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Using NetSuite Help for SuiteScript

Created: September 17, 2017

NetSuite provides an extensive knowledge base via the Help system, but it can be difficult to navigate and find what you need.

Finding your way around

Like most knowledge base-style applications, NetSuite Help has a navigation menu at the left that shows a massive page hierarchy. You can expand sections and drill down through the tree to manually locate your topic of interest. The navigation menu can be collapsed and hidden entirely to the left when you want it out of your way.

The Help button is context-sensitive, so whatever page you are viewing in the NetSuite UI will determine the initial page you see when you click the Help button. If you need help on a particular topic or NetSuite process, it can be useful to navigate to where you might initiate the process in the UI, then click the Help button from there.

Most of the Help topics are built around the various business process workflows supported by NetSuite. There are a few key sections for developers:

  • Everything SuiteScript-related falls under the SuiteCloud (Customization, Scripting, and Web Services) section. If the search fails you, you can probably start drilling down through this category to find what you need.
  • The SuiteAnalytics (Dashboards, Searches, & Reports) section contains information to help you build searches and reporting.
  • If you happen to commonly work with NetSuite's Workflows, then the SuiteFlow (Workflow) section has your workflow-related help topics.

Tips for Searching Help

The Help Center provides a search capability to help you find what you need, but it can be finicky. There are a few good practices to keep in mind when utilizing the Help's search functionality:

  • Keep your search terms brief and very specific. Providing too many search terms typically returns way too many results. Don't search for something like "How do I pay my vendors using a bill?", but rather try something short and sweet like "vendor bill" or "pay bill".
  • Be careful with typos. The search functionality doesn't do a great job of finding similar terms, and it doesn't have any kind of "Did you mean...?" capability like a typical Google search would. If you mistakenly type nlobjFeild instead of nlobjField, you probably won't get any results.
  • If you're using SuiteScript 2.0, you can search for module names directly to find the page for the module API, e.g.
    • N/search
    • N/record
    • N/util
  • You can search the Help database directly from a Global Search in the NetSuite UI by using the prefix help:, e.g. help:User Event Script.

Useful Reference Pages

There are some very helpful pages that should be staple references for even seasoned NetSuite developers:

  • SuiteCloud Supported Records breaks down a complete list of exactly which record types are supported by SuiteScript. Always check here to make sure the record type you want to script is supported.
  • When scripting a Search, the Search Operators page provides an excellent breakdown of which search filter operators can be used in conjunction with specific field types. When you aren't sure whether to use anyOf, is, or equals, this is the page for you.
  • Along similar lines, when you are building filters based on dates and date ranges, the Search Date Filters page enumerates all of the various date selectors you can use to build your date selections, like nextWeek, lastFiscalYear, and threeFiscalQuartersAgoToDate.
  • For building Formula fields and search results, the SQL Expressions page provides a reference for all of the available SQL functions that can be used in formulae. For even more detail on a particular function, you can find it in the Oracle SQL Reference as well.