A Day in the Life - 9/19/2022

The goal of "A Day in the Life" posts is for me to help you understand what's going on in my mind when tasks are assigned to me. They're not all meant to be inspirational; some posts, such as this can be technical. But either way, I hope you can pick up some ideas, and possibly even create something new from this experience.

Part of my role is to receive cases that are considered "defects" in NetSuite. I would file the defect records so that engineers could investigate them. As I have learned more about emotional work, I have become more empathetic to customers facing defects.

The normal way to go about defect filing is to get more info on the customer's scenario -- how they are getting by amid the defect, whether the workaround they do is something they can keep doing for a long time, and other implications on how the issue is affecting the business. We would then draft an issue and have it approved. Finally, we'd create the actual defect record. From there, engineers would investigate the defect and fix the issue, and we would liaise between the engineers and the customers.

Today, I've received a case wherein a type of promotion was messing up the sequence of how line items were placed in an order. The issue caused orders to incorrectly compute for amounts, ultimately leading to a loss of revenue. The company has around 800 new sales orders every day and it's highly probable that several sales orders already had issues. More would be on their way. There is however an easy workaround, which is to click "Add" instead of hitting the Enter key. 

I then imagined what I would have done if I were the NetSuite Administrator of that customer, to at least mitigate the issue. I thought the quickest solution would be to create a simple script or workflow that triggers before records are saved. The script or workflow would create an alert notifying the users that they would have to re-enter the sales order and click, instead of hitting Enter, and/or throw an error. That quick and simple solution should solve most of the orders moving forward. Just a side note, my role does have a limitation when it comes to creating customizations for customers, so we are actually prohibited from doing this ourselves. 

"Linchpins are able to embrace the lack of structure and find a new path, one that works."

                                    -- Seth Godin, Linchpin 

Now for the orders that were already incorrectly submitted. I would create a saved search to identify which orders are affected. It would be a transaction search with a promotion filter, and without a main line filter. Then to isolate further, I would use a formula criterion to subtract the line item amount from the item base price. Any non-zero results should be investigated.

An easy fix would be to export the search results, then create a CSV file to import the correct data, assuming the issue is not reproduced in an import. The Overwrite Sublists import preference must be enabled. This has to be done at least once daily.

Perhaps my past self would ask, "There are so many things you can think about, so how did you know how to do that?" or, "Is there a manual or set of instructions I can follow so I can start thinking like that?" I guess there's really none. Writing everything down on a manual can help people learn the rules and get ideas, but the creativity of expression is something that comes from you.

As Seth Godin puts it, "In the face of an infinite sea of choices, it's natural to put blinders on, to ask for a map, to beg for instructions... Linchpins are able to embrace the lack of structure and find a new path, one that works." Creativity has to do with a knowledge of the rules yes, but moreover, it has to do with how you can weave together parts to make a holistic, and meaningful whole. That is the art.