Note: Hive Proofing underwent an upgrade in September of 2026.

The high-level changes include:

Note: If you'd like to enable AI Proofing, that is a separate app that you would need your workspace admin to enable.

The approvals feature in Hive is designed to help organize and manage project approvals efficiently. Users can access approvals from their Home Page or within specific action cards in projects.

You can add a file to be proofed by your team from within an action card.  Click Add proof to add a new draft of the file you are working on. 

You can also drag the file to the Approval app.

Note: You can attach video files to be proofed as well.  See the full list of supported file types at the bottom of this article.  
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Once you have uploaded a new proof, you can confirm if you'd like an AI review and which reference documents you want to access. Add any other additional instructions that you think would be helpful for your proof.

If you want to skip this step and just Upload as a regular proof, click "Upload Only."

After the document is uploaded, you can select the approver type (internal, external, team).

Within each round, you'll be able to add stages to further delineate reviewer feedback. Once the route is set up, click the Request approval button again to make the approval route live and to trigger a notification for the first approver(s).  

Request Review from a Team: You can send a request to an entire team by adding the 'team' as an approver. Once requested, a notification will be sent to all members of the team.

Add External Approver: Choose Add external approver if you would like to request approval from someone who is not in Hive. Simply enter their email address, and they will receive a link from Hive to review the content in the proofing window.

Note: You must add a proof to use this feature.

Change status after approval: Choose change status after approval to automate your approvals workflow by moving the action card to the appropriate status once a decision has been made.

If an assignment has been routed to you for your approval, it will be shown separately from your standard actions at the top of the My actions view in the "My Approvals" section. Click the item to begin the approval process.
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You can proof a document by clicking the file from the action card for your assignment. Once in the proofing tool, you can add a variety of annotations, stamps, shapes, text, free-hand drawings, and more.

To add a basic annotation, click "Annotate" in the upper panel and leave your comment.

Add highlights, freehand lines, highlights and more by clicking on the various buttons under "Annotate." You can append a comment to the lines or highlights as well.

Additionally, you can add:

You can also compare versions when proofing various iterations of the same document. To do that, click the three "More" dots in the upper right hand corner and select "Compare" at the bottom of the list.

From there, you'll be able to view each proof side-by-side and better understand the differences and changes.

Above "Compare," there are various ways to Download and Save proofs:

When you are ready to sign off, click "Approve" or "Request Changes" based on your feedback. If you want to approve directly from the action card, scroll to the proofing section and choose your approval type.

You can make a decision for the proof you have been routed for approval from the action card for your approval assignment:

Pro Tip: You can also mark your decision within the proof itself by selecting the green check mark for approve and the red button for require changes. See Section 5. 

If you'd like to use our AI Proofing feature, you can start an AI review by selecting the star icon in the right hand corner, next to the comment box. Once you click "Generate AI review," the review will begin in the proof itself.

Once the AI proofing review is complete, the recommendations will populate in that right-hand bar. You can go through each recommendation and choose to promote it to an annotation, or clear it.

The circle icon on the top left of each annotation will guide you through the process of Resolving, Dismissing, or Promoting the recommendation to an annotation.

After you've started an approval round, you can click into the settings and:

If the document you want approved or viewed isn't easily upload-able from your desktop, you can generate a proof via a link or email.

You can also mark off 'Add as internal version,' which ensures that the version you're uploading isn't accessible by external proofers.

If you need to upload multiple files into one document, you can do that a few ways.

The following file types are supported in proofing:
​Documents
.pdf, .doc, .docx, .xslx, .pptx, .rtf, .odt, .ods, .odp

Images
.bmp, .wmf, .emf, .hdp, .jpg, .jp2, .jpc, .png, .tif, .tiff

Videos
.mp4, .ogg, .webm

Other

.xps, .oxps, .xml, .xod, .