Welcome! Use this guide to get started with setting up your creative workflow in Hive. Let's get started!
Step 1: Choose your project structure. What is your team type?
Choose the style closest to you.
a) A Marketing & Communications team at a university, institution or organization.
We recommend your projects are the Teams / Work streams that you have. For example, you may create work in the following areas and these would each have a project in Hive:
Video
Events
Newsletters
Blogs
Public Relations: media relations, interviews, press releases
Website content
Website development: Do you maintain more than one domain/site? Make them child projects
Social Media posts: list channels
b) A Marketing or Creative team for your company’s product or service
We recommend your projects are the major categories of marketing work you produce, for example you may have work in the following categories:
Product Marketing
Partnerships
Sales Enablement
Website
Content Calendar
General Marketing (everything else)
c) You create deliverables or perform marketing services when requested by your clients
Great! Follow-up question here: are you paid for the marketing/creative services? Or, phrased another way - are your clients internal to your organization or are they outside of your organization?
> If your deliverables are unpaid or clients are internal
We recommend that your projects are the type of requests you receive from those inside your organization. For instance, let's say you are producing creative marketing materials for real estate agents within your organization. The projects would be the categories of creative work you have, like: Business Cards, New Agent Website, New Listing Postcard, Open House Flyer, Door Hangers.
> Your deliverables are paid or your clients are external
Congratulations, you are the traditional 'client based' model for project set-up! We recommend that you create a parent project for each client, and child project is the scope of work, or project sold underneath that client.
Step 2: Time for a big decision 🤔 - actions or projects for your work?
We are at a fork in the road here! You need to choose if your work is action cards or projects. The rule of thumb is:
If your project typically takes longer than 30 days or more than 10 major steps, these would usually be projects.
If your project is typically shorter than 30 days, or fewer than 10 major steps, the work is usually action cards.
Here's an example of each:
Action Cards
In the below example, each of the blog articles are on an action card within the Blog Content project. Each blog article has about 5-6 steps and takes a few weeks to complete:
Projects
In the below example, the website launch has a few components: design, animations, development, QA & user testing and it spans a few months. This makes sense to be its own project.
Activity: Create projects in Hive based on the team type & scale recommendation.
Step 3: Pick your starting point: how does work usually come to your team?
Pick the option closest to you, but if there are many, it's ok! You can set up each one.
a) With a request from another team or outside party
We recommend setting up Hive Forms to manage the intake process. This will standardize the information that your team receives, and eliminate the back-and-forth over email. Once you have your Form created, be sure to share the URL with anyone who makes these requests from you. Putting the link in your email signature is a great idea to promote the new request flow.
Review our Forms Tutorial here and our Video Tutorial here.
b) With an email request
We recommend you connect Hive Mail, and use the 'Create action from email' option to quickly turn incoming requests into actionable to-dos for your team, slotting them into the correct project and assigning to a team member.
c) With a weekly, monthly, quarterly planning meeting
We recommend you create a Hive Notes series for this recurring meeting, so you can add a new entry each time the planning meeting occurs, create action items directly form the meeting and put them into your Hive Projects to begin work.
Just start by creating the Hive Note, title it, add an agenda, and share it with attendees of this meeting. The next time this meeting occurs, open the Hive Note & use this for meeting decisions, and action items.
Activity: Toggle on Hive Mail, Create Hive Form and/or Create Meeting Note
Step 4: Get your supporting apps ready
Does your team have creative review cycles? If yes, turn on Proofing & Approvals in Hive Apps
For internal reviewers, you will be able to route creative work to them as long as they are members of the project.
For external reviewers - like clients, vendors, partners and others outside of your organization who do not have a Hive license, you will use External Proofing, and you will send them the file using their email address only.
Does your team need assistance in Resourcing capacity, keeping track of time or timesheet reporting? If yes, turn on Resourcing, Timesheets so you are ready
Follow the Workflow Guides for these use cases here::
Activity: Turn on Proofing & Approvals, Timesheets & Resourcing
Step 5: No time like the present to get your work into Hive
Where are your projects and to-dos right now?
a) You're starting in Hive with a blank slate, not importing from another tool or copying a list of tasks from anywhere!
Now that you have your projects created, create the action cards with each of the deliverables that your team currently has to do in these projects. Even better, ask another member of the team to assist.
b) You're importing from another tool
Hive can ingest project data from other tools when it's exported in common formats, like CSV and JSON and we have built importers for tools like Basecamp, Trello, Asana and Smartsheet. Follow the import guide here to gather the project work from other tools and import it into Hive.
c) You have a list of tasks in Excel or other spreadsheet
If you have a list of tasks in a spreadsheet, or word doc, just copy & paste to put them into Hive.
Activity: Add the action items into Hive using the selected method
Step 6: Rally your troops
Now is a good time to add your team members to the Hive workspace and assign them to their tasks.
You can invite them & add them to the relevant projects all at once:
Step 7: It's go time 🚀
Here is your final checklist to launch now that you have your Projects, Actions, Intake method & supporting Hive Apps (Mail, Notes, Forms) ready to go.
Final Checklist:
Pick your Hive Launch Day & schedule a team meeting for this day
Host a Hive Launch Day introduction meeting for your team, sharing your screen and showing them how the new creative workflow will happen in Hive
Celebrate - you're launched!