Setting Personal Preferences

NetSuite is full of ways to personalize the system and make it work how you want. We’ll look at some of the more popular and useful settings that can be customized in this video. In the settings portlet there are a few options you can change or set. We already covered personalizing the dashboard in an earlier video, and we’ll come back to Set Preferences in a moment. Depending on your role you may see the Publish Dashboard link to allow you to publish your dashboard to other users. You also may see this Campaign Subscription Email, where you can subscribe or unsubscribe from your companies email campaigns. This can be useful if you want to see the communication your customers are getting; at least with email campaigns done through NetSuite anyway. A little further down there are links to change your password or update your security questions if the need arises. There is also this link to change your login email address, but I recommend working with your administrator if you need to do this, because it’s pretty uncommon. To customize your personal settings you can either click Set Preferences in the settings portlet, or hover over home and click Set Preferences. Either one takes you to this Set Preferences screen. Under General you can change how your name is displayed when you send email from the system. This is useful if you go by a nickname, or something like that. You can change the signature that is used when sending email from NetSuite. My recommendation is to make this look as similar to your normal email signature as possible. You can also change your email address here. This is the email address the system uses when it sends email as you, and is different than your login email. Localization provides settings to customize NetSuite based on where you’re working. So if you work in a country where English is not the native language you might choose a more appropriate one. One of the more important settings is the Time Zone. This affects how and when reminders are shown, how calendar appointments are translated, and when alerts are sent out. You can also choose what the first day of the week is, in case you don’t work Monday through Friday. Formatting provides some options that also relate to where you’re located. So if you’re in Europe, you might change the date format to Day then Month then Year. If you ever need to export data, you can also choose to have the file that is provided be delimited by a comma, or another character if needed. Delimiting is the term for the way a computer separates what is data in one field from what is data in an adjacent field, when exporting data out of the system. We’ll talk more about this a little while later in this course, when we talk about Saved Searches, and later CSV Imports. It’s worth noting, that none of these changes affect how data is stored in NetSuite, just how data is shown for you. Defaults allow you to select your defaults for things like address mapping. This is the map that is generated when you click on a map link next to an address in the system. This could be useful for a sales person who visits clients often, and maybe they like the MapQuest driving directions better. Show internal ID’s is pretty useful, and if you don’t have this turned on, I recommend turning it on. Let me show you what this does. In NetSuite you can click on any of these field labels; I’ll click on this Nickname one. This popup box tells me what the field is for, and if I expand the box I can see the entire description. Here at the bottom I also see this Field ID:, which in this case is MESSAGE_NICKNAME. The show internal Id’s checkbox controls whether the field ID is shown or not. While this may seem like a silly thing, it will come into play later as you use the system more. It also makes troubleshooting problems a lot easier. I’ll go ahead and close this box now. The Only Show Last Sub Account, Entity and Item, here, all work similarly. If you have a customer of GM and a sub-customer under it of Chevrolet, then with this box unchecked you will see GM : Chevrolet. If this box is checked you will only see the customer listed as Chevrolet. Whether you need this or not, and whether it helps you or not, is going to depend on how your accounts, customers, items and other entities or relationships are setup. Under Messages you can choose to display or not display submit warnings. Submit warnings are messages that pop up when you’re entering data in a record, and do something to leave that record without saving what you’ve entered first. I recommend leaving this checked unless you have a specific reason not to. Under Optimizing NetSuite there are a number of options you can set that can help speed things up, but there are two here that I think are particularly important to call out. First is the Number of Rows in List Segments. When you look at a list of any type of record, for example Transactions, Customers, or Employees, there is a maximum number of records that will display on the results page before splitting the results into multiple pages. The technical term for this is pagination. This number controls how many records will be shown on each page. A smaller number means that each page will load faster, whereas a larger number means there are less pages to go through to find the information you want. Because I am typically doing system administration for NetSuite I usually have this set to 1,000, which is quite large; actually this is the largest value that can be set. For day to day work I suggest setting a value such as 200, and then adjusting it, if this seems too big or small. Maximum Entries in Dropdowns is similar, however it controls the number of selections that appear for menus that dropdown. Usually you can see the effects of this very prominently if you are in a Sales Order entering the Customer or the Item; of course that’s assuming you have a large number of customers and items. 500 is the maximum number that can be set here, but usually 50 to 100 seems to be the sweet spot. If we go to the Appearance subtab toward the top, we can choose things like our Color Theme. Don’t laugh about changing colors though, because it is one of those things that seems like it’s just icing until you actually use it for something useful. For example if you login with multiple roles, you might choose different colors for the different roles. The same is true if you use different instances of NetSuite. Since you can recognize the colors quickly, they are a great visual way to know that you are, where you think you are. Fonts and chart themes can be changed which can help a lot for people who are visually impaired. You can even select this Display Default Theme with Optimal Color Contrast which also helps for people with visual impairments. Toward the bottom left we have Centers & Dashboards. This is where we can choose to use the Classic Interface, which, if you remember from the previous video, is how we change our menus to be the same as that of the classic center. We can also select a landing page, or dashboard, that is different than our home dashboard if we want. So we could select the Sales dashboard if we were in sales, and every time we logged in we would be taken directly to that screen. In the Transactions subtab, we can choose if we want warnings when we start to do things like sell products with low inventory amounts, or have vendors or customers who are above their credit limit. Under Customer Credit Limit Handling, for example, we have options to either Ignore, Warn, or Enforce Holds. No matter what we choose here though, this will not affect how credit limits are handled if there are more restrictive rules already in place. There are also options about how printing is handled for transactions, and how transactions are emailed. Most of the time PDF is the preferred method since prints will look identical, or almost identical, from computer to computer, and browser to browser. However, there may be times when HTML is needed, for example so that a transaction can be embedded in an email rather than sent as an attachment as it would be with a PDF. On the Analytics subtab, under Reporting, you can choose what category of reports you want to automatically report by period; None or Never, Financial Only or All. Picking never affects some of the KPI’s, it actually makes them not work since they need a default, so be careful doing this. You can also select if you want your company’s logo, report title, and report description to appear on reports that you run. It can be helpful to turn these off if you need more space at the header of the report. Leaving them on can be helpful if you’re distributing the reports, and need them to be self-standing. Under Search there are some options for how searches work. You can show a list if there is only one result, or have the system go to that result automatically; this is after pressing enter of course. You can enable or disable keywords for popup and quick search, we’ll take a look at that in the next video. You can select how you want the global search to sort the results it provides. If this box is checked it will sort results by Name or ID, versus sorting results into categories if this is not checked. I actually usually leave this unchecked, because it becomes easier to find what I am looking for if I know the record type such as, Lead, Customer, Sales Order, etc. Of course, you should use it both ways and see which one works best for you. For searching in lists, or the global search, you can enable or disable these auto suggest popups. I suggest leaving them enabled for both, which is their default, but if this is causing problems, then you can always turn them off. Activities provides access to settings for how your Calendar, Tasks and Phone Calls work. You can click this link to access your calendar preferences, let’s go into this in a new tab. From here you can select who can and can’t see your calendar and appointments by default. You can also set Preferences for your Start and End times, and calendar increments. I know of at least one organization that uses the calendar as a way to track billable hours with 15 minute time increments. Back on the preferences browser tab we can set some other calendar preferences, including the default reminder type and time. For Tasks and Phone Calls we can select the default priority, as well as if they are public or private by default. The Alerts tab provides one of the coolest, yet most underused, features in NetSuite. This is the ability to automatically have the system email a snapshot of your dashboard, or at least certain parts of it anyway, to you at various times during the day. If you are a busy executive, or a sales person who spends more time on the road than in the office, then this feature may be indispensable once you use it. All you need to do to send the info is select the time or times and make sure your email address is correct. This is a feature that is usually at least worth checking out. The Restrict View tab allows you to set your view so that you only see specific information, such as info for a specific subsidiary or department. This is a temporary setting though, and whatever you select here goes away the next time you login. It’s still really useful if you know that you’ll be working with only one department for a few hours, since it can make your work go a bit faster by having these filters. This doesn’t override any account restrictions you already have in place. It doesn’t give you the ability to see more than you normally would. This is also not a security feature, it’s just here for convenience. There are obviously a lot of settings here, and we will come back to many of these in later videos in this course, as the need arises. It’s probably worth taking the time to explore these settings in more detail on your own, or working with your administrator if there is a specific setting you are looking for. Also, there is a lot more information in the help documentation, and if you’re looking for more information about customizing NetSuite it’s a great resource. Questions this video will answer: • 0:00 – How can I make NetSuite easier to use? • 0:15 – Where do I go to publish a dashboard? • 0:25 – How do I see the emails I am sending to my customers and contacts in NetSuite? • 0:30 – How do I change my password and security questions in NetSuite? • 0:40 – How do I customize my preferences in NetSuite? • 1:00 – How do I setup an email nickname in NetSuite? • 1:05 – How do I set my NetSuite email signature? • 1:15 – How do I change my outbound NetSuite email address? • 1:30 – How do I change the NetSuite interface language? • 1:35 – How do I change the time zone in NetSuite? • 1:40 – How do I change the day a week starts in NetSuite? • 1:50 – How do I change the date format in NetSuite? • 1:55 – How do I change the export delimiter in NetSuite? • 2:15 – Are NetSuite preferences global? • 2:15 – Do my NetSuite preference changes affect other uses if I am an administrator? • 2:25 – How do I change where maps come from in NetSuite? • 2:35 – How do I get NetSuite to show field name ids in the field label help? • 2:50 – How do I find where field data is coming from? • 3:20 – How do I get my subaccounts, subentities or subitems to show in the system, reports and searches? • 3:20 – How do I hide my subaccounts, subentities or subitems from reports and searches? • 3:45 – How do I show or hide the save warning popup in NetSuite? • 4:00 – How do I increase or decrease the amount of items shown in drop down menus in NetSuite? • 4:00 – How do I get NetSuite to show more search results in saved searches? • 4:20 – How do I get me saved searches to load faster? • 5:00 – How do I change my colors in NetSuite? • 5:00 – How can I tell NetSuite roles apart easily? • 5:30 – How do I make the NetSuite colors stand out more for someone who is colorblind or has a hard time seeing? • 5:45 – How do I make my menus look the same as the administrators? • 5:55 – How can change the first page I see in NetSuite to be something different? • 5:55 – How do I change my default dashboard? • 6:05 – How can I get inventory popup warnings? • 6:05 – How can I see credit limit popup warnings? • 6:15 – How can I force credit holds in NetSuite? • 6:30 – How do I change how transaction and documents are printed in NetSuite? • 6:30 – How do I modify how emails are sent from NetSuite? • 6:55 – How do I change the time period my reports run when I first run them? • 6:55 – Some of my KPI’s don’t show data, how can I fix this? • 7:05 – How do I show or hid my company logo, or the report title and description from a report? • 7:20 – Some of my searches take me to the record and don’t show a list, how to I fix this? • 7:30 – How do I change how search and quick search work in NetSuite? • 7:30 – How do I get NetSuite to let me type in record prefixes in the search box? • 7:40 – Where can I change how search results are sorted? • 8:00 – How do I turn off search popups? • 8:10 – How do I change my calendar preferences? • 8:10 – How do I share my calendar with someone else? • 8:20 – How do I stop someone from seeing my calendar in NetSuite? • 8:20 – How do I only let someone see that I am busy but not see what I am doing in my calendar in NetSuite? • 8:30 – How do I change when my day starts and ends in NetSuite? • 8:30 – How do I change my calendar availability in NetSuite? • 8:30 – How do I change NetSuite calendar time increments? • 8:40 – How do I get my calendar reminders to be sent earlier? • 8:40 – How do I change my reminder type in NetSuite? • 8:40 – How do I change calendar and event security in NetSuite for tasks, phone calls and events? • 8:55 – How can I send dashboard data automatically through email? • 9:15 – I only want to see one subsidiary, department, class, location in NetSuite, how can I do this?