on safe searches.

09:05All right. Next is the navigation portlet. So this is a free sweetite app or bundle from NetSuite that installs predefined shortcuts to reports and pages based on roles. So you can choose a role from the drop down for here I have chosen controller and so you can and then it will automatically do some pre-esigned um shortcuts to set up things and master data that might interact with that role and transactions that are most commonly associated with that role and then you can customize that further.

09:40So you can kind of tailor links to the things that are most commonly used by that role and it comes predefined with standard roles and then you can you know the world's your oyster as far as using that and tailoring that even further. So this can be really useful for kind of making uh for getting to things quickly for kind of predefined roles and then as I said we can Luxent can definitely help you or you can take this and make this your own as well. So the dashboard is a really powerful tool and honestly I could spend hours talking about how to best use the dashboard because I think it's um one of the best things about NetSuite is having that base page.

10:18Um but these are just the beginning areas that we're going to touch on. So with that I am going to go on to the global search. So getting to your data within NetSuite um especially as the amount of data grows can sometimes feel challenging and the global search is a powerful tool but there are ways that you can make it work better for you and so that's what we want to talk about today. So one of the things that you may be already familiar with but are prefixes. So, these are ways to limit your search to a record type uh by putting a prefix and then a colon.

10:55And these are based on the record type of what you're looking for. So, if you're looking for um an item, you can put it colon. And so, the main thing here is these are the ones that NetSuite recommends. But if you have a custom record or another record that shares the same first two letters or first three letters, then you're going to get both of those in your results. So the most important thing here is that um your record types are kind of unique. So if you create a custom record that has the same name as an already existing record in NetSuite, then you're going to see some duplication if you search on that.

11:32Um, but this can still help you limit it, especially if that custom record doesn't have the same numbering as an existing uh standard record in NetSuite. This can still be really useful um if you're looking on a number for instance and you don't want to see, you know, I use the same numbers for invoices and cash sales maybe and they started out all at 1,000 and I'm looking for 1,200. If I just type in 1,200 and I don't limit it to invoice. If I put INV at the beginning of it, I will just get invoices and not invoices, cash sales, sales orders, and so on.

12:17Next, we have search characters. So, some of you may be familiar with this if you've used, you know, if you use them on Google and other things. These work similarly to how they work in any search engine, but these are additional ways to kind of refine your search. So they can be used in combination with a prefix as well. And I can demonstrate this. Um we're going to get to a live demo portion of the um presentation. So I'll show you this live in um NetSuite. So a wild card, a percentage sign. So this will open up the search to find all results with the number or text included.

12:52So if you're using with numbers, you can even change the placement of the wild card to change how the search functions. So putting it at the end will find all results that begin with those numbers and using it at the beginning will return all results that include those numbers. A plus sign, so this will include inactive records in your search. This can be useful for finding like inactive items or customers or vendors. So, if you're looking for a vendor that you know you've inactivated, but you want to see that vendor record, if you include that plus sign after it, you can search for it in the global search without reactivating it or having to do like a save search on it or anything like that.

13:34If you use quotes, uh this will find exact matches for the text just like if you use it on any uh search engine. If you use the or terminology, this will let you search for multiple text options at once without using a safe search. So if you know maybe this uh particular customer uses two versions of a or very close versions of a spelling, this will let you search for it um in by using or it could be this or that. Now two that we're going to talk about um these are kind of fun ones.

14:09So if you do um inv colon colon and then a number. So if you put that colon colon after um your prefix, it will actually open your result in a new window when there is only one result. So I'll demonstrate this in our live demo. Um this does rely on having a particular preference turned off that we're going to discuss in our next section. And then also capitalizing the first letter in the prefix.

14:41So in that previous example IV that capital I um this will result in opening it in edit mode. So inv colon and then the number will open that result in edit mode. All right. And then next, something that a lot of people don't know is that you can actually get to help from the global search. So if you put help colon and then search for a topic in global search, you can it will take you to the help center and find all of the help topics related to that search uh query that you just made.

15:28Um, so this is a shortcut to getting to that help topic screen when you know what topic that you are looking for. All right, so now that we've talked a little bit about the global search and kind of maximizing that feature, let's talk about preferences. So preferences are one of the ways that you can set your NetSuite account up to kind of best fit your needs. So, one of the things that I just talked about uh related to those uh prefixes and kind of um some of those ways that we can use the global search.

16:00This is the one that I mentioned is that when you have this turned off, this is a preference that says show list when only one result. So when you have this turned on, what will happen is when you have a save search or in the global search or searching for something and there is only one result, it will show you that result in a search in a list format as opposed to just taking you to that result. When you have it turned off, it will take you to that result. And so those two that would open in edit mode or open in a new um tab in a new window, those rely on this being turned off because it needs to, you know, it needs to know that you want to go to that result as opposed to just opening it in a list format.

16:46All right. Another fun um one that can also be really useful is so NetSuite has a lot of color schemes. So this is um one of the things that you can use to of course in your production environment align with your brand um align with you just your aesthetic preference for what you like to you know look at all day when you're in NetSuite but it can also serve a functional purpose especially if you have multiple um environments in NetSuite when you have a production environment and a sandbox environment when you have those two environments it can be really useful to have them different colors so that you know which environment that you are in at a glance so you know, oh, I've made this change.

17:28I'm I'm currently in sandbox or I'm currently in production. So, if you're kind of working going back and forth between two um so you know which one you're making the changes in. That can be really, you know, really good just from a glance perspective. Oh, this one's production. Oh, this one's Sandbox. Um they also have a lot of really fun ones there if you're, you know, a college sports fan. They have a lot of college sports teams in there to choose from. Next we have internal ids. So this is a preference that will allow you to see the internal ids of all the fields on the field help section.

18:01So if you click on a field within NetSuite it will show you then the internal ID of that field. So this can be really useful to help identify the NetSuite kind of name of that field. Um which sometimes can be useful if you're creating a save search and you're like oh what is you know sometimes that name has been changed. Maybe you, you know, in your environment that name has been updated to reflect your personal preferences in your environment, but maybe you want to know what that NetSuite internal ID is.

18:28And so that can be very useful. And then another one is the customer dashboard preference. So this is where you can always take you to a customer's dashboard page instead of their entity page. So the entity page is where you would usually uh keep up the customer information, their address, um you know, all of the information about the customer, whereas the dashboard is a little bit more actionoriented. It has graphs and things. It has their current outstanding AR presented in a more, you know, user-friendly dashboard format.

19:05Um so if you prefer that dashboard format, you can actually set that preference to always as that as the default view. So you can select that and then um that will take you there when you select a customer. All right. So with that I'm going to go into the uh live demo. I do see that we have a Q&A. So let me Yes. Um the recording will be sent after the webinar. So we will send out a recording of this as well as the handouts.

19:44So, let me pull up our live demo. We'll go into that. Okay. Oh, sorry. I need to stop sharing for just one other quick second. Okay.

20:34So, in terms of the dashboard, I just wanted to quickly show you guys. So, here is the shortcut. um tile. And here is where you can go into the setup. You can set up, you know, you can rearrange if you already have pre-existing shortcuts on your um uh roll. You can rearrange how they are displayed here. So, you can say, "Oh, I like this one first, this one last," so on and so forth if you have a lot of shortcuts. And then also if you have something outside of NetSuite. So for instance I have here pulled up the Oracle uh um learning center maybe I want to add this and I want it to open in a new window.

21:24So this will mean that instead of replacing the window that I have open in this case my um NetSuite dashboard I want it to open in a new window so that it doesn't take over my entire screen. So I would have to log back into NetSuite. So I want it to open up in a new window. So then when I click on this, it will open up a brand new tab for me with the Oracle Learning uh center. So again, that can be really useful for outside payroll services and things like that where you have things that are outside of NetSuite, but you still want to make them easily accessible.

21:59All right, next we have reminders. So this is the portlet. So, um, where you can drive it using save searches. As I mentioned, there are a lot that are in here that are already like pre pre-installed with NetSuite. And then here is where you can decide whether they are headline or not. You can just drag them if I say, you know, invoice is overdue. That's something that I've maybe assigned to someone else or it's just not something that I want um a lot of attention brought to it. So I can press save.

22:34And then now when I refresh this, you'll notice down here the invoice is overdue is in smaller font. So it isn't as um it's not drawing as much attention to itself. And then on the actual reminder itself, this is where you can say what are my highlighting rules. So when it is greater than zero, I want it to be red or yellow or you can decide what color you would like. and then when it's greater than 10, I want it to be, you know, so on and so forth. So, you can basically for each particular um reminder that you have, you can draw as much attention as you would like to it with those rules.

23:19All right. Next, we have the recent records. So, with recent records, here it is as a dashboard portlet. Um there isn't much to do with it on the dashboard. it will just show you the 12 most recent. But then here it is, as I mentioned, it's always on here. Um, and then you have the ability here to select all recent records. And as I mentioned, this will take you to the 100. In this case, I haven't been doing that much in my demo environment here, so I don't have that many. Um, but this would take you to the 100 most viewed recent viewed or edited recent records.

24:01All right. Next, we have our add new. So, this is where this personalize section. So, this will take you to um where you can decide, oh, you know what? I don't have any responsibility for creating new items. So, I want to take that off. Also, the thing that I do the most of is create invoices from scratch. So, I want invoices at the top here. So, I can drag and drop it at the top. I can also say, um, you know, maybe cash sales is the thing that I want. You can also just move it to the top if you have a lot of them.

24:39Um, so this is fully customizable. And then you press save. And then now when I go back in here, my invoice is at the top. Um, and then you can see item is completely gone. So this can and then now when I click here it's going to take me to um a brand new blank invoice. So it's the things that you most commonly would um create through the user interface from blank from scratch we'll call it. All right. And so then we have the analytics and KPIs.

25:16As you can see here, a lot comes kind of pre-installed with NetSuite and you have a lot of ability to kind of customize them on your own. So we have, of course, the basic KPI. Um, as mentioned, you have standard KPIs that you can add. So things that are native to NetSuite that it thinks, you know, open quotes, open opportunities, things that um, you know, are that you might want to see. Um, I'm in this controller role, so it's going to gear most of my KPIs towards things that would be important from a financial perspective.

25:51Um, a sales role would look more like open opportunities, open sales orders. Um, it's going to focus those around the role. Same thing with this here, which is um the KPI scorecard. So, there are different uh KPI scorecards that are pre-installed. In this case, we have financials. And then, as I mentioned, one of the things if there are things that are unique to your company, all of this can be customized. So, KPIs, um, if there are different key performance indicators that are unique to your business or that you would like to track, those can be built as well as unique KPI scorecards.

26:32So, if you want to see something here that is unique to you, we can definitely um, help with that. All right. So on the global search, I wanted to show you um this INV and INV28. So this will show me um invoice 28. Now if I had just typed 28 in here, um let's try 284 because I think you need at least three characters before it's going to search. So in here, I'm going to get invoice 284. I'm going to get a contact for 284 supplies. I'm going to get payment.

27:10So, I'm going to get a lot of different things. But if I just wanted invoice 284, I would have to type inv. So, that is how the prefixes can be useful. Um, also if I type in this, let's say I wanted um this will show me this wild card character. This will now show me any um returns all invoices with 28 in them. So this is going to show me all notice this is 128 as well as 28 228.

27:46So this has just invoices with 28 in them. If I then move it to the back, it's only going to show me invoices that start with 28. So that can be useful. And then um then we have this category. So I wanted to show you the plus. So this cat 6 um if I add a plus.

28:21One of the things you'll notice is this other one came up. That is because this is an inactive item. So, oh, I think I selected the wrong one. Sorry about that. So, this item would not normally show up in a global search, but because I added the plus, both of these come up. So, you can see um you know, if you have an inactive vendor, inactive customer, inactive item, you can see how that might be useful um you know, to to get both of them to appear. All right.

29:02and then on the um preferences. So to get to preferences, you'd go to your home and set preferences. So I wanted to show you this uh particular preference first. So right now this show list when only one result is on. So if I type inv colon colon 282 and I press enter, nothing happens because essentially it's just going to show show it to me in a list.

29:39I'd have to click on it. But if I unselect this colon 22 Now when I press enter this opens up a new window with that invoice in it. So that's what that colon colon does is it opens it up opens up this result in a new window. And then if I capitalize this prefix inv282 and press enter.

30:25Okay. This will actually open it up in edit mode. There you go. All right. And then on our other preferences, I'll just quickly touch base on this because I know we're one minute over here. Um, so I showed you that one. Then we have our appearances.

31:01So this is where we can set the color scheme. So, there are lots of different color schemes that you can choose here. As I mentioned, there are a lot of different uh schools to choose from. That seems to be the big one. Um, I have to uh go with my Georgia Bulldogs. So, you can set and then it will change the appearance of this. Next, we have the internal IDs. So, this is where you can select show internal IDs. And then anytime you select this a field help it will show this field ID and then show you the uh internal ID of that field.

31:48Another um good example would be like this PO number. See how the P it says PO number but the field ID is actually other reference number. So that's an example where the name doesn't match the internal ID. And then last but not least, we have the set customer dashboard as default view. So then when we go to a customer we will get their dashboard view as opposed which is this view.

32:30So I'll show you the difference. So this is the dashboard as I mentioned. It's a little bit more um it has your KPIs here which has like you know their current sales, how much they've been build, how many days overdue they are and then links to current like tasks you might want to perform like accepting a payment. whereas um their entity record which would normally be the standard when you clicked on a customer is where you might maintain their their address information.

33:11So if you prefer this view that is where you would set that um preference. All right. And so that's it for the demo.