A Different Way of Working With Your ERP
Ask Oracle is the natural language assistant built into NetSuite Next. Rather than navigating to a saved search, building a report, or working out which menu a page sits under, you simply ask, in plain English, for what you need. The three examples below were recorded in a live NetSuite environment to show what that actually looks like in practice, not just in theory.
1. Ask the Question, Skip the Report
The first example starts with a simple question: "Can you show me recent invoices in the past 30 days?" Ask Oracle recognises this as a question rather than a search term, and offers the option to chat with it directly. While it works, it lists out any assumptions it has made, useful for checking you are comfortable with how it has interpreted the request, before it returns a list of matching invoices, each one hyperlinked straight through to the record.
From there, the results can be narrowed further. The same request could be refined to a specific customer, vendor, or date range, without starting over. Because Ask Oracle keeps working in the background, there is no need to sit and watch the screen while it processes, so you can carry on with other tasks in NetSuite and come back once it is done.
2. Finding Your Way Around Without the Menu Hunt
Ask Oracle is not only for pulling data. It is also a genuinely useful way to learn your way around a new interface. The second example asks, "Where can I update customer records?" Ask Oracle responds with the exact page path (in this case, List, Relationships, Customers) along with guidance on editing a customer from within that list. If you already know which customer record you want, you can ask Ask Oracle to take you there directly, and it will provide a link.
3. From Report Insight to Action Plan
The third example is where two NetSuite Next AI features start to work together. It begins with a question aimed at finding the right report: asking Ask Oracle which report would show which customers have outstanding payments. Ask Oracle can also work with whatever report or page is already on screen, so if you are looking at something specific, you can simply reference "this report" or "this page" in your question.
Once on the right report, an aging summary in this case, clicking the insight icon brings up Narrative Insights: a summary of the report's top findings, key risks, and key opportunities. The eye icon alongside it shows the reasoning behind those insights, worth checking, since any AI-generated content should be verified against your own knowledge of the business.
This is where it gets genuinely useful for day-to-day work. Copying that narrative insight and pasting it into a new Ask Oracle conversation, then asking it to help address the key risks identified, produces a set of actionable next steps, not just a restatement of the findings. You can refine further from there, for example asking for timeframes against each step. It is a combination particularly suited to preparing leadership updates or getting ready for a finance review.
The One Habit Worth Building Now: Ask Specific Questions
In another of our recent blogs we flagged getting comfortable asking, not just clicking, as one of the simplest ways to prepare for NetSuite Next. Having seen Ask Oracle in action, it is worth restating why that matters: the more precise your question, the better the answer. "Show me outstanding payments" will work, but "show me outstanding payments over 90 days by customer" gets you straight to what you need, without a follow-up question required.
A few other habits worth building alongside this: treat every AI response as a starting point rather than a final answer, use the 'i' icon wherever it is available to understand how an insight was reached, and remember that Ask Oracle can keep working in the background while you get on with other things.
See It In Action
We've embedded a short demo video below, walking through each of these examples in a live NetSuite environment.
If you would like to talk through how NetSuite Next and Ask Oracle could work within your specific business context, the Project Salsa team is happy to walk you through it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What can you actually ask Ask Oracle in NetSuite Next?
Ask Oracle can answer natural language business questions (such as showing recent invoices or outstanding customer payments), help you navigate to a specific page or record, and work with whatever report or page you already have open on screen. It returns hyperlinked results and states any assumptions it has made along the way.
Do I need to check Ask Oracle's answers before relying on them?
Yes. Ask Oracle and Narrative Insights are AI-generated, so their outputs should be treated as a strong starting point rather than a final answer. Using the ‘i’ icon to review the reasoning behind an insight, and validating results against your own knowledge of the business, is recommended practice.
What is the best way to get useful answers from Ask Oracle?
Specific questions produce better results than vague ones. Asking "show me outstanding payments over 90 days by customer" will get a more directly useful answer than "show me outstanding payments", without needing a follow-up question to narrow it down.
Is Ask Oracle available now?
NetSuite Next features are part of Oracle's ongoing product roadmap and are being rolled out over time. It is currenlty scheduled to be rolled out in New Zealand by the end of the year (2026).
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NetSuite Next features represent Oracle's current product direction and roadmap. Feature availability and rollout timing may vary. Contact Project Salsa for the most current information on what is available in your edition.
