NetSuite Next: New UI, Ask Oracle & What Changes for Users

What is NetSuite Next?

NetSuite Next is Oracle's name for the most significant overhaul of the NetSuite platform since its founding. Announced at SuiteWorld 2025 and expanded at SuiteConnect 2026, it includes three major changes:

1. A complete UI redesign built on Oracle's Redwood Design System
2. Ask Oracle — a natural language assistant embedded across the platform
3. AI Canvas — an interactive workspace for scenario planning with live data

Evan Goldberg called it "the biggest update of NetSuite since we founded the company." That is a statement worth examining — here is what is actually changing, what the timeline looks like, and what you need to do to prepare.

See Oracle's official NetSuite Next page for the full product overview: netsuite.com/portal/products/netsuite-next

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The Redwood UI redesign

NetSuite's interface has not changed fundamentally in years. The Redwood Experience is Oracle's modern design system, already used across other Oracle Cloud products, now coming to NetSuite.

What changes visually

The redesign is not cosmetic — it restructures how users interact with the platform:

• Sticky header with persistent navigation — search and the "Create New" button are always accessible, no matter where you are in the system
• Collapsible field sections on forms — long record forms (like sales orders with 30+ fields) can be collapsed to show only what matters for the current task
• Filters moved to the top of list pages instead of buried at the bottom — a small change that saves significant time when working with large datasets
• Progressive disclosure on dashboards — controls appear on hover, keeping the dashboard clean until you need to interact
• Updated typography, iconography, and color palette — cleaner, more readable, with better visual hierarchy
• Touch-friendly navigation — larger click targets and hover-to-expand menus that work on tablets

Rollout timeline

Oracle is rolling Redwood out in phases, not as a sudden switch:

Phase	When	What changed
2024 Release 2	Q4 2024	Redwood Experience launched as optional theme
2025 Release 1	Q1 2025	Expanded to Reports, Saved Searches, Analytics Workbooks, Setup Manager. Became default for new accounts
2026 and beyond	Rolling	Continued expansion to remaining pages, forms, and workflows
Full rollout	Within 12 months of Oct 2025	North America first, other regions following

You can enable Redwood today by going to Home > Set Preferences and selecting the Redwood Experience theme. It is optional for existing accounts — Oracle is not forcing the switch.

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Ask Oracle

Ask Oracle is the feature most likely to change how people use NetSuite day-to-day. It is a natural language assistant that lets you search, navigate, analyze, and act across your entire NetSuite dataset using plain language.

How it works

Instead of navigating menus, building saved searches, or asking your NetSuite admin for a report, you type a question:

• "What were our top 10 customers by revenue last quarter?"
• "Show me open purchase orders over $50,000"
• "How many support cases were opened this week?"

Ask Oracle interprets the question, queries the relevant records, and returns a visual answer — a chart, a table, or a summary. It is not just search; it understands context and can aggregate data across record types.

Role-based responses

The same question produces different results depending on who asks. A CFO asking about purchase orders gets financial summaries with cash flow impact. A warehouse manager gets inventory levels and shipping details. The responses adapt to the user's role and permissions — you only see data you have access to.

What it cannot do (yet)

Ask Oracle is not an autonomous agent that takes actions on your behalf. It retrieves and presents data. It does not create records, approve transactions, or modify workflows — though Oracle's roadmap suggests agentic capabilities are coming.

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AI Canvas

AI Canvas is a collaborative workspace for scenario planning with live data. Instead of exporting NetSuite data to a spreadsheet, building a model, and presenting it in a slide deck, AI Canvas lets teams:

• Analyze problems with real-time data from NetSuite
• Model what-if scenarios — what happens to margin if we raise prices 5%? What if we add a second warehouse?
• Visualize impacts with interactive charts tied to live data
• Trigger agentic workflows — once a decision is made, initiate the corresponding action in NetSuite

Oracle positions this as replacing the "export to Excel, model in spreadsheet, present in PowerPoint" cycle that most finance and operations teams live in today.

Our take: AI Canvas is the most forward-looking feature in NetSuite Next. It is also the one most likely to be underwhelming at launch. Collaborative scenario planning with live ERP data is genuinely hard to build well. Worth watching, worth testing when available, but do not restructure your planning process around it until it is proven.

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What this means for your NetSuite instance

If you are a current NetSuite user

Enable Redwood now. There is no risk — it is a visual theme, not a data change. Get your team familiar with the new layout before it becomes the default. Go to Home > Set Preferences and switch.

Review your saved searches and dashboards. The Redwood interface changes how dashboards render portlets and how filters work on list views. Test your most-used dashboards and saved searches in Redwood mode to verify they work as expected.

Ask Oracle requires no setup. When it becomes available in your account, it will be accessible from the navigation bar. No configuration needed — it uses your existing data and respects existing role permissions.

If you are evaluating NetSuite

NetSuite Next strengthens the case for NetSuite as a modern platform. The Redwood UI closes the gap with younger SaaS products that had more modern interfaces. Ask Oracle reduces the learning curve — new users can find data without learning NetSuite's menu structure and saved search syntax.

If you have heavy customizations

Test everything in your sandbox. Custom CSS, SuiteScript client scripts that interact with the UI, and custom portlets may need adjustments for Redwood. The core functionality does not change, but the DOM structure and CSS classes are different.

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How NetSuite Next compares to competitors

The ERP market has been racing to add AI features. Here is how NetSuite Next stacks up:

Feature	NetSuite Next	SAP Joule	Dynamics 365 Copilot
Natural language assistant	Ask Oracle	Joule	Copilot
UI modernization	Redwood Design System	Fiori (already modern)	Fluent UI
Collaborative planning	AI Canvas	SAP Analytics Cloud	Power BI integration
Bundled pricing	Included	Separate AI SKU	Included with licenses
Availability	Rolling (North America first)	Available	Available

NetSuite's advantage is bundling — AI features come with the platform, not as separate add-ons. SAP charges separately for Joule on some editions. Microsoft bundles Copilot but requires specific license tiers.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is NetSuite Next?expand_more

When will NetSuite Next be available?expand_more

What is Ask Oracle in NetSuite?expand_more

Will NetSuite Next change my existing customizations?expand_more

Is NetSuite Next free or does it cost extra?expand_more