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How to use Hive's CRM

Utilizing the CRM to centralize your work with Hive.

Written by Ellen Kajca

What is Hive CRM?

Hive CRM is a workspace app inside Hive for managing commercial relationships — accounts, people, opportunities, and the work that follows from them.

Unlike a standalone CRM you bolt onto project management, Hive CRM lives in the same workspace as your actions, projects, notes, meetings, and email.

That means sales, customer success, and delivery teams can track pipeline and customer context without switching tools.

In short: Hive CRM helps you answer: Who are we working with? What's in the pipeline? What needs to happen next — and where does that work live in Hive?

Who is Hive CRM for?

Hive CRM is useful if your team needs to:

  • Track accounts and contacts — prospects, customers, partners, and vendors in one place

  • Manage a sales pipeline — opportunities with stages, amounts, owners, and close dates

  • Plan outreach — campaigns and email/call sequences for targeted follow-up

  • Scope and propose work — estimates and proposals tied to accounts and deals

  • Connect CRM to execution — link accounts and opportunities to Hive projects and actions

  • See pipeline health at a glance — configurable home dashboards and reporting widgets

Who can access CRM?

Workspace admins control CRM access under Workspace settings → Apps → CRM:

  • Everyone in the workspace (with CRM permission), or

  • Selected people only

Users without CRM access cannot open the app. External users do not have CRM access.

Getting started

CRM Settings

Open Workspace settings → Apps → CRM to manage CRM settings:

From there, you'll be able to control who has access to specific information in the CRM. You can also import email threads and calendar meetings to better build out your CRM instance.

Some other ways to import data into CRM:

Use Import CSV to bring in:

  • Accounts (companies)

  • People (contacts)

  • Opportunities (pipeline)

Hive shows a summary of created and updated records after import. Home dashboard widgets refresh as data comes in.

You can also import from HubSpot-style CSV exports if columns match Hive's supported import fields. Workspace admins can connect Salesforce or HubSpot for a 90-day backfill and recurring sync.

For full steps and column details, see Import data into Hive CRM.

Or create records manually:

  1. Accounts → Create account (name, type, lifecycle stage)

  2. People → Create person and link to an account

  3. Opportunities → Create opportunity (stage, amount, owner, close date)


Core features in detail

Accounts

An account is a company or organization — prospect, customer, partner, investor, vendor, or former customer.

Each account has:

  • Type — e.g. Prospect, Customer, Partner

  • Lifecycle stage — e.g. Target, Engaged, Onboarding, Active, Expansion, Renewal, At risk, Churned

Open an account to see tabs such as:

  • Overview — key details and linked records

  • Team — people at the account

  • Projects — Hive projects linked to the account

  • Actions — linked Hive actions

  • Notes — shared account notes

  • Emails / Calls — linked email threads and meetings

  • Files — materials attached to the account

You can filter accounts (all, prospects, customers, partners, missing domain), save views, reorder columns in those views, and export to CSV.


People

People are contacts — decision-makers, champions, and stakeholders at your accounts.

  • Create people manually or via import

  • Link people to one or more accounts

  • Open a person sheet from the grid for quick details

  • Enroll people in sequences for structured follow-up


Opportunities

Opportunities are deals in your pipeline.

Track:

  • Stage — by default: Prospecting → Discovery → Qualification → Evaluation → Proposal → Negotiation → Selected → Dormant → Won/Lost. Your workspace can customize pipeline stage names.

  • Forecast category — Pipeline, Upside, Best case, Commit, Closed, Omitted

  • Amount, owner, and close date

From an opportunity you can:

  • Link actions and meetings

  • View activity, emails, and calls

  • Create or link a delivery project — accepting a proposal creates a delivery project automatically (retry with Create delivery project if needed), or link an existing Hive project. See Create or link a delivery project from CRM.


Meetings

The Meetings section shows calendar meetings linked to CRM people, accounts, or opportunities. Link meetings from account or opportunity pages so customer conversations stay tied to the right records.

Workspace admins can also run meeting backfill in CRM settings to import recent calendar events into CRM context.


Campaigns

Campaigns help you plan outreach to a defined audience — useful for launches, nurture programs, or targeted sales pushes.

  • Set a campaign name and objective

  • Build your audience from CRM accounts and people

  • Link campaigns to Goals for measurable outcomes

  • Export campaigns and save filtered views

Outbound copy in campaigns can be approval-gated before sending.

For step-by-step instructions, see Create and run a CRM campaign.


Sequences

Sequences are reusable follow-up flows — email steps and call-mail steps you can enroll people into.

  • Create a sequence with multiple steps

  • Enroll people from campaigns or individually

  • Track sequence status and analytics

Sequences support planned outreach; they are not a full marketing automation platform.


Estimates & Proposals

Estimates — create scope-of-work documents from CRM account context before kickoff.

Proposals — organize source materials (PDFs, text files) and build proposal content, including reusable snippets and AI-assisted outline generation. You can also send, share, and sign a proposal (acceptance link, DocuSign, regenerate text, review on an action card, and download PDF).

Useful for agencies and services teams scoping work before a deal closes or during proposal stages.

Create a proposal from a Word template

Workspace admins can configure one Microsoft Word template for CRM proposals. The template must be a .docx file and can include {{marker_name}} placeholders in the document body. Placeholders in headers, footers, footnotes, and endnotes are not supported.

Add or replace the Word template

  1. Open CRM and select Proposals.

  2. Select Proposal settings.

  3. Under Word proposal template, select Upload template or Replace template.

  4. Choose the .docx file and save the template.

Replacing the template affects future document generations only. Proposal generation reports any unresolved placeholders as missing proposal information.

Create and generate the proposal

  1. Open CRM, select Proposals, then select New proposal.

  2. Enter the proposal title, customer account, opportunity, owner, and due date.

  3. Select Fill a Word template, then Continue to Word template.

  4. Add source material or snippets if needed, then create the proposal.

  5. Open the proposal and select Generate Word from template. The proposal must be linked to an opportunity with pricing.

  6. When generation finishes, select Download Word or Upload revised Word.

The revised Word file must also be .docx and cannot contain unresolved template markers. Publishing the proposal converts the Word document to PDF.


CRM Insights & reporting

When you open CRM, you land on Opportunities by default. Select Insights (Home) for pipeline reporting:

  • Import-first panel when the workspace is new

  • Configurable dashboard widgets — add CRM report widgets from the Insights menu

  • Pipeline Coach (AI) — summary of pipeline risks, opportunities, and recommended next steps when you have pipeline data

Filter and save views on list pages (Accounts, People, Opportunities, Campaigns) and export matching data to CSV.


Reorder table columns in saved views

Arrange CRM table columns so the fields you use most often stay in a consistent place across saved views on Accounts, People, Opportunities, and Campaigns.

  1. Open Accounts, People, Opportunities, or Campaigns in Hive CRM.

  2. Drag a column header to the position you want.

  3. Save or update the view to keep the new order.

You need CRM access and permission to write to the saved view. The saved view stores the column arrangement for the next time you open it.


How CRM connects to the rest of Hive

Hive CRM's main advantage is that it composes with existing Hive work:

Hive feature

CRM connection

Actions

Link accounts, opportunities, or people to any action from the action panel

Projects

Link projects to accounts and opportunities; accepting a proposal creates a delivery project automatically

Notes

Attach notes to accounts for shared customer memory

Goals

Link goals to campaigns

Dashboards

CRM Insights uses dashboard widgets for pipeline reporting

Email

Link email threads to accounts; admins can backfill recent mail into CRM

Meetings

Link calendar meetings to CRM records

Example workflow:

  1. Create account + opportunity in CRM

  2. Link related actions for follow-up tasks

  3. Run a sequence for outbound touchpoints

  4. Accept a proposal → Hive creates a delivery project (or link an existing project)

  5. Delivery team works the project with full account context

Want to try CRM?

If you're a workspace admin, you can enable CRM for your Hive workspace.

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