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Who knew that keyboard shortcuts could be so darn controversial?
I recently got the chance to present a NAV tips and tricks session at the NAVUG Midwest Regional Chapter meeting, and one topic that came up again and again was what keyboard shortcuts were changing in the transition from the classic client to the role-tailored client (RTC).
The first discussion started as a rumor during the social hour the night prior. “Did you hear they’re getting rid of F8?” “No, they can’t get rid of F8!” “What’ll we do without F8?” “Oh my inventory accountant is going to hate that” “Well I heard they’re changing everything.”
Well lucky for us we had quite a few folks there who have already been using the RTC who were able to quite handily put that vicious rumor to rest. F8 is firmly available to copy the field above in the new client, just has it has been in the classic client.
There are quite a few other things that are just simply changing, and I think the changes make a whole lot of sense.
Take F3. F3 has been the constant companion of the NAV user, utilized whenever we needed to designate a new record, a new line, a new document, or a new card. Anything new has been F3. This has been replaced with four new commands in the RTC. Complicated? No, I think that Microsoft has made a concerted effort to simplify by making keyboard shortcuts more consistent with other Microsoft Office products. Even though four new commands are replacing one, I think that Ctrl+N will come quite naturally to someone wanting to create a new record. Ctrl+Insert likewise makes sense for inserting a new line. Ctrl+Shift+C for opening a new card and Ctrl-F2 for creating a new document may be a little taxing, but I’m betting we’ll all get used to it. Frankly, I’m glad to see Microsoft making it easier and more consistent for new users to adopt.
I’m sure I may utter an oath or two when I hit F3 in the RTC and instead of getting a new record, get bumped into a field filter. But I sure will appreciate many of the brand new keyboard shortcuts that support RTC features that we’ve never had before like Alt+Tab to switch among open windows and F5 which now acts as a refresh command, just like it does in other programs.
Check out the link below which goes to a Microsoft .pdf listing out a nice comparative list of keyboard shortcuts between the classic client and the RTC. This will be the first document I give to my end users when we start working on our transition to the RTC. There will always be fear of change, even with small things like keyboard shortcuts.
Encourage folks to look for the consistencies and efficiencies gained with the new ones and remind them; at least they didn’t get rid of F8.
