Fundamentally, NetSuite organizes these all the documents as a general Transaction Type.  NetSuite wants to read the “Email” as specified on the Transaction’s main Entity reference as the suggested email address to distribute the communication.  For a Purchase Order, the Entity will be a Vendor.  For a Sales Order, the Entity will be a Customer.  All good, but what do you do if you want a different email address reference?    What if you want to address multiple parties?

For a recent client engagement, we helped them leverage some work they were doing to solve this problem.   In their use case, they had created saved searches that would query all the relevant contacts’ email addresses under selected roles on the entity record.  They also would pull in sales people and other parties into the email list that needed to receive the communication.

The saved search query got them halfway there.  For every communication, they manually ran the Saved Search, outputted the list of email address results to Excel, de-duplicated the list and turned it into one long semi-colon string that would finally be cut-and-paste into transaction’s “To Be Emailed” field.  This became tedious fast and they needed a better way.

Seeing the pattern, and their need for flexibility, here is what we did:

1. For every transaction, we created a SuiteScript that would run when the transaction was created.  This way, it would happen only once behind the scenes.
2. We defined SuiteScript parameters which was specified on the deployment: a) a reference to the respective saved search and b) the column name in the saved search that contained the email address being looked up.
3. We then would run the saved search and add a filter condition to pass in the ID of the record being created;
4. We would take the results, automatically de-duplicate the list, and append any other existing transaction email addresses already in place.
5. Finally, we turn it into one string delimited by semi-colons and then update the transaction’s email field.

The following code pattern assumes you have background in SuiteScript implementation.  Of course, there are different approaches, but I hope this technique saves you time.

/*
 *  on transaction update, runs a saved search to retrieve a list of email addresses, de-dupes the list, and saves it into the 'email' field of the transaction
 */

function PROLECTO01_transactionBeforeSubmit(type) {

	var funcName = "PROLECTO01_transactionBeforeSubmit (" + type + " " + nlapiGetRecordType() + " " + nlapiGetRecordId() + ")";

	// we don't do anything on delete, and if this is a create, then we'll let it run on the afterSubmit, as we don't have a record ID yet
	if ((type == "create") || (type == "delete"))
		return;

	try {

		var emailList = PROLECTO01_getEmailListFromSavedSearch(nlapiGetRecordId());

		// we are here only on an update

		if (emailList)
			nlapiSetFieldValue("email",PROLECTO01_combineAndDedupeEmails(emailList + ';' + nlapiGetFieldValue("email")));

		nlapiLogExecution("DEBUG", funcName, "Updated Email List: " + nlapiGetFieldValue("email"));
	} catch (e) {
		nlapiLogExecution('ERROR', funcName, (e.name || e.getCode()) + ":" + (e.message || e.getDetails()));
	}
};

function PROLECTO01_transactionAfterSubmit(type) {

	var funcName = "PROLECTO01_transactionAfterSubmit (" + type + " " + nlapiGetRecordType() + " " + nlapiGetRecordId() + ")";

	// on the afterSubmit, we ONLY do it if this is a create; for updates, it was already handled by the beforeSubmit
	if (type != "create")  return;

	try {
		// we are here only on create; since record was already written, just post the single field
		var emailList = PROLECTO01_getEmailListFromSavedSearch(nlapiGetRecordId());

		if (emailList) {
			nlapiLogExecution("DEBUG", funcName, "email list found -- updating field ");
			nlapiSubmitField(nlapiGetRecordType(), nlapiGetRecordId(), "email",PROLECTO01_combineAndDedupeEmails(emailList + ';' + nlapiGetFieldValue("email")));
		}
		nlapiLogExecution("DEBUG", funcName, "Updated Email List: " + nlapiLookupField(nlapiGetRecordType(), nlapiGetRecordId(), "email"));
	} catch (e) {
		nlapiLogExecution('ERROR', funcName, (e.name || e.getCode()) + ":" + (e.message || e.getDetails()));
	}
};

// takes a list of commma or semi-colon separated emails, and returns a de-duped, semi-colon separated list
function PROLECTO01_combineAndDedupeEmails(emailList) {
	var funcName = "PROLECTO01_combineAndDedupeEmails";

	try {
		var tempList = emailList.split(",").join(";").split(";");
		var theList = [];

		for (var i = 0; i < tempList.length; i++) {
			var email = tempList[i].trim();

			if (theList.indexOf(email) < 0)
				theList.push(email);
		}

		nlapiLogExecution("DEBUG", funcName, theList.join(";"));

		return theList.join(";");
	} catch (e) {
		nlapiLogExecution('ERROR', funcName, (e.name || e.getCode()) + ":" + (e.message || e.getDetails()));
	}

}

// this function executes a saved search, filtering it by the transaction ID of the current record; it then extracts the merged email field
function PROLECTO01_getEmailListFromSavedSearch(tranId) {
	var funcName = "PROLECTO01_getEmailListFromSavedSearch";

	try {
		//here is the reference ot the script parameters which vary by deployment
		var searchId = nlapiGetContext().getSetting("SCRIPT", "custscript_prolecto_saved_search_id");
		var emailFieldLabel = nlapiGetContext().getSetting("SCRIPT", "custscript_prolecto_email_field_label");

		nlapiLogExecution("DEBUG", funcName, "Looking for field " + emailFieldLabel + " in Saved Search " + searchId);

		var filters = new Array();
		filters.push(new nlobjSearchFilter("internalid",null,"anyof",tranId))
		var searchResults = nlapiSearchRecord(null, searchId, filters, null) || [];
		nlapiLogExecution("DEBUG", funcName, searchResults.length + " rows returned");

		if (searchResults.length > 0) {
			var searchResultColumns = searchResults[0].getAllColumns();
			for (var columnNdx in searchResultColumns) {

				var column = searchResultColumns[columnNdx];
				var row = 0;

				if (column.getLabel() == emailFieldLabel) {
					var emailList = "";
					for (var row = 0; row < searchResults.length; row++)
						if (searchResults[row].getValue(column)) {
							nlapiLogExecution("DEBUG", funcName, "row " + row + " has " + searchResults[row].getValue(column));

							if (emailList.length > 0)
								emailList += ";";

							emailList += searchResults[row].getValue(column);
						}

					// nlapiLogExecution("DEBUG", funcName, "returning: " + emailList);
					return emailList;
				}
			}

			nlapiLogExecution("ERROR", funcName, "No column found with label '" + emailFieldLabel + "'");
			return;

		} else
			nlapiLogExecution("ERROR", funcName, "No rows found executing saved search " + searchId);
	} catch (e) {
		nlapiLogExecution('ERROR', funcName, (e.name || e.getCode()) + ":" + (e.message || e.getDetails()));
	}
}

While using NetSuite, one of the commonly missed opportunities is taking control of a situation.  Most NetSuite users are information workers who are well paid to think and solve concerns.  Yet many times, the tool’s standard behavior demands operations that are mindless, tedious, and consume valuable time and energy that can be shifted to much more productive concerns.  You are not stuck with this default inferior way of working; the NetSuite Platform is full of untapped potential.  If you are ready to take matters into your hands and make work more enjoyable, let’s have a conversation.