Have you or a friend or colleague recently transitioned from another CAT system to Case CATalyst? In addition to the outstanding personal training services offered by Stenograph’s Certified Independent Training Agents, there are a number of features and tools available that may make the transition faster and easier.
Custom keyboard maps and macros: When you’re accustomed to pressing g or Ctrl + g to global and extend marking, it might feel weird or be hard if you had to remember to press Shift + Right Arrow to mark and d or Ctrl + d to define something to your dictionary. If you’re trying to remember d is to define, but you usually press d to delete a word… let’s just say it could be very challenging. Fortunately, it’s not necessary to learn a whole new set of keyboard equivalents before you can begin working on your new CAT system. Instead, Stenograph can provide you with a keyboard map that closely mimics the commands of your former system, or assist you in modifying the keyboard map you use so that you can press any key, key + Shift, key + Ctrl, or key + Shift + Ctrl to perform the command you want it to. We can also help you adjust the keyboard assignments to ensure that whatever keys you want to press to navigate will go exactly where you want the cursor to go, rather than where they are assigned to go by default.
Alt + key: If you’re accustomed to pressing Alt plus a key instead of Ctrl or Shift, that’s probably not a problem. Stenograph can help you record a macro to perform the desired command and then assign an Alt + key combination to that macro to play it back!
Options that change how punctuation is inserted: Some CAT system users are accustomed to pressing the same key to both insert and remove punctuation. Some are accustomed to pressing punctuation while their cursor is anywhere in a word and having the associated punctuation symbol be inserted at the end of the word rather than at the current cursor position. Although that’s not CATalyst’s default, it’s no problem. These are options that can be selected to insert punctuation the way you prefer.
Working with old files can be a breeze! Eclipse text, dictionary, and steno notes files can be imported without any type of conversion and used as is with Case
Prep. Most other competitors’ text, steno, and dictionary files can be exported to RTF/CRE format and imported into CATalyst, and Case Prep can also work with ASCII and PDF files. Also, Eclipse dictionary conflict information is used by CATalyst’s conflict resolution features. Setting up a layout (margins, paragraph styles, rules for page appearance) and the standard forms and parentheticals is frequently just a matter of contacting the firm owner who may already have copies of these files, ready to be customized, or contacting a certified training agent who can create efficient, easy-to-use new files for you and your employer(s).
If you have a colleague who has considered switching to CATalyst but has held off because they think it’ll be too difficult for them to learn a new CAT system, be sure to have them talk to us about these and other tools we have created to help make transition as simple as possible.
Cindi Lynch is the Training Program Manager at Stenograph. She can be reached at clynch@stenograph.com.