Get Control over NetSuite’s Email Reply-To Address

This article is relevant if you seeking to get control over the way that NetSuite sends email sender information (e.g., from and reply-to).

Background

While working with our clients to help them speed up their communications to their customers and other parties, we often are invited into a discussion about the way that NetSuite configures the email sender information. This topic most frequently comes up when we are automating the distribution of ship confirmation and invoice emails. Readers may wish to review my 2019 article, Best Practices for Automating NetSuite Invoice Generation for further background.

The most common request is to control who the email message is coming from and how to get control over the reply-to information. Many accounting departments set up email inboxes with alias email addresses, such as “accounting@company.com” so their internal team can work an email inbox for accounting related requests. Yet, NetSuite’s mechanism to send a transactional email (in contrast to campaign email used in promotional or mass/bulk email efforts) leaves little control over these configuration options.

NetSuite User Preference Email Address Configuration

You can get control over the email sender information via the Home, Set Preferences, User Profile information. In that mode, you can change your “Nickname” which formats the Name value of the mail. You can also change the “From” Email address which is what appears to the email recipient as a vanity. This “From” Email address also controls the “Reply-To” email address.

The primary challenge is that users may wish to perform different email operations during their NetSuite work session and it is cumbersome and error-prone to remember to frequently change this preference confirmation. While it is possible, I rarely see this option being used unless there is a permanent configuration setup.

Get Control over Template-Based NetSuite Email Messages

NetSuite’s template-based email messages would be the natural place to get control over the sender’s reply-to information. However, at the time of this writing, NetSuite offers no built-in capacity. What can you do at this point?

The Hard Way: Scripting NetSuite Email Messages

The NetSuite scripting and workflow platform allows you to craft email messages. In that mode, you can get control over the reply-to information. However, most of our clients do not want to revert to script or workflow for every email message.

The Easy Way: Leverage a Template-Based NetSuite Email Message Tool

When our clients in this situation ask us for suggestions, we offer them a complete framework for generating template-based email messages that give them full control over the name and reply-to information — just as we would have expected NetSuite to offer.

My firm has developed a license-free tool called the Content Renderer Engine (CRE) that is designed to make it much easier for NetSuite Administrators to craft and distribute content. Since 2015, I have written many articles describing how you can link together multiple saved searches so that you can fully automate NetSuite messaging.

With the Content Renderer Engine (CRE) framework, we give NetSuite administrators the ability to control the employee that sends the email address and the reply-to information. While these information elements can be controlled via the profile (template) record, the same information can be manipulated dynamically during runtime depending on the context of the situation.

Click the image to see the configuration option.

Note, depending on the usage model, you can get control over the reply-to or work with NetSuite’s built-in mechanism to have reply-to information get tracked automatically via NetSuite’s Capture Email Reply (or technically, Variable Envelope Return Paths).

Work with NetSuite Innovators

Since 2008, our team continues to leverage the NetSuite platform to drive solutions. Our clients tell us that we possess a unique perspective of business acumen and NetSuite technical expertise that combined produces valuable ERP leadership in their organizations.

Like all the tools we have built in our NetSuite Systems Integration practice, the Content Renderer Engine is free of license charge to our clients. Once NetSuite Administrators are up to speed, they then use our tools to help them solve their own challenges.

If you found this article useful, feel free to receive notification of new articles. If you have a NetSuite email or content generation challenge that you would like to solve, let’s have a conversation.