A Year In Review at Hive

2020 has been quite the year. I think we’re all breathing a collective sigh of relief that we’re quickly approaching 2021, but despite the year’s ups and downs, we’ve made some incredible strides in the way we work. Since companies went remote in March, we’ve reevaluated how, when, where, and why we work. And Hive has changed alongside all of you. That’s why we’re here to give you a year-in-review, taking you step-by-step through some of the biggest changes we made in 2020 to help you and your remote team work faster, better and more efficiently.

Hive 2.0

Perhaps the biggest change we made this year was the launch of Hive 2.0, which involved a newly designed action card and an updated navigation system inside Hive.  New Navigation The new layout was focused on the left-hand side panel, which has everything from My Actions to Apps and Projects. This panel became your new all-in-one source for all things inside Hive. My Actions view is anchored on the top left of your Navigation sidebar. This will take you to your to-do list, which lists every task that has been assigned to you with due dates. We’ve also made it easy to customize your Navigation panel. To unpin Hive apps from the panel, click on Apps, then use the pins on the tiles to unpin or pin to the panel. You can access these apps from the Apps section anytime. We’ve also moved pinned projects and Summary Views over to the left-hand panel. Pin as many projects as you’d like, and access them quickly from the Navigation. To pin a project to the left-hand side panel, select the “pin” icon next to the project name. If the pin is blue, your project will show up on the panel. If you want to remove a project from the panel, click on the pin icon again. To find a list of all your team’s projects, archived projects, templates, and summary views, click on Projects, formerly known as Project Navigator. For Hive Messengers, we’ve made a few changes to messaging. Messaging is also included in this new panel. We’ve moved user Status under your profile menu on the top right. To edit the height of your messaging panel to see either more projects or more of your messages, drag the bar between Groups and pinned projects up or down. To quickly start a conversation, click on the “New Message” button, and add your teammates to the chat, or use shortcut Command/Control+K. You’ll also be able to hide Group or Direct messages by pressing the X on the right side of the row. If a new message is sent, it will come back to the panel. Updated Action Card In addition to our new Navigation panel, we’ve unveiled a new Action Card format. We’ve refreshed the layout to make it easier to quickly gather the most important details for each to-do. Now you’ll be able to see the assignee, status and due date easily on the right-hand side. We’ve also made it easier to quickly share, delete or archive cards, which you can do with the four icons on the bottom left of the panel.  To mark your card as urgent, access action templates, or convert your action; head over to the more menu at the top of the card. Quickly share, delete, or archive, or copy your action from the bottom right of the card. Following the card means you will get notifications in your activity feed for things like comments, status updates, and date changes. Assignees will automatically become followers. Use the comments section on the bottom left of the card to collaborate with your teammates. When you @mention someone, they will automatically be added as a follower. To see a history of your card, click on show history at the bottom left of the card. As the year went on, we also made a few more action card changes…

• Ability to edit text in action card - We added the ability to change text color, highlight, create bullets, and bold, underline and italicize text

• Carry over dependencies on action card when card is copied

• Recurring subactions in action cards

• New dependencies formatting in action cards - Color-coded dependencies with new icons

• Ability to convert action to subaction

• Add followers to action cards

Mobile App Updates

In 2020 we made tons of updates to the Hive Mobile app, which included:

• Mobile search

• Mobile Kanban board

• Status on mobile

• Show action card history on mobile

• Changes to the mobile action card

  • Each assignee will have an avatar representing the assigned parties and each project will be accompanied by a new project color badge.

• Ability to share documents from mobile app

• Share action cards from mobile app

• Ability to search for groups in mobile chat

• Single sign on available on mobile app

Over the next few months, we’ll be unveiling new mobile updates, including the ability to add priority levels on mobile, an update to mobile notifications, and mobile Notes that you can access on-the-go.

Portfolio View 

Portfolio View in Hive is a much loved view for small and large teams around the world. Why? It’s the all-in-one place to see the detail of Project Navigator combined with the flexibility of a Table View. Portfolio View is best leveraged when looking at multiple projects that have the same action cards and/or custom fields because you can then compare those projects accurately and efficiently.  Note: Portfolio View is a Hive App - read about how to toggle them on & pin them here. Throughout 2020, as teams have moved remote and organizations have needed greater insight into overarching project and task trends, we’ve made the following updates to Portfolio View:

• Create, save and share portfolio views - With our new updates, users can create, save, and share multiple Portfolio Views, monitoring and managing projects from a macro-level perspective.Portfolio View color statuses - The red, grey, yellow and red dots help clarify specific project progress with a glance, great for teams working at a rapid pace.

• Show % complete in Portfolio View - You can now see project % completed in portfolio view, which will correspond to project completion percentage on your project homepage. 

• Edit status inline in Portfolio View - You can now edit a project status while in Portfolio View. To utilize this new feature, simply double click on the status column in Portfolio View.

Hive Notes

There probably hasn’t been a more relevant time for Hive Notes to take off than 2020. People all over the world used and loved Hive Notes to help them stay focused and connected during meetings.  In case you missed all of our Notes updates, here are a few highlights: 

• Utilize Hive Notes formatting functionality to clearly list out action items and talking points to help your meetings run smoothly

• Add multiple entries in one note to correspond with a recurring meeting

• Assign action items to teammates with a few clicks, or link an existing action

• Reorder action items in notes with a simple drag and drop motion

Focus Mode

Another thing we heard? Lots of you were hard at work on projects and tasks from home, but felt like the notifications from your device were distracting you. That’s why we created Focus Mode. With Focus Mode, you can shut off all notifications and effectively mute your Hive app. To toggle on focus mode, visit the Hive App store by clicking "Apps" at the top of the left-hand panel. You can find focus mode in the "My Apps" section of the app store. Once focus mode has been enabled, you can simply drag and drop tasks from "My Actions" into the "My Focus" section at the top of the screen. In Focus Mode, all notifications and chats are muted which allows you to focus on a single action card. Open the card in Focus Mode by clicking 'Open action card' in the bottom left. You can complete the card by clicking 'Complete action' or by completing from the open action card as normal. Exit focus mode and start receiving notifications again by clicking 'Exit'!

Priority Levels

Throughout 2020, we also started tracking all feature requests via Canny, to help us better understand what we needed to add to Hive to enhance your remote work experience. One of the most requested features on our Feature Request page was the ability to set priority on action cards, and we're excited to announce that it's here - thank you for using your voice, Hive Community! With priority levels on your action cards, you can now:

• See a priority level indicator on the outside of cards in any project's card layout - aka, Status, Team or Label View

• Create a customized priority list - including colors! (Is your team more Low, Medium, High? Or perhaps P1, P2, P3, P4? - it's your choice!)

• Sort action cards by Priority level in your project's card layouts

To get started: 

Step 1: Toggle on Card priorities in Hive Apps. Note: A workspace Admin must enable this! Step 2: Check out your new feature: open any action card to see the defaults: High, Medium and Low as shown in the screenshot below. If that works for you, you're all set! If you'd like to customize, continue reading to the next section.

Customize your Priorities

We recommend starting by using the edit option to change the name & color of the 3 existing priorities, and adding a fourth or more using the "Add a new priority level' option. Click the Edit pencil when hovering over the priority to get started: You can customize:

• Name

• Level (when you sort, 1 will be at the top)

• Color

Card Layouts

From a card layout, click Filters and then in the Sort By drop-down, choose Priority Level. The cards will be ordered with Level 1 at the top, descending from there.

Priority Levels & Urgency

When sorted by Priority Level, if you have an action card marked as Urgent, the Urgent card will be ranked at the top, even if its Priority Level is lower than another card. After the Urgent card, the rest of the cards will be listed by their Priority Level (and cannot be re-ordered differently).

A few other highlights:

Timesheet reporting Want to see exactly where your billable hours have been allocated by project? Meet Timesheet Reporting, ideal for agencies and organizations who need to cleanly categorize time spent. Gantt Updates Gantt is a big fan favorite. Throughout 2020 we made some additions to Gantt’s functionality. You can now:

• Share Gantt view via URL with external parties

• Easy editing for action tiles in Gantt

• Enter equations for lead and lag time in Gantt

• Sort Gantt actions chronologically from left to right with new “Cascade sort” button