How to Use the Keyboard on the Scheduler
You can reschedule an appointment on the Scheduler from the keyboard as well as with the mouse: move it, give it to the engineer above or below, and make it longer or shorter. The arrow keys show where the appointment would go, Enter saves it and Escape cancels it.
How do I move an appointment with the keyboard on the Scheduler?
Press Tab until the appointment on the Scheduler board is highlighted, press the Left or Right arrow key to move it one cell earlier or later, then press Enter to save. Press Escape instead of Enter to put it back where it was.
- Press Tab to move through the board until the appointment you want is highlighted. Each appointment on screen can be reached with Tab.
- Press the Left arrow key to move it one cell earlier, or the Right arrow key to move it one cell later. The size of a cell is the Cell duration in Scheduler settings.
- Press the Up arrow key to give it to the engineer on the row above, or the Down arrow key for the engineer on the row below. It keeps its day and time. The Up arrow key does nothing on the first engineer's row, and the Down arrow key does nothing on the last.
- Read the line that appears with the day, the start and end times and the engineer's name: that is where the appointment will go. Its card opens beside it at the same time.
- Press Enter to save the change, or Escape to cancel it.
Each arrow press moves the appointment by a whole cell from where it is, so a visit at a quarter past keeps its quarter past. It stays on the same calendar day: when the next press would take it before midnight or past midnight, the arrow key does nothing. The keyboard cannot change its day: to move an appointment to another day, show that day on the board in the Work week, Week or Month view, drag the appointment with the mouse into that day's column and let go. The Day view shows only one day, so there is no other day to drag it to. It is not held inside your working day hours, so a visit moved past them is no longer drawn in the day and week views once saved. The saved change shows the usual message with Undo for six seconds.
The arrow keys work in the Month view too, but the Month view shows no hours, so read the times in the line that appears before you press Enter.
Pressing Enter on an appointment that you have not moved does not open its card. The card opens beside the appointment as soon as an arrow key starts to move it, and it stays open if you then press Escape to cancel the move.
How do I make an appointment longer or shorter with the keyboard?
Highlight the appointment on the Scheduler board, then hold Shift and press the Right arrow key to make it one cell longer, or Shift and the Left arrow key (Shift+Left) to make it one cell shorter. Press Enter to save the new length, or Escape to cancel.
Only the end of the appointment moves; its start stays where it is. An appointment cannot be made shorter than one cell or carried past midnight, so at those limits the keys do nothing.
This is also the way to resize a short appointment that is drawn too narrow to have edges you can pull with the mouse.
The keys do nothing on an appointment whose action status is Finished, Cancelled, Matched, Closed or Send Error, because those cannot be rescheduled.
What keys work elsewhere on the Scheduler?
On the Scheduler, Escape closes the panels, lists and cards you open, with one exception: the appointment details card stays open until you select its Close button. The arrow keys and Enter work in each list. The keys by area:
- The board — the board itself can take the keyboard: press Tab to reach it and use the arrow keys to scroll it, even when no appointment is on screen.
- A marked-out slot — Escape removes the range you marked out on an engineer's row, and the quick call card with it.
- A call from the To schedule column — while you are placing a waiting call, the first Escape takes back the placement waiting for its tick, and the next one puts the call back in the column.
- While dragging with the mouse — Escape calls the drag off and the appointment stays where it was.
- Go to engineer — type a name, use Up and Down to choose a match and Enter to go there. Escape closes the list; a second Escape empties the box.
- The Quick call card — Escape closes it, and Ctrl and Enter together (Ctrl+Enter) creates the call. The card says so in its heading: Esc closes · Ctrl ↵ creates.
- Scheduler settings — Escape closes the dialog without applying your changes, the same as Cancel.
- The date panel and the Which engineers panel — Escape closes them.
- The view menu — when the view buttons are folded into one button, Escape closes its menu.
A key pressed on a button inside an appointment, such as the button that opens the customer in a new tab, belongs to that button and never moves the appointment.