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

What is NetSuite Next?

TL;DR: NetSuite Next is Oracle's major platform overhaul — a new Redwood UI, Ask Oracle natural language assistant, AI Canvas for scenario planning, and agentic AI workflows. Announced at SuiteWorld 2025 and expanded at SuiteConnect 2026, it's included in existing licenses at no extra cost. The Redwood UI is available now (optional toggle). Ask Oracle and AI Canvas are rolling out through 2026, North America first. The biggest practical impact: non-technical users can query data in plain English instead of building saved searches, and the interface finally looks like a modern SaaS product.

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 additional areas including Reports and Analytics Workbooks
2026 and beyond	Rolling	Continued expansion to remaining pages, forms, and workflows
North America rollout	Within 12 months of Oct 2025	Other regions following (per Oracle's SuiteWorld 2025 announcement)

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)

Oracle describes Ask Oracle as primarily a retrieval and analysis tool, but the line between "answering questions" and "taking actions" is blurring. According to Oracle's official product page, agentic workflows can be "initiated in Ask Oracle" and agents can "analyze, reason, and recommend while users retain control and decision authority." In practice, Ask Oracle is evolving from a query tool into an interface for launching AI-driven workflows — though users still approve actions rather than agents acting autonomously.

Ask Oracle vs. saved searches

For context, here's what changes practically:

Task	Before (Saved Searches)	With Ask Oracle
"Top customers by revenue"	Build saved search with summary type, group by customer, sort desc	Type the question, get a chart
"Open POs over $50K"	Create saved search, add filters, choose columns	Type the question, get a table
"Support cases opened this week"	Navigate to Case list, filter by date, count	Type the question, get a number
"Revenue trend by month"	Build Analytics Workbook with date formulas	Type the question, get a trend line

Saved searches aren't going away — they're still better for scheduled reports, dashboard portlets, and integration data sources. Ask Oracle fills the gap for ad-hoc questions that don't justify building a permanent saved search.

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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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Agentic AI and workflow automation

Beyond the three headline features, NetSuite Next introduces the foundation for agentic AI — AI that doesn't just answer questions but takes actions across the platform.

At SuiteWorld 2025 and SuiteConnect 2026, Oracle demonstrated several agentic use cases:

• Financial close agents that identify reconciliation discrepancies, propose adjusting entries, and route them for approval — Craig Sullivan (Group VP of Product Management) noted these could reduce close cycles to "as little as a few days"
• EPM planning agents that detect forecast deviations and suggest corrective actions
• AI-powered bank transaction matching that learns from historical patterns to auto-match bank feeds
• Developer Assistant that generates SuiteScript code from natural language descriptions

These agents operate within NetSuite's existing role and permission framework — they can't do anything a user with that role couldn't do manually. The difference is speed and consistency: an agent monitors data continuously, while humans check reports periodically.

Where this stands today: Most agentic features are in preview or early access as of early 2026. Oracle is releasing them incrementally rather than all at once. Expect the financial close and procurement agents to reach general availability first, with more complex agents following through 2026 and 2027.

For a complete breakdown of every AI feature announced, see our SuiteConnect 2026 coverage.

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Impact on developers and customizations

If you have SuiteScript customizations, custom CSS, or SuiteApps, NetSuite Next affects you directly.

What changes for SuiteScript

• Client scripts that reference specific DOM elements or CSS classes may break under Redwood. The underlying SuiteScript API hasn't changed, but if your scripts use document.getElementById or jQuery selectors tied to the old UI structure, they need updating.
• User Event scripts and Suitelet scripts are generally unaffected — they operate on the server side, independent of the UI layer.
• SuiteScript 2.x is fully supported. SuiteScript 1.0 continues to work, though Oracle's investment focus is on the 2.x API.

What changes for custom themes and CSS

• Redwood introduces new CSS class names and a different DOM hierarchy. Custom CSS that overrides NetSuite styles will need review.
• SuiteCommerce sites are not affected by Redwood — the Redwood redesign applies to the NetSuite backend, not the customer-facing storefront.

Testing checklist for developers

Before enabling Redwood in production:

• Test all client-side SuiteScripts in sandbox with Redwood enabled
• Verify custom forms render correctly (field placement, sublist behavior)
• Check custom portlets on dashboards
• Test SuiteLets that render custom UI
• Verify third-party SuiteApps with their vendors (some may need updates)
• Review custom CSS overrides

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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

What is the Redwood Experience in NetSuite?expand_more

What are NetSuite Next agentic AI features?expand_more