Dustin Stubbs

  If you’ve been building in NetSuite for more than five minutes, you’ve hit this question: “Should I use a saved search… or SuiteQL?” Let’s make this easy. Saved Search: Your everyday hero Use a saved search when: You want something quick and easy No SQL brainpower required Admins or users might need to tweak it later You’re building reports, lists, or dashboards You want built-in sharing and scheduling Why it rocks: ☑️It’s point-and-click ☑️It’s flexible enough for most needs ☑️NetSuite optimizes it for you In short: If it’s simple (or user-facing), go saved search. SuiteQL: When things get spicy Use SuiteQL when: Your saved search starts looking like a Frankenstein You need real joins (multiple levels) You want better control + performance in scripts You’re building integrations or doing heavy data lifting You need subqueries, aggregations, or complex logic Why it rocks: SQL-style queries = more power + precision   Handles complex joins and data relationships way better Re...

Map/Reduce scripts are one of those SuiteScript features that look amazing on paper and then immediately get misused in the wild. I’ve seen Map/Reduce scripts that do everything in map , ignore reduce entirely, or blow through governance because they treat it like a scheduled script with extra steps. Let’s talk about a few real-world patterns that make Map/Reduce scripts easier to reason about, easier to debug, and much more reliable in production. This isn’t a deep dive into “what is Map/Reduce” — this is about how to actually use it day-to-day without hating your past self. First: Stop Treating Map/Reduce Like a Scheduled Script If your Map/Reduce script looks like this: function getInputData() {   return search.create({...}); } function map(context) {   // Load record   // Modify record   // Save record }   You’re not wrong , but you’re missing most of the benefits. Map/Reduce shines when: You separate read logic from write logic You group work intentiona...

Ever built a Saved Search that crawls instead of loads?  I have, and one small workaround I have found is to add &csv=Export to the end of the URL.  This will trigger the CSV export automatically.  So instead of needing to view the report and then click CSV export I can go directly to getting the CSV that I ultimately want.  Full URL will end up looking something like this:  https://[companyid].app.netsuite.com/app/common/search/searchresults.nl?searchid=1234 &csv=Export I have also used this for some external tools and Hot Key functions where I need the user to get the CSV file.

  Sometimes it's the smallest slice of a project that demands the most ingenuity. What seemed like a simple enhancement to a Saved Search ended up stretching my understanding of NetSuite’s formula logic—and my patience. 🔍 The Objective I needed to compare two types of project actions occurring within a 30-day window. Here’s the twist: Project Actions are a custom child record of a NetSuite Project (Job) , and they’re not stored in a way that makes direct comparison easy. So, I had to retrieve them through a Project Search , pulling in individual Action records via joins—first hurdle cleared. 📅 Date Math, NetSuite Style Next came the math. I needed to calculate whether one action happened within 30 days of another, but NetSuite doesn’t make date arithmetic feel intuitive. My first instinct was to use TO_NUMBER() to convert the dates into values I could compute on. Spoiler: it didn’t work. So I tried a workaround—subtracting a fixed reference date ( TO_DATE('01/01/2000...

Issue: We had a request from our Stakeholders to change a Multi-Select Field to a Single Select.  The Issue came up with this field being part of a bundle that we use.   We didn't want to deal with this being reverted or causing issues after we updated the bundle in the future, so I cam up with this work around. It is a Client Script that will throw an error to the user if they select more than one, and then it will reduce the selection to one option. /**  * @NApiVersion 2.x  * @NScriptType ClientScript  *  * 2025 Prevents multiple selections in a multi-select field * by showing an error message and removing the last selected value.  *  */ define ([ 'N/ui/message' , 'N/runtime' ], function ( message , runtime ) {     function fieldChanged ( context ) {         var scriptObj = runtime . getCurrentScript ();         var fieldName = scriptObj . getParameter ({       ...

Came across a weird issue after updating to NetSuite 2025.1.  Our PDF Printing function was showing the underlying code for the PDF instead of rendering the PDF. Looked at many possible issues and discovered that it was in our header: old code had name : 'Content-Type:' , value : 'application/pdf' I removed the : and it worked as before name : 'Content-Type' , value : 'application/pdf' Found the solution on Reddit.  Posted to a StackOverflow:  pdf generation - How to Change NetSuite 2025.1 PDF Renderer Back to Previous Instead of BFO? - Stack Overflow