Earlier in the winter I was tasked with architecting and implementing Support Case Management for MIBAR’s NetSuite environment. Every consultant at MIBAR uses the Employee Center role to manage tasks, enter time, enter expense reports, etc. So, my first step was to determine the extent of the background restrictions that NetSuite puts in place for users managing cases logged into the Employee Center Role.
The out of the box Customer field dropdown did not populate any values. Employees at MIBAR need to be able to see cases regarding all Customers, however any out of the box NetSuite Customer fields will restrict users from seeing any records related to Customers not assigned to their group. On the Employee Center Role page there is a checkbox that says, “Support Role.” When clicking the field level help it leads you to believe that this would only further restrict users from seeing Cases not assigned to them, however clicking this checkbox removed the restriction on the Customer lookup.
Originally, I had planned for users to be able to see all cases and manage their time via the Case record itself. However, since MIBAR uses the “Show Projects Only for Time and Expense Entry” preference, the time entry needed to be entered separately from the Case record. My workaround for this was to display the associated Project Task in a Custom field on the header record. This way Employees would be able to click on the associated Project Task record and enter their time. My next was to make sure to check that Case records were viewable via the Employee Center, and everything seemed to be working fine, however three months later and two weeks before the scheduled go live that capability disappeared. I tried to think of different ways to display the Case list/records, but the background restrictions were proving to be more stubborn than last time. I contacted NetSuite Support to ensure I wasn’t missing anything. I was informed that they were aware of the issue of Case restrictions via the Employee Center flip flopping and that it would be resolved in the next update.
In the blink of an eye my architecture and process flow were ruined. I had to think of a way for consultants to manage their Cases without them ever being able to view or edit them. With the help of some user event scripts I was able to transfer all the core and custom Case functionality from the Case record to the Project Task record. Consultants would be able to update the status of their project tasks which would then update the status of the Case records, escalation to management was brought over via checkboxes, and email alerts to the customer were tied to updating the status of the Project Task record as Completed. It was by no means the desired outcome, but it was a great short-term solution to a problem that will hopefully resolve itself in the next release.
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