All it takes in Hive is 5 steps to get your workspace set up for success. Yep. That’s it. 5 steps. But let’s rewind.

Project management tools are essential tools to keep agencies on track with deliverables, planning, projects, and client communications. Tools like Hive provide a centralized platform for planning, organizing, and monitoring the progress of various tasks and activities related to a project.

One of the key benefits of using project management tools like Hive is that they help agencies streamline their workflow and improve collaboration among team members. By providing a shared workspace where team members can communicate, share files, and track project milestones, these tools enhance communication and coordination within the agency.

Optimizing Your Agency Workflow with Hive

But often times the hardest part of getting started with a tool is the initial set up – how is everything going to work together? What apps do I need? What workflows should be included? That’s why we’re here to break down the 5 steps you need to take.

1. Add your first project into Hive by Client Name

For agencies or teams focused on client work, we’ve found it easiest to get started with each client as a project. To add a project, click on the blue “+” button in the upper right hand corner, and click add project.

From there, name the project after your client and add three initial tasks. Don’t bother adding more than three, because it’s likely the flow or set up could change. Some ideas for your first few tasks include:

• XYZ Campaign Kick Off
• Schedule Client Weekly Meeting
• Monthly invoice (recurring task)

2. Connect your Email and Calendar to Hive

Inbound requests, content, and client communications come most often in meetings or by email. Sync up your Gmail or Outlook inbox with Hive through Hive Mail. To access Hive Mail, you’ll need to go to Hive Apps -> and toggle on Hive Mail.

Once Hive Mail is enabled, you’ll also want to toggle on Hive Calendar from the same App homepage. That will allow you to view your daily meetings in Hive, assign time to work on next steps, and track progress.

3. Enable Proofing & Approvals

While you’re in Hive Apps, let’s get proofing and approvals enabled. This is the bread-and-butter of many agencies work, as it allows them to attach documents to action cards and request approvals and approval rounds.

If proofing & approvals isn’t enabled, you won’t be able to upload images, videos, or PDFs for proofing. Another great workflow functionality is the approval flow. From the proof, you can set up an intricate series of approvals that a document needs to go through before it’s ready to go.

Approvals and their stages can be as simple or complex as you want – it’s all totally customizable, and we’d recommend starting with 1 or 2 stages to get the hang of it.

4. Add your teammates to projects

This is sort of obvious, but you likely have teammates in your agency that need to be included in specific projects or tasks. The good news? You don’t need to add them to EVERY SINGLE project in Hive, because they’re likely not involved in EVERY client. You can add them to client projects that they’re involved in, and skip the ones they don’t need to know about.

Once your teammates are in Hive, you can start assigning them tasks – either alone or adding multiple assignees to the client tasks they’re involved with.

5. Enable Hive Forms and pin Forms to left hand panel

Agency teams love that Hive Forms are built into the Hive interface and allow for a seamless transfer of information from client to agency team.

Basically, Hive Forms are forms accessible via URL (aka anyone can click on them or fill them out), and can be used to gather new client information, client feedback, assets, information, and so much more. Forms allow that information to be brought right into a Hive project or task, depending on your preference and settings.

Once your client (or teammate even) fills out the form, it will be directed into Hive, and migrate to a “to-do” for your team.

P.S. You can also route the form fills to create a new projects. For example, if a new client fills out an onboarding form, it can create a whole PROJECT for you. Easy.

But Wait! Is there more?

And that’s it. That’s all you need to do to get your workspace up and running. Are there more features in Hive to explore? Absolutely. Some of them are probably even relevant to your workflow. But there’s plenty of time for that later.

We want to focus on getting you set up for success and bringing the core parts of an agency workflow into Hive. Need more specific help with your set up? Email help@hive.com and we will put you in contact with the best person on our team to assist.