If you are a power user of a desktop application like Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, a text editor, etc., then you have probably mastered some if not all of the keyboard shortcuts/hot-keys offered by that application for performing routine actions without the aide of your mouse. Undoubtedly if you use keyboard shortcuts in your favorite desktop applications, you are more productive as a result.

And if you've used many web applications, most likely you've gotten used to not having keyboard shortcuts to do anything beyond simple navigation of form controls and using the ENTER key to submit a form. Web applications have traditionally ignored this extremely valuable user productivity feature, instead forcing you to click all over the place and wear out the batteries in your wireless mouse.

Web 2.0 arrived on the scene a couple of years ago and said "Enough is enough!" when it comes to dissin' the keyboard. Applications such as Google GMail and Yahoo Email have helped blazed the way for a whole new user experience on the web with regards to the keyboard.

OnePlace as well has support built into it for the keyboard. You can, for example, add a new task without ever touching your mouse. In fact you can add a bunch of tasks without ever touching the mouse. Likewise, you can call up your calendar, archive or trash sans mouse. Most OnePlace keyboard shortcuts are available system-wide, meaning no matter where you are within OnePlace, a consistent set of shortcuts are always at your fingertips.

Keyboard shortcuts come in handy not only to navigate the various areas of OnePlace, but also when working with dialogs during data entry. You may already know that the ENTER key saves your changes, but did you know that the ESC key will close an open dialog and cancel your changes? Or that SHIFT-ENTER (Save and Add) will save your current changes and then reset the form, allowing for quick entry of multiple tasks, projects or notes?

So you might be asking, "Sounds great, but how do I know what the keyboard shortcuts are and what they do?" One easy way to identify some of the shortcuts is to look at the buttons in the toolbar at the top of every page in OnePlace. Buttons that have a corresponding keyboard shortcut will underline a letter in the button's label, identifying the key that performs the action for the button. For example, the Calendar button's label underlines the "C". The Quick Add button's label underlines the "Q". Pressing these keys performs the same action as clicking on that button.

There are however several keyboard shortcuts that cannot be identified this way, and need to be memorized (or be made readily available via a nearby cheat sheet). Never fear, all the supported hot-keys are documented in the OnePlace Help here. Our recommendation is to print off this handy list and keep it close by as you learn and use OnePlace.

Keyboard shortcuts are a great way to boost your productivity, especially when performing repetitive tasks, so we encourage you to give them a try today!