Before coming in to the subjected topic first let me talk about some scenarios (some close to real world scenarios)

1. Occasionally My agents have to Search for a post code and find the location, What would you suggest ?
2. Based on customer voice, my agents have to send an Escalation mail  to take up the case on priority (I know, some strictly object on the requirement and say it should be SLA base rather than customer voice, but for now it is my requirement – You know Customer is the “king” eod)
3. Agents: Can I use Ctrl+F to Search for a customer ? (straight forward question 🙂 )

These are the just few scenarios from on top of my head. Though there might be multiple other solutions possible but the simplest of all is “Shortcut keys”. I believe it would be the best solution because

a) the Application UI won’t get messy with all sorts of buttons everywhere

b) It is globally agreed that customer service representatives are fast with their key board rather than mouse

c) the amount of configurations/changes we have to do is less

This is a quick post on how to configure the shortcut keys for your application. All we have to do is, Create the action call required and provide the required shortcut key in the action call window.

If you take the first scenario in this post, Here is how my action call configured

Notice the Shortcut Key combination (You can use any combination like this).

That’s it, You are done !! Open USD, Start a session and press Ctrl+Alt+B – You got your Postcode search tab opened along with search results.  Create your set of Shortcut keys and paste it on to Agents’ desk, you are all good to go 🙂

Now, Some points worth keep a note.

• You can use any combination of modifier keys like Ctrl, Alt, Shift
• It’s always a good practice to follow a pattern for all your shortcut keys, something like Ctrl+Shift or Alt+Shift etc, which helps in Agents remembering easily.
• I would suggest not to go with a single modifier key, coz’ the hosted applications  might interpret and take unwanted actions.
• I heard that there was some issue with Shortcut keys in older versions of USD. I’m working with USD2.2 now and found it is working brilliant.
• Somewhere I read in an article, if your agent is facing problem with key gestures locking up in any hosted control – ask them to use Ctrl+Up to bring back the focus on to USD and then start using shortcut keys.
• Don’t use combination of Keys (like Ctrl+BP or Ctrl+B+P), that won’t work. It’s a limitation in WPF itself.
• If you are planning to use Function keys (F1-F12), then you have to use them without any modifier key combinations.
• Don’t try to use the same Shortcut key for 2 action calls. When I experimented I got only the last action call fired, it ignored all other action calls. Smart 🙂

That’s it for now. I hope you liked it. Please share your inputs if I missed anything or if you have any other brilliant scenarios where we can use this nice little feature.

How it would be if you can give an option to use Ctrl+End shortcut key to close the active session and Ctrl+Alt+End to close all sessions ? Simple, Nice and Cool – isn’t it ?

Happy new year once again !! Have a great day ahead 🙂