Hive 2.0: Our New Navigation

Hive is ever-evolving, thanks to teams around the world who provide real-time feedback and suggestions. One of the areas we’ve been working to simplify is Hive’s Navigation, because it’s one of the main features and functionalities teams use when they’re working in Hive.

One of our main goals throughout the redesign was to make the user experience more intuitive, less cluttered, and more customizable for all of you. The new navigation is centered around your left-hand side panel, which has everything from My Actions to Apps and Projects. This panel is your new all-in-one source for all things inside Hive.

Let’s start at your home base, My Actions view, which is anchored on the top left of your Navigation sidebar. If you click on the My Actions icon, you’ll be taken straight to your simplified to-do list, which lists every task that has been assigned to you with due dates. In My Actions, you can also sort tasks by “Future,” “Completed,” and “Assigned by Me.” This helps break down your to-dos into a format that is easier to understand, and can help prevent overwhelm — if we showed all future tasks in your My Actions, that could get a bit excessive.

We’ve also moved pinned projects and Summary Views over the the new left-hand side navigation panel as well. Pin as many projects as you’d like, and access them quickly from the panel. To find a list of all your team’s projects, archived projects, templates, and summary views, click on “Projects” formerly known as Project Navigator. To pin a project to the left-hand side panel, simply select the “pin” icon on the left-hand side of 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, simply click on the pin icon again — once the icon is white, the project will be removed from the panel.

Now that you’ve got the projects you want pinned to the panel, you’ll quickly be able to access them with a few clicks. The project color will also show up on the panel, which can help differentiate projects at a glance. As we mentioned above, if at any time you’d like to switch which projects are in the panel, it’s as easy as un-pinning them from the “Projects” tab.

For all of you Hive Messengers out there, we’ve made a few changes to messaging. Messaging is also included in this new panel. Instead of a one-size-fits-all view of your messages and projects, you’ll now be able to edit the height of your messaging panel to see either more of your projects or more of your messages. To do that, drag the bar in between “Groups” and your last project up or down — this will edit the panel’s size.

To quickly start a conversation with your teammates, click on the “New Message” button, and add your teammates to the chat, or use shortcut “Command K.” You’ll also be able to hide Group or Direct messages by pressing the arrows to the left of the “Group” and “Direct” text. With this functionality, you can hide any types of messages if you need to focus on other things. When you’re ready to address messages again, simply click on the arrow and your messages will all be brought into the panel.

We also know that so many of you rely on Hive Apps like Resourcing, Analytics and Timesheets to manage your team. Those are all now going to like in the “Apps” section on the left-hand panel under Inbox, if you’ve got Hive Mail. For easier access, you can also pin your Apps to the navigation panel by clicking the pin button on the upper right hand corner of each app square. Once the Apps are added to your panel, you’ll always be one click away from your favorite Hive add-ons. Bonus: You can also open these Apps directly from the Hive Apps page itself by clicking “Open” within each App square.

If you realize you’ve added too many Apps to the panel, you can un-pin an App at any time by visiting the Apps section and clicking the pin button on the upper right. Once the pin button is grey, the App will no longer appear on the panel. Additionally, if you want to remove the App from your Hive experience altogether, simply click the blue toggle in the bottom left hand corner to uninstall it.

Here’s a full demo of the new Navigation, as well as the updates we’ve made to the new Action Card, to really help you get a feel for how it works.