5.3 User Preferences That Change the Interface

What One User Can Change

Set Preferences is the personal page at Home > Set Preferences. Hovering the Home icon also offers the link. The settings belong to the user who is logged in. They change how that person sees dates, lists, colors, and internal IDs. They do not turn a company feature on for everyone else in the account.

The General subtab opens first. Which fields you see depends on enabled features and on the permissions of the current role. On that subtab you set the date format, the time format, and the time zone. Help notes that a change to the date format or the time zone applies to every role that uses the same email and password. It is personal across that user's roles. It is not a one-role trick, and it is not the account-wide switch an administrator uses for company features. Language and the first day of the week sit with those formatting choices. Some reports still treat Sunday as the first day of the week no matter which day you pick.

List behavior is on the same General subtab, in the Optimizing NetSuite section. Number of Rows in List Segments sets how many rows load in each slice of a long list. A segment size of 50 is a balanced choice. A lower number speeds pages that contain long lists, because only one segment loads at a time. Delay Loading of Sublists skips subtab data until you click the subtab.

Maximum Entries in Dropdowns is the switch between a dropdown and a popup. Enter the largest number of values you want in a dropdown. If the field has more possible values, the list becomes a popup. Enter 0 to use popups every time. Enter a number larger than any of your lists when you want dropdowns whenever the field allows them. Help's performance topic says to use 50 or less unless you need larger menus. The preference note says that 25 or less improves page-load time. A dropdown fetches every value when the page opens. A popup waits until you search or click the list icon. Type the first letters and press Tab to complete the field. Popup fields also suggest matches after you type three letters or more. The separate Type-Ahead On List Fields box shows matches as you type in a dropdown. A dynamic list can still open as a popup even when the count looks small, because the list size is not fixed in advance.

Show Internal IDs

Show Internal IDs is on Home > Set Preferences, on the General subtab, in the Defaults section. Check the box and save. The box is present only after at least one of these features is already enabled: Client SuiteScript, Server SuiteScript, SuiteScript Server Pages, SuiteFlow, or SOAP web services, or Advanced Site Customization or SuiteCommerce Advanced. Turning that feature on is an administrator action. Checking Show Internal IDs is still the user's own preference, and Help says the change affects only the current user.

With the box checked, click a field label to open field-level help. The field's internal ID appears in the lower-right corner of that window. Lists and search results gain an Internal ID column for records and custom fields. Workflow screens can show action internal IDs as well. The preference does not create new IDs. It reveals IDs that already exist. The checkbox itself is not under Enable Features, not under General Preferences, and not under Accounting Preferences. Enable Features can only make the checkbox available by turning on a qualifying feature.

Appearance

The Appearance subtab changes presentation. The Colors section, chart theme, and chart background change how dashboards and charts look. Chart theme choices include Basic, which is the default and uses limited contrast, Colorful, and themes that follow your color choices in bolder or lighter shades. A thumbnail shows each option. You can override the chart theme on an individual portlet. Chart background can be lines, bands, or a grid, and lines are the default.

Landing Page picks which tab opens after login. The list is the standard and custom tabs in your center. If you leave it blank, Home opens. An administrator can override your choice with a company landing page built as a Suitelet. Use Classic Interface, on roles that are allowed to see the option, shows the same tabs an administrator sees. Help is explicit that the role's functions do not change. Only the presentation of tabs, and how functions are organized inside them, changes. The Administrator role does not get this option. Show Portlet Hint warns you when portlets time out and points you to minimize them, which is the dashboard behavior covered with performance. Some browsers have a NetSuite density setting, and very high density is similar to 67 percent zoom. Chrome and Firefox use the browser's own zoom instead of that NetSuite control.

Restrict View for This Session

The Restrict View subtab limits what you see for the current login session only. Help's list is class, location, department, and, in NetSuite OneWorld, subsidiary. The next login restores the restrictions that were set on the role. Include Sub options pull in child departments, locations, classes, or subsidiaries of the value you picked. Include Unassigned includes records that have no value in that classification.

The October 2024 sample treats Location and Department as the restrictions that apply on this subtab. Period is not a Restrict View option. Segment is not one either. On a role record, an administrator can restrict the role by a segment, and the segment choices there are class, department, or location. That role restriction stays with the role for every login. Restrict View is the temporary, personal narrowing on top of the role. Help's fuller list on the personal page also includes class and subsidiary, which the sample does not treat as its applicable pair. Use a subsidiary restriction when a report cannot consolidate and must run for one subsidiary. Some standard reports return an error until that preference is set. After you restrict the subsidiary, the departments, locations, and classes you can pick are those tied to that subsidiary. Choosing the root subsidiary includes all subsidiaries, so the include-subsidiaries box is unnecessary in that case.

Set Preferences cannot enable a company feature. If Show Internal IDs is missing, the remedy is not another pass through Accounting Preferences. An administrator enables a qualifying SuiteCloud or web feature, and the user then checks the box on Set Preferences. The same split applies to any company capability, such as currencies or revenue features: the feature switch is Enable Features, while the user's date format, time zone, colors, and list behavior stay on Set Preferences.

Practice the role, performance, and preference choices in the NetSuite Foundation practice questions.