This article is relevant if you are working with NetSuite’s sFTP SuiteScript Module.

Background

Shortly after the release of NetSuite’s SuiteScript 2.0 language upgrade, the NetSuite product team came to us as they were interested in feedback on their soon-to-be-released sFTP services module. The product team saw that my firm created a flexible and robust NetSuite FTP integration capacity using the open-source Apache Camel platform. See related article Link NetSuite to FTP via Open Source Middleware to learn more.  At SuiteWorld, we met face-to-face with the product lead to discuss the new sFTP module; our team was enthusiastic that the platform was becoming richer with capacities. At the time of the discussion, since it was not yet released, all we could really do is imagine how the new module would work and be programmed.

The sFTP module was then released. In our next client situation that needed sFTP services (they needed to move files to the bank generated from our implementation of NetSuite’s Electronic Payments Bundle), we discussed that the module could be used in lieu of our previously created FTP solution. When working with our clients to solve their NetSuite related endeavors, we first attempt to take advantage of everything that the NetSuite platform offers in terms of built-in abilities. The idea is to find the trade-off between implementation effort, ease for ongoing use, and any other ongoing costs or obligations. Since all the solutions we offer have no ongoing recurring costs as we give our previously created algorithms free of license charge, most of our client discussions are about features and implementation effort.

Challenges in Implementation and Using the NetSuite sFTP Module with Passwords

In a previous article, Overcome NetSuite sFTP Programming Challenges, I outlined some challenges getting the module to work. Readers who are programming the module for the first time will save effort following the article. More recently we discovered another challenge related to passwords.

Alex F., a consultant on our team, was implementing the module for a client. Our client had to connect with a remote system that had a password very similar to this one: “V2BR34fkFEU3nuFGurxcVQzxvhdSA32H339tyvnmSS8PgX8fK4NAEGQ8sL8aBbQJ”. The password worked just fine when Alex logged in using FileZilla (an open-source FTP framework. Alex simply could not get it to work in Netsuite. So he took matters into his own hands and changed the password to something short: “TESTitOUT2019” and that worked!

While we didn’t find out the full limits of the passwords that indeed work, we speculate that there is a string length issue and not a string complexity issue. While we did not report it to NetSuite (since all of our work is client-driven, we are not going to spend time informing NetSuite when we need to get other urgent work completed), we believe it would be helpful if this was better documented.

Work with Talented NetSuite Professionals

My hope is that this article helps our fellows in the community who are trying to get more value out of the NetSuite investment. If this article was valuable to you, feel free to get notifications of new articles. If you find you need more robust FTP or other automated bi-directional file or data movement capacities between NetSuite and a remote system, let’s have a conversation.

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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