GURUS NetSuite Data Exporter User Guide & FAQ

Get in Touch With a NetSuite Professional

What is The NetSuite Data Exporter?
How do I Install the GURUS NetSuite Data Exporter?
Table of Acronyms
Glossary
Instructions for Using the GURUS NetSuite Data Exporter
What’s New
How Do I Retrieve Saved Searches?
Retrieve Saved Searches (Legacy)
How Do I Schedule Searches?

Limitations
GURUS NetSuite Data Exporter Limitations
Google Workplace Limitations
NetSuite Governance and Limitations
Troubleshooting Tips for Users
Roles and Permissions
Custom filters
Frequently Asked Questions & Errors
Configuring NetSuite Embed Dashboard (Premium Edition)

What is The NetSuite Data Exporter?

The GURUS NetSuite Data Exporter is a Google Sheet Add-on, created by GURUS Solutions, that helps companies automate the process of exporting NetSuite Saved Searches to Google Sheets.

The Data Exporter allows you to connect to your NetSuite account with the provided credentials, run specified Saved Searches, and export the results into Google Sheets. It also supports additional filters on existing Saved Searches to further refine the results.

How do I Install the GURUS NetSuite Data Exporter?

You can start your free trial of the GURUS NetSuite Data exporter by downloading the tool from the Google Add-Ons store and applying for your activation through our website.

To download the add-on through your Google sheets:

Open a Google sheet and head to the Add-ons menu.
Click "Get Add-on" and search for NetSuite Data Exporter and install it from there.

To activate the tool once you’ve downloaded the add-on, click the link here and fill out the form. In order to begin using the Data Exporter, you need it to be activated in your NetSuite, or the tool will not work. Therefore, please wait for confirmation from a member of the GURUS Solutions team stating that your bundle has been activated.

If your bundle has not been activated, you’ll likely get the following error message:

Once you’ve filled out the form, and a GURUS employee has confirmed that your Data Exporter license has been activated. To help you get your Data Exporter up and running as fast as possible, our team put together a quick Installation Guide to help you install the tool for yourself.

Table of Acronyms

Acronyms	Definition
TBA	Token Based Authentication

Glossary

Terms	Definition
Token Based Authentication	Authentication method using generated tokens based on oAuth 1.0 used to connect to NetSuite.
Google Sheet Add-on	Application installed inside a Google Sheet to offer additional features to the Sheet.
Google Workspace Marketplace	The marketplace where we can find and install add-ons for Google Sheet and other Google products.
Google Workspace	Google productivity environment for companies. Typically includes Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs and Sheets, etc.
SuiteBundle	Application installed inside a NetSuite Instance to provide extra features.
SuiteApp	SuiteBundle found on the NetSuite SuiteApp marketplace.
Sandbox	Testing environment provided by NetSuite to execute business processes without impacting the production environment.

Instructions for Using the GURUS NetSuite Data Exporter

Looking to get started with the GURUS NetSuite Data Exporter? Let’s go over some of the basics.

What’s New

In the December 2023 release of the Data Exporter, we added the following elements:

We now support the embedding of Looker Studio reports in NetSuite! The same way you would include the GoogleSheets, you can now have this with Looker Studio!

We added support for what was previously called a “standalone search”, or searches that refer to NetSuite data that are not standard records. A new field is added to the settings tab to allow selection of the new types.

Here is the list of the newly supported search types:

DeletedRecord
EndToEndTime
ExpenseAmortPlanAndSchedule
RevRecPlanAndSchedule
GlLinesAuditLog
BillingAccountBillCycle
BillingAccountBillRequest
BinItemBalance

PaymentEvent
Permission
GatewayNotification
TimeApproval
RecentRecord
Role
SavedSearch
ShoppingCart

SubscriptionRenewalHistory
SuiteScriptDetail
SupplyChainSnapshotDetails
SystemNote
TaxDetail
TimesheetApproval
Uber
ResAllocationTimeOffConflict

ComSearchOneWaySyn
ComSearchGroupSyn
Installment
InventoryBalance
InventoryNumberBin
InventoryNumberItem
InventoryStatusLocation
InvtNumberItemBalance
ItemBinNumber

How Do I Retrieve Saved Searches?

*If you already see the NetSuite Data Exporter sidebar and Settings tab in your sheet, skip to Step 3. If you do not see the “Search Type” column, restart the extension and follow steps starting with Step 1.*

1. Open a Google sheet that you want to have the search results saved. Navigate to Add-ons > NetSuite Data Exporter > Request Search Results
2. The NetSuite Data Exporter sidebar appears to the right and a pop-up message displays to request your confirmation to add the Settings tab. Click Yes.
3. The Setting tab is now created. Enter details for the searches that you want to retrieve.
- 3.1. Search Type: Mandatory. Most standard records such as customers, vendors, transactions, accounts, etc. do not need to be specified and as such, you may use the option “None/Other”. However, if the search you wish to extract is part of a sublist or sub record such as GL Line Audit Logs,deleted records, inventory balance, etc , there is a high chance you will need to specify the type. In those cases, choose one of the choices of Search Type which will be compatible with your choice of the Search Id. If you do not find the search type in the list, you may select “None/Other”. The list contains the Search Type for which NetSuite requires the type to be specified in order for them to be extracted.
- 3.2. Search Id: Mandatory. In NetSuite, you may obtain the Search Id of your saved search from its URL
  
  Or from the Saved Searches list view, once you have enabled the preference to Show Internal IDs
  
  You can also use the textual search id such as “customsearch_gs_bin_item_balance” or “customsearch_1234”
- 3.3. Tab: Mandatory. Enter the name of the tab to place the search results in. If the specified tab does not exist, a new tab will be created. If the specified tab exists:
  
  • On scheduled mode: it will overwrite the data in that tab
  • On manual mode: it will ask you if you wish to overwrite the data, append or cancel the extract
- 3.4. Skip: optional. Select Yes to skip this search from the next request. (ex: If you want to pull your list of customers once a month, but update your sales data weekly). Select No or leave it empty to include this search in the next request.
- 3.4. Additional Filters: optional.
4. In the NetSuite Data Exporter sidebar, enter required authentication credentials for your NetSuite instance. Enter your credentials created in section 5 of the Installation Guide and Account Number. If you are linking to a sandbox account, make sure to use “NSAccount_SB#” where # is the number of your sandbox. The URL of your NetSuite sandbox account uses a “-” and lowercase “sb” but our tool requires an “_” and capital letters for “SB”.
5. Click Request
6. Done! Search results are now exported to the specified tabs and a success message displays. If you entered an existing tab for your search, you will be prompted to confirm that the tab will be overwritten before the results are exported.

How Do I Retrieve Saved Searches? (Legacy)

*If you already see the NetSuite Data Exporter sidebar and Settings tab in your sheet, skip to Step 3.*

1. Open a Google sheet that you want to have the search results saved. Navigate to Add-ons > NetSuite Data Exporter > Request Search Results
2. The NetSuite Data Exporter sidebar appears to the right and a pop-up message displays to request your confirmation to add the Settings tab. Click Yes.
3. The Settings tab is now created. Enter details for the searches that you want to retrieve.
- 3.1. Search Id: mandatory. In NetSuite, you may obtain the Search Id of your saved search from its URL
  
  Or from the Saved Searches list view, once you have enabled the preference to Show Internal IDs
- 3.2. Tab: mandatory. Enter the name of the tab to place the search results in. If the specified tab does not exist, a new tab will be created. If the specified tab exists, it will be overwritten by the search results.
- 3.3. Skip: optional. Select Yes to skip this search from the next request. (ex: If you want to pull your list of customers once a month, but update your sales data weekly). Select No or leave it empty to include this search in the next request.
- 3.4. Additional Filters: optional. Multiple filters may be applied as long as you enter the filters on new rows before the next saved search.
  
  Note: Filters only work without Filter Expressions, so will always have a "and" in between. Having filter expressions in the saved search itself can also cause issues when using additional filters within the Data Exporter.
  Note 2: If you are using date filters, the date format must follow the date format of the preferences of the user tied to the token.
  
  Example:
4. In the NetSuite Data Exporter sidebar, enter required authentication credentials for your NetSuite instance. Enter your credentials created in section 5 of the Installation Guide and Account Number. If you are linking to a sandbox account, make sure to use “NSAccount_SB#” where # is the number of your sandbox. The URL of your NetSuite sandbox account uses a “-” and lowercase “sb” but our tool requires an “_” and capital letters for “SB”.
5. Click Request
6. Done! Search results are now exported to the specified tabs and a success message displays. If you entered an existing tab for your search, you will be prompted to confirm that the tab will be overwritten before the results are exported.

How Do I Schedule Searches?

Note: This feature is not available in the Netsuite Data Exporter Free Trial version. To learn more about this service, contact us at sales@gurussolutions.com.

1. Make sure you check the “Remember me” box as the scheduler functionality will need your credentials to run asynchronously.

Note: This feature is only available with Token Based Authentication.

2. In the Scheduling section, select a frequency type from the dropdown button. You can choose between “Hours”, “Days”, “Weeks" or "Months".

3. You can then select the number of times per frequency type the request will execute. Ex: If you select Hour in the frequency type, and type “4” in the "Occurs every" field, the request will execute every 4 hours.

Note: Values for hours can be anything between 1 and 23 hours.

4. Select the start date for the first execution.

Note: Only the hour will be taken into account. The minutes will be ignored.

5. Click the “Set Schedule” button to confirm the schedule.

6. You can update the schedule by changing the values and clicking “Schedule” again.

7. You can cancel the scheduled execution by clicking “Clear Schedule”.

8. You can consult the Request Logs tab to see the status of the requests.

Note: In scheduled mode, every request will override the content of the targeted Tab. Appending the results to the end of the sheet is currently not supported.

Important Note Regarding Concurrency with NetSuite:

A concurrency error may occur when multiple Google Sheets are scheduled within the same time
To avoid concurrency errors, schedule the searches to run at different times so there are no conflicts ie) one Google sheet may be scheduled at 2:10PM, and the second would be scheduled at 2:40PM
The Concurrency is a limitation imposed by NetSuite

Limitations

Outside of the limitations of the NetSuite Data Exporter application, there are additional limits imposed by the Google Workplace Quotas and Limitations as well as the NetSuite Governance and Concurrency. Here are some data points to help you calculate the limits.

GURUS NetSuite Data Exporter Limitations

The Data Exporter only supports extracting Saved Searches.
- It does not support extracting SuiteAnalytics Workbooks or SuiteQL Queries.
- It does not support extracting Reports.
The Data Exporter does not support saved searches that "Use Expressions". "OR" operations are not supported
- All custom filters added into the Settings sheet will be linked using an "AND" operation.
The Data Exporter only supports records that can be read through SuiteScript. A saved search based on a record that is not supported will return an error in the Data Exporter.
- Refer to SuiteAnswers article 10242 for the list of supported records.
- Custom Records are supported as long as the role associated with the Access Token has access to them.
The Free version of the Data Exporter does not support the Scheduling features
The Free version of the Data Exporter only allows to query two (2) saved searches per requests
The Free version of the Data Exporter only allows to perform ten (10) queries per day

Google Workplace Limitations

The Data Exporter is limited by the following limitations as documented by Google. They are different based on which Edition your company has. To know which Edition you have, please contact your Google Workplace Administrator.

https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/services/quotas

Here are the Features used by the Data Exporter.

Triggers total runtime: This limitations affects the total processing time of the Data Exporter for the day
URL Fetch calls: Each request by the Data Exporter will perform 2 URL Fetch calls
Script runtime: This affects the processing time of the Data Exporter for each request. If you try to download 50 saved searches and each saved search takes 30 seconds to download, this will take approximately 25 minutes to run. If you have Workspace Basic, you will be limited to 6 minutes of execution. You will get an error message after 6 minutes.
Simultaneous executions: If multiple users use the Data Exporter at the same time.
URL Fetch response size: This is the maximum size of the response received by NetSuite. If the response size exceeds this limit, you will get an error message.
Properties read/write: This is the maximum number of properties that can be set or read everyday.
Properties are used to save the credentials and are updated and read at each request.

Also not documented here, but there is a connection timeout that will occur if the request takes more than 60 seconds.
This applies for each Saved Search individually. If you have 3 saved searches, and they each take 30 seconds, they will successfully execute.

There is also a limit in the total number of cells you can have in a Google Sheet. According to this support post, you can have a maximum of 5 millions cells and a maximum of 18 278 columns. This includes inside multiple tabs. Once this limit is reached, you will receive an error message:
https://support.google.com/drive/answer/37603

NetSuite Governance and Limitations

The Data Exporter is also limited to the governance imposed by SuiteScripts as well as the maximum number of concurrent connections allowed for RESTLets.

All NetSuite instances are limited to the number of concurrent connections external applications can perform. This depends on your NetSuite Tier and the number of SuiteCloud Plus Licenses. If no connection is available for the Data Exporter, you will receive an error message. Here is the SuiteAnswers Article explaining the concurrency limits:
https://netsuite.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/65791

The Data Exporter relies on a RESTLet installed on your instance to perform the search. RESTLets have a maximum governance of 5000 units and each batch of 1000 lines of results of the search will cost 10 units. So there is a hard limit of 500 000 lines of results per saved search.

Take note though that a search with 500 000 lines of results will most likely time out on the Google Side before the results can be returned.

RESTLets also have a data size limit of 10 MB, so the total size of each search must be under 10 MBs, including the content of all the fields from the search.

Troubleshooting Tips for Users

The NetSuite Data Exporter uses SuiteCloud technology to execute the saved searches within NetSuite and the data is then downloaded in your Google Sheet. The following section will describe a few troubleshooting tips that will help you find potential issues if the Data Exporter returns you errors while trying to synchronize your data. Refer to our FAQ section to know more about some common error messages.

Roles and Permissions

You will be using an Access Token to connect to NetSuite from the NetSuite Data Exporter. This access token will be associated to:

A specific NetSuite User
A specific NetSuite Role

The NetSuite role will define what records and functions of NetSuite the Data Exporter will be allowed to use. To make sure your role has enough permissions to run your saved search, we recommend that you ask your NetSuite Administrator to give to your user the same role as the Access Token. Then, using the drop down menu at the very top right of your NetSuite screen, where your name is, select the role provided for the Data Exporter and try viewing and modifying the saved search you want to pull using the Data Exporter.

If the saved search runs perfectly in the user interface of NetSuite, while using the same role as the Data Exporter, and provides you with all the columns and all the data that you are looking for, chances are it will be working as well in the Data Exporter.

If it does NOT work within the NetSuite's User Interface, it will also NOT work in the Data Exporter. If this is the case, we suggest you work with your NetSuite Administrator to adjust the role or the saved search until it works within the NetSuite user interface.

It could happen that you can View the search in the User Interface but you get a permission error when editing it or trying to edit a copy of it. This indicates that a custom field referred by the saved search is set for "Search/Reporting" to "Run" and not "Edit". The Data Exporter needs the Edit permission to work.

Also make sure your saved search is shared with the role or the user attached with the Access Token (from the Audience tab).

Refer to section 5 of the Installation Guide to learn more on how to configure Access Tokens and Roles.

You can refer to our FAQ section to get more information on common error messages.

Custom filters

If you have errors when adding custom filters set in the Settings sheet, try your search again without the filters to make sure it functions properly. If your search does not work, refer to the previous section to troubleshoot why your saved search does not work.

If it works without filters, the problem is probably in the syntax of your filter. Make sure you use an operator that is valid for the type of fields

(ex: date fields have different operators than List/Records or Free-form-Text).

Refer to SuiteAnswers article 10565 to know more about the search operators.

As mentioned in the note 2 in section 2.1, you must also ensure that you are using the date format of the user to which the token is tied to. In order to see this preference, log into the user to which the token is tied to and go to the Home button > Set Preferences

And then look in the “General” tab in the “Formatting” section you will see the preference for the dates. You have to use that particular format in order for the date filters to function properly.

Frequently Asked Questions & Errors

Q: I get an error saying that my email/password is invalid or "Invalid Login attempt". But I’m able to log in to NetSuite with the exact same credentials. Why?

A: This message also can mean multiple things:

That could mean that you have the wrong Token information
This could mean the role attached to your Token does not have the permission allowing Login using Access Tokens.
It could mean the Account Number is incorrect.
- Account numbers are case sensitive. If you are trying to reach a sandbox, the format must be your account number followed by underscore followed by SB1 all in capital: Ex: 12345_SB1
This could mean you try to access an account no longer active (ex: an expired Sandbox or demo account)

Q. I get the following error message. Why?

A: The search id entered does not exist in the NetSuite instance. Verify the search id in the specified row. This error can also occur if the user and role attached to your credential do not have access to the search.