👀See the bottom of this article for common error scenarios. In addition, there are a few housekeeping chores to keep in mind.
Prerequisites
In order to ensure that you (and other employees in your organization) can be added as attendees, your NetSuite role needs the required permissions to be able to find the employees. In order to accomplish this, we recommend one of two options.
Ask your NetSuite Admin to provide your role with View Access (minimum) to Employees and Employee Records. If your organization has concerns about viewing sensitive data on employee records we recommend that they use custom forms to restrict the viewing of this data.
ORAsk your Admin to enable the NetSuite preference to enable SHOW EMPLOYEES AS CONTACTS under Setup> Company> General Preferences.
Employee Record and Employee Permissions
Step 1: In NetSuite, go to Setup> User/Roles> Manage Roles
Step 2: Search for the Role to update. Go to Permissions Tab> Lists
Step 3: Add Employee Record and Employees and set at least View level.
General Preferences
Screenshot of setting to enable SHOW EMPLOYEES AS CONTACTS feature.
Step 1: In NetSuite, go to Setup> Company> General Preferences
Step 2: Turn on SHOW EMPLOYEES AS CONTACTS
🔵 Attaching Calendar Events to NetSuite Records
Use ExtendSync auto search to search NetSuite based on attendees on your invite list or click the search icon🔎 in the menu to search the desired record type. Once your calendar invite is complete go ahead and click Attach and then send your invite.
🔵 How the organizer is mapped
When you attach an event to a NetSuite record, we attempt to search for the Contact/Employee ID for the event organizer and then add them as the organizer. If no match is found, NetSuite will automatically default to the currently logged-in user.
🔵 How attendees are mapped
For each attendee, ExtendSync will search NetSuite for matching contacts based on email Id and add them as attendees. Since NetSuite requires that an attendee have a matching NetSuite record ExtendSync skips adding any attendees that don't have an entity record (such as Contact) in NetSuite. They will still appear on your Outlook event.
By default, the organizer is also added as an attendee unless your NetSuite role does not provide the appropriate permissions (see Prerequisites above) to search for employee records. In the event your employee record cannot be found the event will still be created and associated with the NetSuite record, however, it will not be visible on your own NetSuite calendar.
🔵 Finding the attached event on NetSuite records
All attached events can be seen on the Activity tab on the attached record. If there are multiple attendees at the event, the event can be seen on the attendees' contact/customer records also.
🔵 Finding the attached event on your calendar
For the event to appear on your calendar, you need to be part of the attendee list. In the event your employee record cannot be found (due to permission issues) the event will still be created and associated with the NetSuite record, however, it will not be visible on your own NetSuite calendar.
🔵 Recurring Events
CloudExtend currently supports creating single (one-time) events. If you mark an event as recurring in Outlook and attach it to NetSuite only the first event in the occurrence will be attached to NetSuite.
Common Error Scenarios
🔵 Contact not mapped to company
This occurs when the contact to whom you attached the event is not mapped to the company. NetSuite does not allow attaching events to orphaned contact records (ie contacts without a parent company). To resolve this edit the contact and associate them with a parent company or attach the event to another contact in the event who has a company mapped.
🔵 NetSuite Default Form for Creating Events with Required Fields
If you have required fields on your event form NetSuite will return an error message and the event will not be saved.
Here are a few workarounds to get the event synchronizing to NetSuite, ask your NetSuite admin to do the changes:
Option 1: Create a Custom role and Custom Form for ExtendSync Users
Create a custom role for ExtendSync Outlook Integration
Assign a different form (without mandatory fields) for the new role
Log in to ExtendSync using the new role. Since the fields are no longer required you will be able to save events.
When you work in the NetSuite UI you will log in with your original role that enforces the field restrictions
Option 2: Create a script
Create an on save workflow or script in NetSuite that will populate the required fields (with some value such as "N/A", etc.) to bypass the mandatory settings. This could be set to run only in the context of web services which means it would only run if the event was created externally via an app like ExtendSync.
🔵 Attached Event is not seen on your calendar
Make sure you have access to your employee record and have met the prerequisites detailed at the beginning of the article.
🔵 Event is appearing multiple times on your calendar
If you have multiple attendees invited you do NOT need to attach the event to each attendee. You only need to attach the event to a single NetSuite record and the event will be visible under that record as well as under employees and contacts that are in the invite last (as long as they exist in NetSuite). In fact, if you attach the event to every contact on the list you will end up with duplicate events.