Use workspace shortcuts

Last Update: Apr 2025 • Est. Read Time: 5 MIN
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Shortcuts can speed up your team by providing pre-defined blocks of text that can be used as a canned response. These are more than just canned responses, though. With shortcuts, you can perform actions, such as set or replace the conversation's subject or name, specify an email template, add tags, or specify optional or custom fields, such as assigned user.

Shortcuts can be private (just for you), public to the whole company, specific to an individual team, or limited to specific teams and individual users. 

Who can access this feature?
User typesContent Managers can adjust shortcuts.


In this article 

Create a shortcut

You can customize your shortcuts to suit a variety of responses.  

To create a shortcut:

  1. Go to SettingsWorkspace > Shortcuts.
  2. Select Add shortcut.
  3. Enter a name without a space.
  4. Select its visibility from the Share Access drop-down menu. You can make the shortcut available Publicly or Privately by only giving access to a specific team and/or user.
  5. Select Create. The Edit Shortcut page opens.
  6. Optionally, select a category you want your shortcut to appear in.
  7. Next, add content to the Messages box. This is the actual content that will be sent to your customer. You can format your message using basic formatting options in the text editor and personalize it using snippets. You can also add attachments and images to your shortcut. Currently supported file types are .pdf, .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .zip, .txt, .mov, .mp4, .png, and .jpg. Files cannot exceed 5MB per file, and the total attachment size cannot exceed 9.5MB.
  8. Select Save Changes.

Note: You can use snippets in shortcut names and messages. To do so, select Snippets & Dynamic Textwhen composing the default shortcut message and select the snippet again in the window that opens. If your snippet is translated into other languages, the default platform language will be detected, and the Shortcut title will be displayed in the local language so that your agent knows which one to select.


Perform actions with a shortcut

Along with using shortcuts to send canned responses quickly, you can have the shortcut perform an action every time it is used. For example, you can add a VIP tag whenever a customer in a high customer tier contacts you. You can use the following options to perform an action:

  • Conversation subject
    Creates or replaces (updates) the current subject or name of a conversation. This can be useful if, for example, a customer reached out via a Voice channel and then follows up via email. You can use this shortcut to change the conversation's subject to something more specific to the follow-up reason.

  • Conversation email template
    Select the email template you'd like to use once the shortcut is accessed.

  • Conversation tags
    Append one more more tags. You can use tags to help identify conversations when running reports. This is helpful for reporting since conversations can be identified by the tags they contain.

  • Add optional fields
    Update additional conversation fields, including Assigned User, Assigned Team, Queue, and Status. Learn more about moving a conversation to a different queue.

Shortcut defaults

The Defaults tab in the Shortcuts settings page allows you to set up shortcuts to automatically apply when you open a conversation or create a note. This optional feature is used when you wish to automatically populate a template for your users to use when replying to a customer or creating a note.

Note: Any shortcut in your organization can be specified as a default, so make sure you review all the characteristics of your shortcut to confirm it's appropriate to set as a default reply. Best practices recommend applying shortcuts that include text strings only. You won't want to apply a shortcut that takes action on conversations, such as marking the conversation as done, because this will be applied as soon as an agent clicks 'Reply'.

  • Reply template
    A Reply Template can be set to specify a default response when replying to a customer. This pre-populated shortcut will be added to all new replies from your organization. For example, if your users always reply to an email with "Hi <Customer Name>", you can streamline their reply workflow by saving this as a shortcut. When this shortcut is assigned as the default Reply Template, it will automatically appear when composing a reply to a customer.

  • Note template
    A Note Template works similarly, but instead controls what text populates by default when a user creates a new note. The note will be created with this shortcut as its initial content. For example, if you want team members to routinely collect a certain set of information when creating a note, you might create a shortcut like:

Name:
Callback number:

Add shortcut categories

You can use shortcut categories to organize all your shortcuts into logical groupings that users can easily navigate through when responding to a conversation.

To create a shortcut category:

  1. Go to Settings> Workspace > Shortcuts.
  2. Go to the Categories tab and select Add category.
  3. Enter the name of the new category.
  4. Select Create. The new category will be listed on the page. To see its available actions, hover over the category name.

    The following actions are available:
    • Add Categorycreates a sub category.
    • Edit Category is where you can change the category name.
    • Add Shortcutlets you create a new shortcut to add to the category.
    • Expand/Collapse all Subcategories
  5. Enter a name for the new category, and select its parent from the drop-down menu. 
  6. You can change the order of your categories using the numbered drop-down menu or by dragging-and-dropping it to your desired location. Categories are also visible from the menu that appears when using a shortcut in a message reply.
  7. Select Create.

 To add a shortcut to a category:

  1. From the Shortcuts window, select Editfor the Shortcut you wish to add in a category.
  2. Select a category from the drop-down menu.

    Note: To select a subcategory, expand the parent to find it.

Use shortcuts in a conversation

When replying to a conversation, there are two ways that you can use shortcuts:   

  1. Enter the hashtag symbol (#) into a reply or note. This will activate the shortcut menu, and text entered after the "#" will be used to search shortcuts.
  2. Alternatively, select Insert Shortcut from menu bar when composing a message. Both the Name and Message fields are searchable. If you use a shortcut with a snippet containing translations, the shortcut name will be displayed in your local language.

Move a conversation to a different queue

You can use shortcuts to move a conversation to a different queue.

  1. From the Shortcuts window, select Add Optional Fields.
  2. Select Queue from the drop-down menu.
  3. Select the queue you want to move a conversation to when a user applies the shortcut.

Now, whenever this shortcut is used in a conversation, it performs its specific action and transfers the conversation to the specified queue.

Notes: 

  • Transferring a conversation to a different queue will unassign it from its current user.
  • Actions configured in a shortcut (for example, adding a tag to the conversation or marking it done) are executed immediately when the shortcut is added to the reply editor or a note, even if the message is not sent or the note is not added. 
  • If you use the optional field to change the conversation status to Done and create a message in the same shortcut, the conversation will close, and the message will not be sent. You should not combine marking the conversation status to Done and sending a message in the same action.
  • Shortcuts that update specific attributes may not show on the reply editor or may not execute as expected if the user’s or team’s permissions do not allow changes to those attributes.

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