1. Commerce
  2. Best Practices for Commerce Websites
  3. Customize with Workflows

Customize with Workflows

When interacting with customers on your Commerce website, you can customize their experience with SuiteFlow (workflows), which comes with SuiteCloud. Check out the following information to learn more:

Introduction to Workflows

SuiteCloud has several tools for customizing NetSuite. SuiteScript and SuiteFlow both help automate business processes. While SuiteScript lets you customize more deeply, SuiteFlow uses a graphical interface, so you don't need to write any script.

SuiteFlow creates workflows, automated business processes, that work with standard or custom records. You can set up multiple stages and conditional actions to update records based on your criteria.

Workflows are great for customizing simple business processes. For example, if you want to send an email when a record is updated, a workflow can handle that.

Another advantage is that you can build and manage workflows even if you don't have scripting experience. However, you still need to understand logic, saved searches, and business mapping.

To learn more, see SuiteFlow (Workflow).

Workflow Use Cases

Use workflows for use cases listed in the following table:

Area

Examples

Approval Management

  • Sales orders

  • Estimates/quotes

Record Transformation

  • Quote to sales order

Field Data Modification

  • Mandatory/non-mandatory

  • Set field value

  • Hide/unhide fields

Activity Scheduling

  • Marketing messages

  • Conditional/mass update of records

  • Automatic notifications

Workflows work best for simple trigger/action setups and basic if-then logic.

For more complex customizations, use SuiteScript if you need:

  • More power, flexibility, or application coverage

  • To perform complex logic or calculations

  • To process large volumes of data

To learn more, see SuiteScript.

Workflow Basics

To customize your NetSuite account with workflows, start by enabling SuiteFlow in your account.

To enable SuiteFlow:

  1. Go to Setup > Company > Enable Features > SuiteCloud.

  2. In the SuiteCloud tab, check the SuiteFlow box.

  3. Click Save.

Note:

Set the user’s role with permission to use Suiteflow. For access to all SuiteFlow functionality, use the Administrator role. For more information about the Administrator role, see The Administrator Role.

After SuiteFlow is enabled, you can add new workflows.

To add a new workflow:

  1. Go to Customization > Workflow > Workflows > New.

  2. Fill in the fields as required for your customization.

  3. Click Save.

Note:

NetSuite provides workflow templates that cover common scenarios, such as sales order and purchase order approvals.

Workflows have lots of elements, like record types, events, and actions. Here's a quick overview:

Element

Description

Base record​

The primary record type affected by the workflow​

States​

The stages or statuses a record goes through in the business process​

Triggers​

Events that happen during the process that start the workflow

Actions​

Tasks that happen after they're triggered​

Transitions​

The states to move the record to​

Conditions

What needs to happen for the workflow to start, or for an action/transition to run​

Custom fields​

Variables used in workflows, actions, and transitions​

Revisions​

A list of changes made to the workflow or its parts​

To learn more, see Working with Workflows..

Related Topics

General Notices