Using the command menu

The command menu is one search box that finds records, opens pages, runs actions, and drops saved text into whatever you're typing. Once you know it's there, it's the fastest way to get anywhere in Ona.

Opening the command menu

Press ⌘K on a Mac, or Ctrl+K on Windows and Linux, from anywhere in the app. The same keys close it again. If you'd rather click, there's a search icon in the sidebar header, next to the Ona logo.

The placeholder says exactly what it covers: "Search patients, visits, snippets, pages…". Before you type, the menu shows the common commands and pages as a starting list. ↑ and ↓ move through it, Enter opens the highlighted row, and Esc closes the menu.

A second shortcut skips a step. Press . — the dot key on its own, no modifier — and the menu opens straight into your snippet library rather than the main list. It's listed in the keyboard hints along the bottom of the menu, and it's covered in full under Snippets below.

Finding a patient or a visit

Start typing and the results narrow across every category at once. Records need at least two characters — below that you'll see a "keep typing" hint rather than results.

Results arrive grouped and labelled, so you can tell a person from an appointment at a glance. Each row carries the detail you need to pick the right one: patients show a date of birth, visits show the patient, the date and time, and the clinician. Typing marcus surfaces both Marcus Ellison and Marcus Webb with their DOBs, and underneath them Marcus Webb's Same-Day Sick and Chronic Care visits.

Beyond patients and visits, the menu searches leads, tasks, consents, interviews, note templates, and your snippets. Patients match on name, email, and medical record number, so a partial MRN works as well as a name.

What you find depends on your role. Owners, admins, and operations staff search across the whole practice. Clinicians see the patients and visits they're attached to — the menu won't surface someone else's panel.

Running a command

Commands are actions the menu performs directly, without taking you somewhere first:

• Add new visit — opens the new-visit dialog on the spot
• Add a patient — opens the new-patient form
• New task — writes a task without leaving the page (below)
• Snippets — opens your saved text, and has its own . shortcut (below)
• Share feedback — opens the feedback form in a new tab
• Help Center — opens these guides in a new tab

The first three are the ones that earn their keep. Rather than Visits → Add New Visit, you press ⌘K, type "visit," and the dialog is already open.

Jumping to a page

The Pages group is navigation without the sidebar: Dashboard, Patients, Visits, Team Calendars, Team Members, Tasks, Consents, Forms, Interviews, Templates, and Settings. The list follows your role — clinicians don't see Team Calendars or Team Members, and only owners and admins get Team Members at all.

The page list is deliberately short. Billing and communication sections — Claims, Invoices, Leads, Inventory, Faxes — aren't listed as pages, so reach for the sidebar for those. Their records are still searchable: type a lead's name and the lead itself comes back.

Adding a task

Run New task and the menu turns into a short form, without closing and without losing the page behind it. It's for the thought you have mid-visit that would otherwise become a sticky note.

Only the title is required. The rest is optional:

• Description — the detail that won't fit in a title.
• Assignee — starts as you. Change it to hand the work to someone else.
• Patient — links the task to a patient, so it also appears in that patient's own Tasks section.

⌘Enter saves without reaching for the mouse, and Esc backs out to the main menu. New tasks land in Todo on the board — see Using tasks for what happens to them after that.

If nothing matches what you typed, the menu offers to keep it. Search for "chase Ellison's lab results," get no results, and a Create task row appears at the bottom. Choose it and the form opens with that text already in the title — fill in the rest, or just save it. It's the difference between losing the thought and having it on the board.

Snippets

A snippet is a piece of text you save once and insert wherever you need it — discharge instructions, a standard follow-up message, the paragraph you retype five times a week. Run the Snippets command and the menu switches to your library without closing. Pressing . takes you to the same place in one keystroke, from anywhere — including from inside the note or message you're part-way through writing.

Snippets are grouped into My snippets and Shared with the team. Filter with the search box, then:

• Enter inserts the highlighted snippet
• ⌘E edits it
• ⌘⌫ deletes it, with a confirm step on the row itself
• Backspace on an empty search box takes you back to the main menu

The order matters. The menu remembers where your cursor was at the moment you opened it, so put the cursor where the text belongs first, then press . (or ⌘K). This is what makes the dot worth the habit: you're already typing in the right place, so one key gets you the library and Enter drops the text exactly where you left off. Insertion works into note editors, message boxes, and ordinary form fields alike. If there was no text field to return to, Ona copies the snippet to your clipboard instead and tells you so.

Typing a real full stop still works. Because the dot doubles as a shortcut, Ona only treats it as one when it would begin a word — at the start of an empty field, or straight after a space or a line break. A dot that follows a letter or a digit is ordinary punctuation, so "Take one tablet daily." and "1.5 mg" type through untouched. When the dot does open snippets it isn't left behind in your text.

To create one, choose New snippet. Give it a name and the text to insert, and decide whether to turn on Share with organization — shared snippets can be inserted by everyone in the practice, but only you and your admins can edit them. If you search for something that doesn't exist yet, the New snippet row offers to create it under the name you just typed.

Details that matter

• The result count includes commands and pages, not just search hits — "17 results" on an empty box is the standing menu, not seventeen matches.
• The dot shortcut stays out of number, phone, email, password, and date fields. A decimal point or a dotted address should never open a menu. Everywhere else it's live, the note editor included.
• Esc steps back one level at a time: from the snippet form to the snippet list, from the snippet list or the new-task form to the main menu, and from there it closes.
• A half-written task survives a pause. The menu clears a stale search on its own after a minute, but it leaves the new-task and snippet forms alone — walking away mid-sentence doesn't cost you what you typed.
• A spinner replaces the esc chip in the search box while results are loading. Results settle a moment after you stop typing rather than on every keystroke.
• Sharing a snippet is one-way in practice — teammates can insert it, but editing stays with you and your admins, so a shared snippet won't drift.
• The sidebar search icon is desktop-only. On a phone the sidebar isn't there, though the keyboard shortcut still works if you have one attached.
• Patients never see the command menu. It's a staff tool, and it's gated to members of the practice.

Related

The command menu finds and navigates; it doesn't answer questions. For "tell me about this patient" rather than "take me to this patient," use Ona Assistant (see Using Ona Assistant) — the two are complementary. The command menu gets you to the record; the Assistant reasons over it.

Get in the habit of reaching for ⌘K first when you already know what you want. It's quickest precisely when you have a name or an action in mind — which, during a working day, is most of the time.