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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Start a proof from a card attachment: click a PDF, Office, Keynote or video file in the card's attachments. It opens in a read-only preview. Click Start proof review to make it the card's proof. Clicking the file alone does not create a proof. See Open a file attached to a card.

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: Each stage can move the action card to a status. This setting is not a workflow. If approval was already requested, hover over the stage name and click the pencil icon (Edit stage). Open Change status and choose a status:

Change status does not show after a stage is complete. Duplicate round and templates keep the setting. To turn it off, choose Remove status change in each stage. For a complete stage, first choose More > Reset round. This clears all decisions in the round. It does not move the card back to its earlier status.

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:

The stamp tool is in both the Annotate and Insert tabs.

The second line is filled in when someone places the stamp, with their name and the current date and time. You can't type free text on the second line: the Subtitle field from the previous viewer has been replaced by these options.

In PDF view, choose Select and drag from an empty area of the page to draw a selection box around annotations. You can also use Shift, Cmd, or Ctrl while clicking annotations to select several.

Select two or more saved annotations anywhere in the document, then choose Group in the bottom toolbar. You must be able to edit every selected annotation. Replies, annotations with replies, and open AI suggestions cannot be grouped. Select a group and choose Ungroup to separate its annotations.

A group can span pages. Its comment lists each location, and the previous and next arrows jump between them.

Drag a movable annotation in a group to move the group’s movable annotations together. Text-anchored marks, such as highlights, stay in place.

Style an annotation: select it and choose Style in the toolbar that appears next to it. Settings are grouped into Text, Stroke, Fill and Opacity. Set stroke or border width with the slider or type a value from 0 to 24 pt; a box border of 0 means no border. The Presets row at the top applies a saved look to the annotation in one click. Choose Save preset to save the annotation's look under a name.

Style a tool before drawing: when a tool is selected, a preset strip appears in the top toolbar. Click a preset to use it for the next annotation you draw, or More presets to see the rest. Your style is your own look for that tool: hover over it and click the small arrow to change it.

Each tool group (text, shapes, lines, pen, highlight and text markup) has its own presets. The viewer remembers your style for each tool group in this browser.

Select a shape and drag any of its eight handles (four corners and four sides). Each handle moves only its own edge.

With a shape, line, arrow, or measure tool selected, drag on the page to draw. A single click doesn't draw anything; it only clears the selection. On video proofs, a tap on a paused frame still places a default box.

A Replace text edit is one comment: the caret holds the replacement text, and the struck-out text is part of the same comment.

Open the Measure tab in the toolbar to use the Distance, Perimeter, Area, Rectangular area, Ellipse area, Arc and Count tools. To match real-world units, choose the scale button next to the tools (for example 1.0 in = 1.0 in) and set the measurement scale. Select a measurement to see its details.

Open More (⋯) > Customize > Personal preferences to turn Compact comments on or off. It is on by default: long comments show up to three lines, and replies stay folded until you open the thread. This preference applies only to you in this browser.

Hover over a comment or reply, then click the smile icon to choose an emoji, or the thumbs-up icon to add a thumbs up. To remove your reaction, click your highlighted reaction. Hover over a reaction to see who added it.

External reviewers can react whenever they can comment. Reactions don't send notifications. You can't react on a locked version or on live website (HTML) proofs.

Comment categories are labels, such as Copywriting or Design, that reviewers put on proof comments. Use them to sort feedback and to filter the comments panel. They work on PDF, video and live website proofs.

Set up comment categories (workspace admins)

Add a category to a comment

Filter comments by category

In the comments panel, select the filter icon next to the search box, then select Category. Select one or more categories. Select Uncategorized to see comments that have no category. A deleted category that comments still use shows as (deleted) after its name. To show all comments again, select Clear all.

Note: Comment categories are not the same as AI Proofing suggestion categories. AI reviews do not use comment categories. To tell Buzz what to flag, see Create workspace suggestion categories.

The Comments and AI review tabs show open and total counts, for example Comments 150 / 200. Hover over a tab to see a progress card with the percent done and a count for each status.

On a phone, the comments panel starts closed and opens as a full-width overlay, and approval actions appear as compact icon buttons.

Choose the page sidebar icon at the top left of the viewer to open Navigation:

If you can edit the proof, drag thumbnails to reorder pages, or open a page's Page actions menu (⋮) to choose Move to top, Move to bottom, Rotate clockwise, Rotate counterclockwise or Delete.

Page edits stay a draft until you choose Save as new version. Hive then adds the edited PDF as a new version of the proof and keeps existing annotations on their pages. If you leave with unsaved edits, Hive asks you to save them as a new version, discard them, or cancel.

Video proofs have View, Annotate, Shapes and Insert tabs. Annotate includes Comment (N), Rectangle (R), Callout (C), Ink (F) and Eraser (E).

Annotation duration: Choose Duration in the toolbar to set how long new annotations stay on screen: Single frame, 2 s, or 5 s (the default). Hive remembers your choice in this browser. A single-frame annotation shows as a diamond on the comments track and reads as Frame at 0:12.4 on its comment card. Drag its end handle to stretch it into a range. Duration is not available on locked or read-only proofs.

Each video comment shows a thumbnail of the frame where it was left.

You can compare versions when proofing various iterations of the same document. Open More (⋯) in the top right and choose Compare. The two versions open side by side, and each side has its own version picker. You can add annotations in either version, including on video proofs. Pressing Esc clears your selection but never closes a version. Choose Close comparison (X) to return to the single view.

Copy between versions: select an annotation and press Cmd/Ctrl+C, hover over the other version, and press Cmd/Ctrl+V. Only the mark is pasted, not its comment text.

Copy annotations to left: copies annotations from the older version to the latest. Copy over all annotations is the default; you can also choose Copy over callouts or Copy over selected annotations. Hive confirms how many it copied, for example "Copied 4 annotations", or tells you why nothing was copied.

If a direct link opens an older proof version and a newer version is available to you, the viewer shows a notice with View latest. Choose it to open the latest version you can access.

Open More (⋯) to download or save a proof. For PDFs and documents, the options include:

For video proofs, choose Download comments for a PDF of comments or Download video for the video file.

When a proof has open AI suggestions, signed-in reviewers downloading with annotations or downloading video comments can choose which comments to include:

Choose Download to export. Downloading does not change comments or suggestions in Hive. The comment-source choice does not appear for Download selected annotation, which exports only your selected annotations.

When you choose Download with annotations for a PDF, image, or Office proof, Hive includes files attached to the exported comments as embedded files in the downloaded PDF. If you download selected annotations, only attachments associated with the exported comments are included.

Before sharing the PDF, review the files attached to those comments. Recipients can receive those files as well as the visible pages and comments. Use a PDF reader that supports embedded attachments to open them.

Comment attachment limits

These limits apply when attaching files to comments on PDF, image, and Office proofs. They are not limits on the size of the main proof document, and they do not apply to comment attachments on video or live-website proofs. If you reach a limit, use a smaller file, remove an attachment, or share a link instead.

If an attachment is left out: the PDF can still download, but Hive shows Some attachments were left out of the download, with the affected files and reasons. This can happen when an existing file exceeds a limit or cannot be read. The files remain on their comments in Hive; they have not been deleted. Check the warning before sharing the PDF.

When you upload the exported PDF to Hive again: Hive can restore embedded comment attachments or reconnect existing Hive files that you have permission to access. If an attachment cannot be restored, Hive shows Some attachments could not be restored. The comments are imported without the affected files.

To save every file you can see in a Proofing folder, open the action card’s Proofing folder, select its three-dot menu (⋯), and choose Download folder. Hive downloads a ZIP named after the folder, with the current visible version of each file. Viewers with read-only access can use this option too.

If the folder has no downloadable files, the menu shows a disabled No files to download item. For a single proof or an annotated PDF, use the proof viewer’s download options instead.

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 to request changes.

For a proof folder, the approver row shows Approve all. After you give a decision on one file, it shows Approve the rest. See Approve multiple proof files at once.

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 start an approval round, click More on the round to:

Click Add proof and choose how to add it:

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

When you add two or more links, enter a Folder name. Hive adds each link as a separate asset in one proof folder.

To add more to a folder, click Add asset in the folder and choose File upload or Link. One folder can mix documents, hyperlinks, live websites and page snapshots.

Each asset has its own row with a small preview, its version and name (for example v2 Banner.pdf), and the date it was added. Hyperlinks show a link icon instead of a preview. Click the preview or the name to open the asset. Hyperlinks open in a new tab. The folder shows all its assets in the action card, so there is no separate box to scroll.

Each asset keeps its own versions. To update one asset, open its row menu and choose Add new version, then add one file or one URL. When you upload several files to a folder, a file with the same name as an asset becomes a new version of that asset, and other files are added as new assets.

If an asset has more than one version, click the arrow at the start of its row to show or hide its Previous versions. Older versions show as short text rows with no preview. Click one to open it.

Live website proofs use the same light toolbar as document proofs. The dark bar at the top is gone. Open More (⋯) at the top right to find:

To make more room for the site, click the collapse button at the end of the comments panel tabs. The panel becomes a thin strip, as in document proofs. Click the strip to open the panel again.

You can add two or more files to a card at the same time. Click Add proof > File upload and select the files, or drag the files to the Approval app. Hive shows the dialog Upload multiple files as a proof.

Select one option, then click Upload:

If you select Upload as folder, the dialog Name your folder opens. The Folder name box shows the card title. Change the name if necessary, then click Continue. If the card has no title, type a name. Continue stays unavailable until the box has a name.

Note:

The following file types are supported in proofing:
​Documents
.pdf, .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx, .key (Keynote), .rtf, .odt, .ods, .odp, .txt, .csv

Images
.jpg, .jpeg, .png, .webp, .gif, .tif, .tiff, .jp2, .jpc, .emf, .svg, .psd, .psb (Photoshop), .ai (Illustrator)

Photoshop and Illustrator files open in the proof viewer as a PDF. A Photoshop file shows as one flattened image, without its separate layers. If a Photoshop proof shows Couldn't preview this file, save it again in Photoshop with Maximize Compatibility on, then upload it again.

Videos
.mp4, .mov, .webm

Email
.eml, .msg

Other
.html, .xml, .zip