Advanced
Shortcuts and power-user behaviour for people who live in Ascend all day. Most of what is here is about removing the mouse from work you repeat.
Start here
The basics, in the order most people need them.
Start with three keys
Everything else on this page is optional. These are not.
| Press | Opens | Use it to |
|---|---|---|
Cmd/Ctrl + F | Search | Find something that exists |
Cmd/Ctrl + K | Command palette | Do something, or jump somewhere |
Shift + K | Keyboard shortcuts | Look up a shortcut you have forgotten |
Shift + K is the one worth committing to memory first, because it tells you the rest. See the command palette and search for what each one does and when to reach for it.
Shortcuts pause while you type
Single-key shortcuts are deliberately off while your cursor is in a text field, so typing "k" writes a k. If a shortcut does nothing, press Esc first.
Advanced material elsewhere
The genuinely advanced parts of Ascend live with the features they belong to rather than in one pile here.
| If you want to… | Go to |
|---|---|
| Drive Ascend from a script or another tool | Public API |
| Give an AI model access to your workspace | MCP integration |
| Search across everything, with filters | Unified search |
| Link records to each other by name | Wiki links |
| Control who sees which page or database | Access groups |
| See who changed a property and when | Property history |
| Automate inbox triage with rules | Inbox Rules |
| Build metric cards over your data | Dashboards |
| Generate Word documents from records | Document templates |
A note on speed
The fastest thing in Ascend is usually not a shortcut — it is not doing the work twice. Before optimising your keystrokes, check whether the job is already handled by a database template, an inbox rule, or a document template.