[daveweez]

Hey,

Does anyone use the box.com (formally box.net) bundle in NetSuite?

I would like to discuss how you use it in your processes and your experience in NetSuite.
This is a cached copy. Click here to see the original post.

[tbuffington]

Yes, we’ve been using it for almost 4 months now. I’d be happy to share experiences and answer any questions.

[Xenomate]

RE: Box.com

kindly do this in this post, as we also would like to learn about it.

[tbuffington]

We use Box as a whole as a replacement of our file server. We’re not 100% there yet, but we’re well on our way. Since we’re big NetSuite users, the integration with NetSuite has been great. One of the main uses we have is to link supporting documentation to transactions – quotes we get in from our vendors linked to an estimate, a customer PO linked to their order, a vendor acknowledgement linked to the PO, etc. It makes it very easy to get documents that the user would previously have to weed through folders on the server to get – now it’s a click away.

We also use it to link documents and files to customers and items as needed. I think being able to stay in one place is one of the bigger benefits to us there.

The new version of the integration with NetSuite is very nice as it always you to search, drag-drop files, and preview common files types right within the NetSuite subtab.

We’ve also been able to engineer some neat integrations using Suitelets and the Box API to streamline some processes internally.

The one real downside I’d say is that when interfacing using the Box side (website, app, etc.) it places all of the NetSuite linked documents into a folder for the record within a root NetSuite folder. As you can imagine, once you start doing a lot of transactions, looking something up in this folder gets hard. You can quickly search if you know the customer name or transaction # which is nice, but it’s not something you’d want to sit and scroll through to find what you’re looking for.

There are a couple of minor items we’ve found, but overall we’re very pleased with it. The integration with NetSuite is great, and Box has a host of other apps and features that have made it well suited for us.

Let me know if you’d like any other specifics or details.

[Xenomate]

RE: Box.com

great write up indeed. thanks. it would seem with Box we will finally be able to abandon SharePoint (outlook is already gone), which is where we store our documents right now. One of the issues using the normal NetSuite folder was always not having a preview and finding documents, but as you describe box, no issue this way.

we will give it a go now and set up few box users as a trial to evaluate further.

Cheers

[tbuffington]

Yes, Box preview is very good although some times can be a little quirky on some file types like TIFF files but almost all others are very straightforward. Searching is very nice too as they have full text indexing on documents so it will search document contents too – not always a blessing though

[daveweez]

Thanks for the reply!!!

A few questions for you:

– you mentioned that all files are sent to a root folder within Box. Do all your users have access to this folder if they have access to netsuite? How do you manage that?

-what kinds of API integrations and suitelets have you developed?

-David

[tbuffington]

All our users have access to this folder as all of our users have access to the records we save them on. I haven’t tried saving something to a record that is more restricted, Employee record, for example to see how the permissions flow back and forth. You’d have to check with Box on that one. So far, we use it for transactions, customers, and items – all of which are fairly open to our users.

In terms of integrations, we’ve written an integration for PO acknowledgements. They are faxed in and go directly to a Box folder. A user uses a custom Box action to enter the PO #, amount, etc. and it automatically links to NetSuite and acknowledges the PO based on a $ variance threshold – makes it so the user doesn’t need to flip between windows/screens. Another one we did was an image workflow, we take photos of products internally, email them to a Box folder, and link them to NetSuite (this also has one additional cloud service tied in too).

[jwebbstevens]

RE: Box.com

I’ve integrated Box.com several times in multiple Netsuite instances. They have rolled out some new changes regarding HTML5 and it is still in BETA. You can give me a ring or shoot me a message within any questions.

There are plusses and minuses to Box with Netsuite. Several of them mentioned about but the Box ecosystem for apps is getting stronger. With things like Openera and SortMyBox rolling out the integration between box and netsuite is better although there are some fundamental flaws with the hierarchy of folders and subfolders. Ie. Massive subfolders under one core Netsuite folder is messy and un neccessary. Box could get a lot more business from Netsuite if they cleaned up the file architecture of the API.

[farrago]

Can the new “Drag and Drop feature” in NetSuite (installed via SuiteApp Bundle ID 41309) be set to save to a Box folder?

[tbuffington]

With the Box integration, you should be able to drag/drop directly into the Box subtab on the records or the one that is full page on the Box main tab.

[farrago]

ah, yes. So, I guess I can now un-install the NetSuite drag-and-drop SuiteApp.

I know we can’t talk price in this UG, but we purchased a Box account and installed the box bundle mostly because we heard that their storage prices were cheaper. It was a preemptive switch to avoid future expenditures. I can’t attest to it actually being cheaper because we’ve never used enough data to get any extra storage fees from NS. I don’t know how much data we’re using or how close we are to the threshold where we pay more …or what it will cost us when we cross that threshold. I wish NetSuite were a little more transparent in their storage pricing costs (and all of their pricing). Maybe they are and I just don’t know where to look.

Tom

[farrago]

One annoying thing is the folder naming at BOX.

It correctly names folder the customer number when uploading into the drag-n-drop area on a customer record.

BUT

It names folder the NetSuite internal ID number when uploading into the drag-n-drop area on a sales order. Why not name the folder the SO number? The folder created using the drag-n-drop area on a customer record doesn’t use the NetSuite internal ID number for that customer.

I asked them how to fix and they gave me a non-answer. Looks like it is some sort of edit to the JS file named “boxaddsubtablive.js” …but, I couldn’t figure out the needed edit.

Has anyone else tackled this?

T

[tbuffington]

Yeah, we editted their integration to work around this and use the transaction number vs. the internal ID.

[silverriaz]

With regard to viewing a file (View API), if I use cURL, I am able to get the location URL of the file that’s on Box. However, when I try to pass the same parameters to nlapiRequestURL, I am getting the actual file and not the location. Is this a known issue and is there anyway around it? Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Author]

Posts