Technical Desk - Making the most of your keyboard

Most Commence users will have discovered the value of using Commence to keep all your contact details, log phone calls and letters. Maybe you are using Commence for your Help Desk, Marketing or much more in a fully customised environment.

What you may not have discovered is how much more quickly you can work if you take advantage of a few keyboard shortcuts. With a little thought and learning, you can save the time it takes to reach for the mouse and find a menu for many common actions!

Data Entry Shortcuts

To add a new item to a view, instead of choosing Edit > Add Item or selecting the tool bar "+" button, try <Ctrl>A

Now you are in a detail form, where you do a lot of editing, and shortcuts are very useful:

<Tab> - move to the next field in the tab order.
<shift><Tab> - move to the previous field in the tab order

To cut and paste some text, select the desired text then
<Ctrl>X then more the cursor to the new location, then
<Ctrl>V

If you wanted to copy text instead of cutting, use <Ctrl>C

On a connection field, the right arrow button opens a list box showing the names of connected items. Now use the up arrow and down arrow keys to highlight the required item. Save the setting with <Ctrl>S.

You can also use <Ctrl>S to save the data in a detail form.

To access the information from a connected detail form, all you have to do is double click on the item name in the connection field. This is very useful for quickly checking or editing connected data, without opening a view on the connected category.

Mouse Shortcut features on Fields

Commence has the ability to define field types, and if this has been correctly setup, double clicking on the data in the field will take the appropriate action:

phone number - dial the number
email - pop up an email window to the recipient
url - open a browser on that location
date - pop up a calendar
time - pop  up a clock

Mouse Shortcuts and Agents

No doubt you often use Agent to automate many tasks - did you know you can also connect an agent to a keyboard shortcut?

To attached a keyboard shortcut (Hotkey) to an agent, you need to use the trigger type of  Keyboard Hotkey, Menu Pick or Toolbar Pick. In the trigger window, go to the Hotkey field and enter <Ctrl><alt><key>. For example <Ctrl><alt>N.

A little known trick is that you can also use a function key or a key on the numeric keypad!