Search and keyboard shortcuts

All plans Member

Onplana’s web app gives you three ways to get somewhere without reaching for the sidebar: the search box in the top bar finds your content (projects, tasks, and people), the command palette jumps to any page or common action, and a small set of keyboard shortcuts covers the trips you make most often. Ten minutes learning all three pays back every day after.

Search your work

The search box sits in the top bar on every page. Click into it, or press / from anywhere outside a text field, and type at least two characters; results appear as you type, grouped into three sections:

Projects. Matches on the project’s name or description, shown with its status badge.
Tasks. Matches on the task’s title or description, shown with the project it belongs to, the assignee, and its status. A subtask shows its parent task’s title in front of its own, with a subtask marker.
People. Matches on name or email, shown with the person’s role.

The words you typed are highlighted in the project and task results, so you can see at a glance why something matched. Selecting a result takes you straight to it:

A project opens the project page.
A task opens the task itself: you land in the project’s Tasks view with that task’s edit panel already open, not just on the project.
A person opens the People page.

Press Esc to close the results, or the small X to clear the box.

What search covers

Search is scoped to the workspace you are currently in. Project and task results include only projects you own or are a member of, and each group shows the most recently updated matches first, so live work surfaces before old work. People results cover everyone in the workspace.

The command palette

Press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on Mac) anywhere in the app to open the command palette, a keyboard-first launcher that overlays the page. Where the search box finds your content, the palette finds places and actions.

Press Ctrl+K. The palette opens with its input focused.
Type a few letters to filter. Matching entries narrow as you type.
Move the highlight with the ↑ and ↓ arrow keys.
Press Enter to go there (or click an entry). Esc or Ctrl+K again closes the palette.

The palette has two sections:

Pages. The main nav destinations: My Work, Dashboard, Projects, Goals, Reports, People, Workspace, Setup, Organization Settings, and admin surfaces like Import, Integrations, Audit Logs, and the Recycle Bin. A few sidebar pages are not in the palette, including Issues and Ideas, so open those from the sidebar. A page your plan does not include appears with a lock icon and an “Available on …” hint naming the tier; selecting it takes you to Organization Settings, where an Owner can open the Billing tab, rather than a dead end. Pages your role cannot see are not listed at all.
Actions. Verb-first shortcuts: New project, Invite teammate, Open timesheet, Configure workflows, and Open Setup hub. Set rate card also appears if you have permission to manage rate cards.

Keyboard shortcuts

Press ? on any page to open the keyboard shortcuts panel, a quick reference you can toggle at any time. The web app’s shortcuts:

Shortcut	What it does
Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on Mac)	Open the command palette
/	Focus the search box in the top bar
G then D	Go to Dashboard
G then P	Go to Projects
G then T	Go to People (the panel labels this Team)
G then R	Go to Resources
G then S	Go to Settings (your personal settings)

General

Shortcut	What it does
?	Show or hide the keyboard shortcuts panel
Esc	Close the open modal, panel, or search results

The G shortcuts work as a two-key sequence: press G, release it, then press the second key within about a second. If the second key does not arrive in time, the sequence resets and nothing happens.

The bare-key shortcuts deliberately stay out of your way while you are typing. /, ? and the G sequences do not fire when your cursor is in a text field or an editor (a wiki page or a whiteboard, for example), and they pause while a dialog is open, so typing a “g” in a task description never yanks you to another page. Ctrl+K is the exception: a modified chord is unambiguous, so the palette opens from any field.

Best practices

Learn Ctrl+K and / first. Between them they cover almost every trip: Ctrl+K reaches any page, / reaches any piece of work. Add G then P (Projects) or G then D (Dashboard) for the trip you make most, and pick up the rest from the ? panel as you need them.
Match the tool to the question. “Where is the invoicing task?” is a search-box question, so press /. “Take me to Reports” is a palette question, so press Ctrl+K. Reaching for the palette to find a task (or the search box to find a page) is the most common early mix-up, and the two keys are the fastest way to keep them straight.
Search with a distinctive word. Search matches names and descriptions, so a distinctive word from the task title (“payroll”, “vendor”) narrows faster than a generic one (“update”, “review”) that matches half the workspace.
Use the palette’s locks to answer plan questions. Typing a feature’s name into the palette tells you immediately whether it is on your plan: an unlocked entry opens it, a locked entry names the tier it needs.

Troubleshooting / common pitfalls

A shortcut does nothing. Three common causes: (a) your cursor is in a text field or editor, where shortcuts are intentionally suppressed; (b) a dialog is open; or (c) for a G sequence, the second key came more than a second after the first, so the sequence reset. Click an empty area of the page and try again.
A project I know exists does not appear in search. Search only returns projects you own or are a member of. Owners, Admins, and Portfolio Managers who can see every project in the Projects list will still not see a project in search until they are added to it; open it from the Projects list instead, or ask to be added.
Search shows nothing after one letter. Search needs at least two characters before it runs. Keep typing.
A page in the palette shows a lock. That page is part of a higher plan tier; the hint names which one. Selecting it opens Organization Settings. An Owner (or an Admin your organization has granted billing access) lands on the Billing tab and can compare plans and upgrade; everyone else lands on General and will need to ask an Owner. See Compare plans.
I searched in the palette for a task and got “No results.” The palette only lists pages and actions. Close it and press /, which focuses the search box in the top bar, the surface that searches projects, tasks, and people.

FAQs

Does Ctrl+K search my projects and tasks? No. Ctrl+K opens the command palette, which finds pages and actions. The search box in the top bar is what searches your content: projects, tasks, and people. Press / to jump straight to it.

Can I customize the key bindings? Not today. The web app’s shortcuts are fixed; the ? panel is always the current, authoritative list.

Does search look inside descriptions? Yes. Projects match on name or description, tasks on title or description, and people on name or email. Matching is case-insensitive.

Does search cross workspaces? No. Search covers the workspace you are currently in. Switch workspaces from the sidebar to search another one.

Do these shortcuts work in the desktop and mobile apps? No, they are the web app’s. The desktop companion has its own command palette and a global quick-add hotkey that works even when the app is in the tray; see Install Onplana Tasks for Windows or for Mac.

Why did typing in a wiki page not trigger a shortcut? By design. Shortcuts are suppressed while you type in any field or editor, precisely so that words containing “g” followed by another shortcut letter do not navigate you away mid-sentence.

Take the product tour, orient before you build
Create your first project, give search something to find
Install the browser extension, capture tasks from any page

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