Texas Health Huguley Hospital is a regional hospital located just south of Fort Worth, Texas. Texas Health Huguley has been a member of AdventHealth since opening in 1977, which is the largest not-for-profit Protestant health care organization in the United States. In 2012, AdventHealth formed a partnership with Texas Health Resources to own Texas Health Huguley Hospital together, opening a brand new facility in 2016. This partnership has also led to a brand new second campus, Texas Health Mansfield, which recently opened at the end of 2020. 

When you think about the people who work at a hospital, you probably picture doctors and nurses scrambling around in scrubs. But there are so many other employees behind the scenes that make everything function on a day-to-day basis. Take Matthew House and his fellow Marketing teammates at Texas Health Huguley for example. As the Senior Visual Designer, Matthew is responsible for creating brochures, advertisements, event materials, and many other designed assets that help people navigate the hospital and its services daily. As Matthew puts it, their three-person content team functions as an entire marketing agency.

On any given day, the content team can receive over 5 individual requests, which can range in complexity and effort required. These projects can be as large as creating all of the materials for a two-day long event for 700 people, or as simple as printing out a flyer for another department.

So how do Matthew and his small team produce these creative materials for the entire hospital? His answer is simple: Hive. 

Before Hive: Projects slipping through the cracks

In the past, the content team manually tracked all requests using an Excel spreadsheet. Work was typically assigned and recorded during weekly team meetings, where everyone sat down, shared upcoming tasks, and logged them in Excel. Work came to the team through a variety of different channels, most frequently happening via word of mouth or over email. 

But when an overlooked due date caused a project to slip through the cracks, the team knew they needed to find a better way to manage its projects. The team got leadership approval to purchase a program and began testing several different project management platforms. Hive’s price point initially drew them in, and when they received a demo from one of Hive’s account executives, they knew it was exactly what the team needed. 

Using Hive Forms to change the project intake process 

“Hive is a massive help for tracking and managing the overwhelming amount of project requests that come in from other departments and recording the time we spend on each of them.” – Matthew House

Since Texas Health Hugeley’s content team started using Hive in 2019, it has developed a project workflow that is one of the most creative uses of Hive we’ve ever seen. But that isn’t surprising — they are a team of creatives, after all. Here’s how it works.

1. Projects are submitted using Hive Forms… on business cards ????

The team knew they wanted to utilize Hive Forms to intake project requests, but the real issue was getting everyone at the hospital to submit requests via that form link. Hive Forms can be accessed by anyone, regardless of whether they use the Hive platform, so that wasn’t the issue. The main obstacle was distributing the link to the Hive Form, in a workplace where employees have so many different roles, many of which don’t even involve being on a computer at all, let alone using software like Hive. 

The solution? The content team made business cards saying “How can we help you today?” with a QR code on the backside and a little description. When someone from another department takes and scans the card, it brings up a form in Hive where they can make a project request.

Inside the Hive Form, employees can select if they want to meet with the content team or if they’d like to fill everything out on their own. After the form is submitted, an email is sent to the content team to notify them of the new request, while another email is sent to the requester themselves, informing them that someone will reach out within the next day.

2. Projects populate in Hive and receive a template if applicable.

Once submitted, information from the Form automatically populates as a project in Hive. Each project shows which facility the request came from, which department it’s in, the name of the project, the day it needs to be done by, and the person or leader who has requested it. 

“Because our team is very creative, we are more likely to forget things. Hive handles it for us, so we can focus on our actual work.” – Matthew House

The team has also created templates for the most common requests they encounter, including print, photography, or video projects. With the click of a button, these templates help the team group the task into its appropriate bucket and give it a deadline fitting for that type of work.

3. Creative work is delivered with another Form for feedback.

The team utilizes Hive Forms after the project is completed as well. If it’s a printed item, the team will drop another business card in the box with the completed marketing materials. These cards include a link to a simple survey (via Hive Forms) with 3 questions asking the client about the finished product. It’s an easy way for the content team to ask for feedback and track it right inside Hive, without having to put in any manual effort. 

Representing creatives in the Hive Forum

But Matthew’s creativity doesn’t stop at the business cards. He is also sharing his ideas and thoughts as an active member of the Hive Forum community. When Matthew first found the Hive Forum by clicking into one of the in-app updates in the top right corner, he thought it was really cool that users can track when Hive employees start working on a feature and when it goes live. From there, he started submitting and voting on changes he thought would be useful for his team’s future. Today Matthew has voted on 37 features and submitted 2 of his own feature requests in the Hive Forum. The coolest thing? Out of those 37 requests, 25 are now live features in Hive. Now that’s what we call democratic software development.

In fact, when we spoke to Matthew, he mentioned that his team would greatly benefit from being able to export Portfolio view as a PDF, and had recently voted on this feature to be built in Hive. The feature went live less than one week after we spoke, proving that Matthew — along with over 100 other voters — truly can make an impact on the direction of Hive as a platform.

We know the future is bright for Matthew and his team at Texas Health Huguley, and we can’t wait to see what else we can build together. Next up on our list at Hive? Figuring out how to implement a QR business card into our internal operations. It’s just too cool!