Chrome Extension: Quality of Life Enhancements for the NetSuite platform

Anyone can tell you that NetSuite is an ever-evolving platform that demands constant attention. Whether it’s the changing business and landscape, rolling with the ebbs and flows of the economy, or adapting to the changes in the technology of the business systems themselves. However, there’s nothing saying that you can’t build or find tools that will help you adapt to those changes more seamlessly. Today, we will dive into a handful of new quality-of-life tools that will streamline your workflow and improve your operations using the – well – NetSuite Quality of Life Enhancements Suite.

Configurability

The current version of the extension allows the user to optionally enable/disable each feature as desired:

File Cabinet Permalinking

The NetSuite File Cabinet is, shall we say, functional at best. It was designed over 20 years ago with one focus in mind: to let the user navigate a file system to add, remove, and move files and directories. But not a lot has changed with it over the past two decades despite users needing a little more flexibility. I found some elements of the File Cabinet lacking and decided to make some changes myself:

The main issue I had was that the File Cabinet punished you if you wanted to go backwards or forwards in the File Cabinet. If you tried to hit back on the Browser, the system would simply kick you back to the root directory and you’d have to navigate your way back to where you were. Similarly, if you were working on an integration that required visually monitoring the state of a folder, you couldn’t refresh the screen because, like with navigation, you would also be thrown back to the root directory.

I decided enough was enough and added support for maintaining the Browser History while you navigate the File Cabinet. Now you can go Forwards, go Backwards, and Refresh without worrying about where you’ll end up! But even better, with this extension, the URL of the File Cabinet will now always tell you exactly where you are so you can even:

Copy Field Internal IDs

Rather than being a tool of convenience, the next extension was built harnessing the adage: necessity is the mother of invention. Back in 2017, David Smith introduced the world to his wildly successful extension, NetSuite: Show Field IDs. In spite of the simple-sounding name, the extension did way more than that – it offered a lookup feature to let the user highlight the field on the page if it’s hard to find, let you hover over a field to show the field Internal ID, but most importantly, the extension let the user shift-click the field to instantly copy the Internal ID String.

This extension worked miracles in speeding up SuiteScript development time by removing a handful of operations when obtaining the Internal ID and had been an invaluable part of the developer toolbelt for the better part of a decade. That is, until 2024.1, when NetSuite updated the DOM of the website so it essentially broke the ID copying functionality and the platform made it much more cumbersome to copy the ID. Adding to the issue of unpredictable DOM updates, the Show Field IDs extension was last updated in 2022 which makes it unclear if this extension is still being maintained.

I lasted approximately one month without David Smith’s extension before picking up the baton and building my own stripped down version of the extension. Admittedly with some notable tweaks:

Support for legacy NetSuite versions (2023.2 and earlier) and 2024.1
The extension briefly highlights the Field Label in blue instead of showing a new copied label underneath
The extension is written in vanilla JS and doesn’t make use of jQuery, saving about 70% of the required space and, arguably, running marginally faster

Even (or especially) if you’re a SuiteScript Developer who doesn’t use either of these extensions, we encourage you to give it a brief shot and you, too, will convert to the faith of seamlessly copying Field IDs.

Disable Lock Message

The last feature is one built out of rage-inducing frustration more than necessity. If you’re an administrator, there’s no doubt you’ve encountered the Lock icon next to SuiteBundle’d elements and maybe you’ve intentionally hovered over the icon once to see what it does. What the icon tells you is that:

This is useful to know, but exactly once. Each accidental hover thereafter is nothing more than a 5-second annoyance to the likes of Clippy.

Since this message serves no utility and is more of an interruption than a benefit, I decided to build another component to my extension which prevents these pop-ups from appearing.

Press Escape to Close Panels

In the native NetSuite interface, closing the Help Modal with the Escape key usually requires the user to first focus on the modal itself. However, this setting improves the user experience by generalizing the closing functionality, enabling users to dismiss the Help Modal with the Escape key even if the modal is not currently in focus. This small but useful change simplifies interactions, making it easier to manage tasks without unnecessary clicks.

Conclusion

This extension was originally four separate extensions but only because I was a more naïve Chrome Extension Developer five months ago. Now, I’ve consolidated the functionality into a single, user-configurable, extension that I continue to expand. If you have any qualms with the NetSuite platform that can’t be solved via SuiteScript, I welcome new ideas or improvements either in the NetSuite Professionals Slack or via the Email supplied in the Extension support section.