NetLoan - Creating a Customer Center

The Customer Center (along with the Employee Center and Vendor Center) are free features with a NetSuite license. They can be turned on and then set up to provide an external access point to records for customers, employees, and vendors.

Difference Between Centers

The customer center allows for the most customization, so typically best practice will be to use a customer center, especially in the case of Loan Lender or Lessor portals, as the intended user will be a customer.

For internal use cases where the company wants employees to have access to records, it may be easiest to use the vendor portal, as the employee portal is the least flexible and will have all the employee information (like payroll and HR information and hours) out of the box showing and it is difficult/impossible to remove. Example use case is needing an employee to have access to an asset record to update tracking information.

Set Up

Navigate to Setup > Company > Enable Features > Web Presence. Scroll to the Access area at the bottom of the page. Check the box for Customer Access.
Navigate to Setup > Users/Roles > Manage Roles. Look for the Customer Center role. Click Customize and save a new version of this role. This is the role we will be editing and assigning going forward.
Navigate to a customer (typically I create one that is myself for testing purposes). Click Edit.
1. On the Access subtab, check Give Access. Select the role as the customized customer center role. When the customer is a company, you can designate the individuals with access on this subtab. Otherwise, the access will default to the email in the primary information section.

You now have a customer center and a tester to access the page. In the production account, add any external users that need access as customers.

Access the Customer Center

There are two ways to access the customer center:

Navigate to a customer record with access. Stay in View mode. Go to the Access subtab. There you will see a link for Preview: Log in as customer. Click that link.

Navigate to Setup > Company > Company Information. Go to the Company URLs subtab. Click the link for the Customer Center Login. You will need to login with the test customer's email and password.

Note for Vendor and Employee Center

For vendor and employee center access, add the relevant role to the vendor or employee record. To login, simply use the normal login page for NetSuite, no custom URL is needed.

Customize the Customer Center

Edit Viewable Records

Navigate to the custom Customer Center Role in Edit mode. Under the Permissions subtab, go to Custom Record.

Add any Custom Records you would like the customer to have access too. Choose the permission level you want the customer to have.

Navigate to the Record for any of the custom records you included in the customer center role. In this example we will use the NetLoan record and are editing the NetLoan Loan record.

On the Record page, create a new Form specific for the customer role. We will use this to restrict what can be seen on the record in the customer center.

Enter the Edit view of the created form. Edit the visible subtabs, fields, and sublists as needed. For example, unchecking the Accounting Subtab so the customer can't see all the inputs you are using for the loan, or unchecking the rate sublist.

Once the form is formatted for the customer's view, save and go back to the record.

Click on the Permissions subtab. Add the custom Customer Center Role as a role in the list. Select the customer specific form as the Default Form and check the Restrict Form button. This will limit the customer from being able to change the form to a different version with more fields visible.

Similarly to the process above, you can create a new list view from the record list and put that as the default list view here. This is the easiest way to limit the records the client can view to only their own, by restricting the customized record list to only show "Mine".

Edit Customer Center Tabs and Dashboard

To edit the navigation in the customer center, you will need to edit the Tabs and Categories for the customer center.

Navigate to Customization > Centers and Tabs > Tabs. Click New.

Put the name of the Tab you want the client to have access too - for example My Loans. Make sure to select the Center as your custom Customer Center. Save the tab.

While on the tab, click the subtab Portlets. Add any type of dashboard elements you want included in the customer's dashboard for this tab. If no categories are setup, this will be the only navigation available within the tab.

Note for Vendor Portal

Search is not available for the Vendor Portal, so you wont be able to include a normal list view of records. Instead use the workaround of adding a List Portlet to the dashboard for the record type.

To add drop down selections within the Tab, you need to add Categories. Navigate to Customization > Centers and Tabs > Center Categories > New.

Fill out the Label as the name of the subtab in the drop down. Select Customer Center as the Center Type and the applicable tab as the Center Tab. Note these two settings cannot be changed once the record is saved.

Add any Links for saved search results and a name for the label. Once saved, these will show as Categories on the Center Tab record. Reminder - the results of the saved search will be limited based off the permissions set on the record (NetLoan Loan record in this example) itself.

Customer Center Example

Based off the setup above, you can manipulate, add to, and restrict the customer center.

Any updates to the records in the Customer Center will be direct edits to the records in NetSuite, so it encourages live information gathering and entry. In this example, I allowed the client to add loan payments.

Since the invoices are tied to the loans in this example, they show as related records and the client can access them directly. When they click on the invoice, it will bring them to that record where they have the option to print, email, or make payment.

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