Jittering Fields When Editing NetSuite Record

Customer Stories

Sometimes things in NetSuite don’t work as expected. Today, we want to guide you through overcoming a strange yet common NetSuite bug: jittering fields when editing.

The Problem

We recently worked with a client that was seeing this issue. Surprisingly, this is actually not as rare as you might think. This bug will completely impair you from using that NetSuite record normally. No matter what you try, it won’t be possible to interact with the record in any way.

There is a way to diagnose this issue, however, and find out what’s causing it.

Right-click on the page, then select an option that says something similar to “Inspect” or “Inspect page” in the list. This will open up technical browser information for developers. You should then see an option to select the “Console.” Once there, you should see some kind of error message highlighted in red. Technically speaking, whatever that error message tells you is related to the problem.

In the example above, I recreated the bug by importing an incorrect module into a script. This is reflected in the error the console displays, and it may display a different error in your case.

Potential Causes

This issue is typically produced by a problematic script, though a Workflow can also be the culprit. Often, a User Event script (a script that runs on the NetSuite server) can call a client-side script or library script that contains the error. For example, if a User Event script displays a button on a record, that User Event script tries to imports a Client script behind the scenes. If that Client script has an issue, this can cause the jittering on the page.

Having said this, it is also possible that a Workflow can cause this issue. Sometimes a Workflow can call a Workflow Action script, which may have a scripting error. But even a normal workflow can cause issues if there is something that NetSuite doesn’t like. In working with a recent client, this turned out to be the cause. It is quite rare for a Workflow to completely “break” a NetSuite record, but it can happen.

Potential Solutions

So, what should you do if this issue comes up? You have several options, depending on the urgency of the situation.

First, we recommend contacting a developer as soon as possible. A good developer will know exactly what to look for in this type of situation. Since this is most often caused by a script, they may be able to fix the issue quickly.

But sometimes, in the most urgent situations, you may need to disable the source of the problem yourself while you wait for help to arrive. Try to think back to when this problem began happening. Were there any recent changes to scripts or workflows that run on this record? If so, you may want to go through each of those automations and try un-deploying them one by one to locate the source. This of course is only a temporary fix, but it may give you access to editing the record once again.

Conclusion

NetSuite bugs are almost never fun, and that definitely goes for jittering fields too. But we hope this article might help guide someone through a challenging situation. Let us know in the comments if you have ever encountered this bug before and what you did to overcome it!