Keyboard Shortcuts in MTLM

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I don’t know about you, but I’m a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts. The right shortcuts can really speed up your computer use. For instance, some of my favorite ones in Windows include Win+Break to open computer properties, Win+E to open file explorer, and in Win7 all the Win+<shift>+ArrowKey combinations to move and position windows.

We have a few keyboard shortcuts in Beta2 for Microsoft Test and Lab Manager, with more planned for the future. I wanted to share the shortcuts we have in now, and ask for your feedback on what else you’d like to see.

The back and forward navigation buttons can be operated with Alt-Left and Alt-Right, or with your keyboard and mouse back/forward buttons.

Control+W will close the active View (or what I call an activity).

Control+S saves the active View.

F1 brings up contextual help from online documentation, which loads in your default browser.

F5 will refresh or revert the current View.

Of course, you can Tab (or Shift+Tab) around the view and navigation area, if you are not using a mouse. Spacebar, Enter, and Escape work where you’d expect them to. F2 should work anywhere you are renaming something (like in Manage Queries and Test Plan Contents tree views). Context menus for the currently focused item will open with Shift+F10 or the context menu key to the right of your spacebar, assuming your keyboard has it. We often hook up the Delete key for actions that make sense.

We also include accelerators to many toolbar buttons like typical Windows apps. If you don’t see the underlined letter which indicates the Alt+key combination, just press the Alt key and they should show up.

When you get into Test Runner, there are even more keyboard shortcuts. Some will work only when the application has focus (like Control+> and Control+< to move forward and back between test cases in the list), and some are meant to be used no matter which application has focus (like Win+Control+Q, by default, to pass the current step). Those make it easy to keep the test result up to speed with you without having to change application focus back and forth.

So what other keyboard shortcuts do we have planned? Mostly everything around navigation. The idea is to prevent you from having to Tab around the application for common things. For instance, getting to the Open Items drop down, and switching activities. What else would you like to see?

Cheers,

David Williamson

Engineering Lead, MTLM