Most of us take a calendar for granted and never give much thought into what they really are. Fundamentally, a calendar is a viewer into commitments; typically personal but can be for groups or other resources. Business is deeply organized around commitments. NetSuite is a powerful business management software application designed to help organizations make and hold commitments to be more competitive. So it is only natural that NetSuite offers a calendar as a way to view business commitments.
NetSuite’s calendar provides for streamlined coordination. In the most basic sense, the NetSuite calendar functions like most other calendars, meaning it shows a view into where you hold commitments to someone or something. For example, in the customer relationship management (CRM) side of the application, it is about tracking promises to those operating in Sales. Within the enterprise resource planning (ERP), it is about remembering payments and orders.
NetSuite’s calendar is focused around three main components: events, tasks, and activities.
Events – An event has a date, start and end time, as well as information on what the event is, who will be attending, who is invited, etc. Events can be something as simple as a conference call where people join and participate. Or it can be a major meeting, such as a trade show. NetSuite has powerful capacities to manage events and the calendar offers a way for individuals to see their commitment to the event.
Tasks – These are the to-do lists, the reminders, etc, and usually are set as date in the future. They can be recurring tasks, such as an action to be completed once every week or month – or they can be one time tasks. These tasks will also show up on the calendar. If the task involves a customer, NetSuite offers a way show their related records which naturally helps serve them well.
Activities – These can be simple matters, such as a phone call. For activities, you have a date, start of the activity, end of the activity, a follow up action, and who participated. All of this information is also seen in NetSuite’s calendar, and is also a way to leverage the information stored in the CRM.
The NetSuite calendar is simple and efficient – giving you the basic records, dates, beginnings and endings, as well as the nature, priority, and the parties involved. But because NetSuite stores all your information into a combined CRM and ERP, you get all the benefits of having your data available on the calendar when needed, without needing to jump from multiple programs to take care of your commitments.
Copyright © Marty Zigman 2011
NetSuite Inc. “NetSuite Calendar Image.” Photo. NetSuite. 1998-2001. 11 Oct. 2011. <https://www.netsuite.com/portal/landing/netsuite-for-google.shtml>
Marty Zigman
Holding all three official certifications, Marty is regarded as the top NetSuite expert and leads a team of senior professionals at Prolecto Resources, Inc. He is a former Deloitte & Touche CPA and has held CTO roles. For over 30 years, Marty has produced leadership in ERP, CRM and eCommerce business systems. Contact Marty to set up a conversation.
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BTW, you are incorrect with the info under tasks. NetSuite currently does not support recurring tasks.
Thank you Erica,
Perhaps I caused some confusion. Indeed, it’s not the tasks that support out of the box recurrence. It is NetSuite Events.
One interesting aspect is the way the system abstracts from Calendar Events, Activities and Tasks. They appear all closely related especially when you browse the Suitetalk Records Browser.
Marty
Any creative ways to have a recurring task that someone has to check off as complete every day? Some hybrid of a recurrent event and a task or something like that? Whereas an event can come and go and there is no method for a tickler that indicates someone actually performed the task/event and when it was done.
Hello Stephen,
We could invent something that does this as a scheduled script. We could easily have a small program that could achieve this goal.
Marty