Housemates Hack Pack for Shortcut

Welcome to the Housemates Hack Pack series! Each post in this new collection will highlight around 3 tips & tricks that our very own Housemates (that’s what we called our employees back when our name was Clubhouse... so don’t worry we’re all appropriately socially distancing and not in a house hanging out together) put to use every day in the app as we use Shortcut to build Shortcut.

My name is Mel and I am a Customer Success Manager here. It’s my pleasure to kick off this series with the initial post.

I’m in the lucky position of getting to talk with Shortcut users on video calls every day. I love seeing how Shortcut helps people collaborate better across the entire software development lifecycle, work faster, and build fantastic products.

One of my favorite parts of these customer calls is drawing someone’s attention to the hidden gems that make Shortcut a real joy to use.

Here are three of these features that I use every day to move efficiently through the app and surface the information that’s most relevant to my work.

1. Use Shift + Click to start editing with lighting speed

Sometimes, Story Descriptions can get long. Same thing for Epic Descriptions, and Comments that I’ve written! If you want to edit or update a long set of text quickly, you thankfully don’t have to endlessly scroll allll the way down to surface the Edit button.

Instead, use SHIFT + Click anywhere on the text and voilá! You’re ready to edit in a jiffy. You can even do this if the text in question isn’t all that long! I use this handy Shortcut feature so often that I actually SHIFT + Click in other apps to try and edit and expect it to work (ahem, Slack 👀).

Once you’re done editing using SHIFT + Click, use SHIFT + ENTER to save the edits in two simple keystrokes and then go on with your day.

Here’s a quick gif of this in action:

2. Sort Tables Quickly Using Column Headers

When you’re looking over a Table View of Stories or Epics, the Header Row of the table holds a lot of power! Click the Title of each column to sort the information by those fields. When you Click the header of the Priority Column, that unlocks the ability to drag & drop to rearrange the Priority level of the Story within a Workflow.

When you sort the information using the header row, that only impacts the view for you. But, when you select Priority & drag and drop to change the order, that impacts the priority for all users.

3. Action bar, plus a special nerdy bonus for Chrome users 🤓

We have a pretty sweet Action Bar in Shortcut now, where you can use COMMAND + K to quickly launch a command menu that can drive many important actions, like creating a Story or navigating to the Search Page. This bar is no clicks, all keyboard 🚀.

But, sometimes, you might be in another app and realize you need to look for something really fast in Shortcut. That’s where it can be really handy to leverage Chrome’s Custom Search Engines.

In Chrome, navigate to chrome://settings/search and click on Manage Search Engines. Under the Other Search Engines section, click Add to create a Shortcut Search Engine!

You can copy this text for the search field, replacing your Workspace’s name after .io/ https://app.clubhouse.io/WORKSPACENAME/search#%s

For the Keyword line, keep that short because it’s the keyboard shortcut (along with TAB) that you’ll use to activate the Search Engine.

Now, to access Shortcut search via the browser, open a new tab (while we’re leaning into keyboard shortcuts, do that via CMD + T), then type your Custom Search Engine Keyword and hit TAB -- ch + TAB -- and you’ll see the search bar change! Once you see Search clubhouse, you can then type your search term & you’ll be taken right to the app!

I hope you enjoy putting these tips & tricks to use. Stay tuned for more from this series in future weeks! Specifically, stay tuned for more every two weeks or so until we’ve used up the world’s supply of tips and tricks.

And if you want to learn more, visit help.clubhouse.io or visit our forums. We’re here to help. And also to write blog posts. But mostly to help.