Creating a custom sublist from a Saved Search is a great way to customize NetSuite to fit your business needs. This process can be tricky, but once you know a few important settings, you should be well on your way to making custom sublists!
Create a Search
There are several crucial things to note as you create a Saved Search to be used in a sublist. Even if you already have an existing search that you would like to use, you may need to adjust a few settings before converting a search to a custom sublist.
Step 1: Navigate to a new or existing Saved Search
Once on the create/edit page for a search, we’ll need to fill out the search name, internal ID, as well as any other desired fields. Under the Criteria tab, you may also want to create a filter to reduce the results to only the main transaction line (“Main Line” is YES), rather than display a separate line for each sub-result on a record.
Step 2: Checking boxes
Next, be sure to check the “Available as Sublist View” box. This is essential to making a custom sublist from a Saved Search. We recommend that you select the “Public” checkbox as well, since this will ensure that the sublist appears correctly for everyone.
Step 3: Available Filters
Correctly setting up an “Available Filter” under the “Available Filters” tab is one of the most significant steps in this process.
The “Available Filters” is a special way for NetSuite to handle custom sublists. Without an “Available Filter,” the custom sublist would display quite unhelpful results. We want to avoid hard-coding transaction IDs in the search. We also want to avoid showing numerous unapplicable results in the sublist search. What we need is a way for the search to dynamically find something unique on the current record and filter the results down to that. This is exactly what “Available Filters” does.
NetSuite’s default expectation is that you will set up the internal ID as the Available Filter. But you may find that you need to filter by another criteria, in which case you can select another field on the target record to filter by. If you decide to go this route, you will also need to select that same field when you create the custom sublist to overwrite NetSuite’s default expectation.
Create a Custom Sublist
Navigate to Customization > Forms > Sublists. This is where custom sublists can be created.
In the “Search” dropdown list, you should see the name of your search. If it doesn’t show in this list, it is likely that the search wasn’t set up correctly. Verify that the “Available as Sublist View” checkbox is selected on the search. Also, make sure that you have an “Available Filter” selected in the search. Only searches with an “Available Filter” will show in this list.
Remember to select which record(s) you would like the sublist to appear on. You can also select which tab the sublist should display under.
As mentioned previously, NetSuite natively expects the sublist to be filtered by the internal ID. If you would like to override this functionality and use another criteria (as specified on the Saved Search “Available Filters”), you can select a corresponding option in the “Field” column.
Once saved, you should see the sublist search results on the specified record, beautifully filtered by the current record!
Conclusion
Setting up a custom sublist from a Saved Search can be tricky at times. But following these instructions should get you on the right path. We hope you find this NetSuite tip helpful!
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