Software Archives - Page 2 of 9

Learning Clojure by Automating an RSS Reader

I’ve been working on revamping how I consume information. Most of my information consumption has been moved to RSS feeds, but I can’t keep up with the number of articles in my feeds. When I take a look at my reader I tend to get overwhelmed and spend more time than I’d like to trying to "catch up" on information I generally was consuming out of curiosity. Not good. I want articles to be automatically marked as read after they are a month old to eliminate the feeling of being "behind". This is a perfect little project to learn a programming language that’s looked interesting for a while! Building a small project in a new language or technology is the best way to learn…

Archiving a QuickBooks Online Account to QuickBooks Desktop

If you run a small business, you probably use QuickBooks. I’ve been impressed with the product: the rate of improvement continues to stay constant over the last couple of years (one of the most important criteria in picking a software platform for your business!) and it’s surprisingly pleasant to use. If you close a company, you’ll want to archive all of your QuickBooks data for at least a couple of years in case you get audited. However, QuickBooks Online does not have a low-cost “audit backup” option to access a read-only version of your data. If you cancel your subscription, you only have 90 days to reactivate your subscription and restore your data…

How to Create a Custom Field to a NetSuite Customer or Transaction

NetSuite custom fields are incredibly powerful and flexible, but they are not easy to work with! Below is a quick guide that walks through how to create customer and transaction custom fields and some tips and tricks for working with custom fields. How to create a custom customer (i.e. entity) field in NetSuite: Navigate to: Customization > Lists, Records & Fields > Entity Fields > New Label: use a name you’d like to see displayed on your customer. Type: “Free-form Text”. There are cases where you won’t want to use free-form text, but in most cases this is the best option. ID: “_a_internal_identifier”. Note that you should start your identifier with a _ since custentity will be prepended to whatever you provide here…

Notes on Working with Jobs (Projects) using the SuiteTalk NetSuite API

Jobs are a confusing part of the NetSuite system. Here’s some notes and resources to help make handling jobs easier: Jobs are named Projects in the GUI There are two versions of jobs: “standard” and “Advanced Jobs”. They both use the same core job record but change how the data is structured on the customer. Jobs have a kcustomer attribute that is not accessible via SuiteTalk which represents the customer that the job is associated with. This field is accessible via SuiteScript. You could most likely expose this field by creating a formula field on the job record with {kcustomer} as the formula. There is no customer field on the job schema However, there is a customer field on the job search columns…

Notes on Dates & TimeZones with NetSuite’s SuiteTalk API

Setting date and datetime fields in NetSuite using the SuiteTalk API is tricky business. Here’s some notes on how to ensure that the date you push over to NetSuite persists the way you’d expect regardless of the server, local server, user, and company timezone. The API is sensitive to the timezone of the current user. If you push the same datetime value to the XML via SuiteTalk, and change the timezone settings on the user preferences page, the resulting date set on the record will most likely change. The timezone is not available on the employee record. Also, the timezone is not available on the company/subsidiary record. It is impossible to determine the timezone set on the user or the company from the SuiteTalk API…

Fixing Bundler Issues After a macOS Sierra Upgrade

I recently upgraded my laptop, and with that came setting up a fresh dev machine. With a fresh install always comes with a set of development configuration problems. Here’s some tips of resolving ruby bundler issues in MacOS Sierra. These tips assume you are using dotfiles that look similar to these. Also, I prefer fresh installs, so I never pull config from my old machine/OS. These fixes may not work if you are migrating configuration from a previous OS. For any of the fixes outlined below: Adjust the version strings based on your project If you do not have bundler’s shared gems disabled, then you can omit the –install-dir directives. An error occurred while installing pg (0.18.4), and Bundler cannot continue…

Notes on NetSuite’s Gift Certificate Record

The gift certificate functionality in NetSuite is much more limited than other functionality in NetSuite. It’s also the only option for implementing store credit, electronic, and physical gift cards in NetSuite. If you need to integrate with the gift certificate system in NetSuite, here are some notes to help you along the way: Gift certificates are not created directly. They are are created by creating a “Gift Certificate Item” and using that item in a SalesOrder. Gift certificates can be created without an associated posting transaction (Sales Order) by importing a CSV. However, you cannot create a standalone gift certificate via SuiteTalk…

Finding the NetSuite Deposit Associated with a Payment or Refund

Determining which NetSuite deposit record is associated with a customer payment, customer refund, cash payment, cash refund, etc using SuiteTalk is not straightforward. It’s also challenging to determine if a refund record is still available to be deposited. Payment transactions have a status field which indicates if a record has been deposited or not, but refund records do not have this field. In order to determine if a refund is deposited, you need to search for an associated deposit…

How to get a NetSuite demo account for SuiteTalk or SuiteScript development

If you’re looking to integrate with NetSuite, you need a NetSuite instance to use for development. However, getting one isn’t straightforward. Here’s how to get up and running with a NetSuite demo account. Signup for a "SDN Community Edition" account. Here’s a direct link to the signup form. After submitting the form, you’ll be told that you will get a response. You won’t. I’ve applied for multiple SDN accounts on behalf of clients and they’ve never gotten a response. You’ll need to email sdnsupport@netsuite.com with the following template: SDN Support, I applied for a NetSuite test account a couple days ago, and I have not received an update…

Using NetSuite’s Token Based Authentication with SuiteTalk

NetSuite’s OAuth is very different from the standard oauth flow: setting up a user for token based auth is very cumbersome. It requires digging around in the NetSuite GUI, creating roles, and copy/pasting various keys. Why use token based authentication? The alternative is email + password based authentication. This method works fine, but passwords expire every six months; resetting passwords every six months is a huge pain for a SAAS product that integrates with NetSuite. Plus, email + password auth is much less secure (an attacker can login to the GUI with a email and password). Here’s a guide to getting setup with token based authentication. Note that you must be using a SuiteTalk API versions greater than 2015_2. 1…

Category: Software