Google Drive / SharePoint Linked Documents for Approvals
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Matt Matuszak
It would be amazing to have the ability for a shared Google Doc or Microsoft Word document to be linked in an action card's approvals rather than it generating a PDF for review with annotation. Our team would love to be able to link out to the shared doc from the approval in the action card, suggest any changes, and then return for approval/denial/request changes.
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Benjamin Britz
We were hoping the new Google Drive feature release for Approvals/Proofing would resolve this issue. Like many of the comments in this feature request, we want the ability to track changes natively in Google (Google Doc, slides, etc), but track approval requests and sign-offs in Hive. For our company, we are unable to store most of our documents in Hive for data security reasons - so having a "pass through" to Google Workspace like when you normally link a file in Google Drive to Hive is necessary to use Approvals/Proofs for us. Creating a PDF from the Google Doc and uploading it as a proof to Hive (the new feature release) bypasses the security concern we were aiming to avoid.
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Maria Steger
Workaround for now: Ignore "Add Proof", attach document to action card and use approval rounds with attached document.
Caveat: Including external approvers only works when a proof has been added.
It would be amazing to have the ability to add a shared document as proof and to deactivate the Hive approval environment.
Kelley Bunge
Merged in a post:
Office 365 (and other cloud) integration
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Project Updates
Sometimes its preferable to edit the source document directly in word but having the document control of the review rounds is helpful. Allow the proofing function to "pass" the user through to a shared document in Office 365 while still working within the structure of review rounds. A similar approach could allow for Google docs or share editing in Adobe Online.
Kelley Bunge
Merged in a post:
Approval rounds with MS Office 365: request approval within Word / Excel, using Microsoft's "track changes" and "add comments" features + snapshots in Hive's approval tool
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Maria Steger
We work with MS Word documents a lot. Using Hive's inbuilt proofing tool means that we need to go back and forth between Word and Hive when applying requested changes and revising a document, which our team finds quite frustrating.
Using MS Word's inbuilt "track changes" and "add comment" features makes the feedback process so much faster and easier as users can either accept or reject proposed changes and do not have to copy them manually from Hive to Word. BUT it also means we can't use Hive's brilliant approval rounds process. Instead, we need to create our own approval process with "approval (sub)actions" as a work-around.
It would be wonderful if we could link (= attach from OneDrive rather than upload) a shared Word document and request changes and comments be made "within" Word.
In a perfect world, Hive would save a snapshot of the annotated version with the approver's comments and requests in the approval tool once the reviewer clicks either "Request changes" or "Approve". This way, we would have a perfect record of the process.
Kelley Bunge
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Sherry Shifflet
Yes! This times 1,000. We use dropbox rather than OneDrive, but essentially want the exact same thing. Having to take a PDF out of Hive and input the changes into word manually is not only incredibly inefficient, it introduces a human element and opportunity for error. Those two things are making it so that we think the "workaround" that we're going to employ is creating a "proof" of a blank document within Hive and use the first comment on the blank document to be the link to the dropbox article so we can use Word's track changes features. We'd like to be able to use Word for what it's best at for AND use Hive for what it's best at. We don't want to take our process for proofing back out into emails and attachments, but the inefficiency and opportunity for error of trying to correct the word portion of our workflow within Hive's PDF system just makes it a no-go. It would be great if we could just use a link out to the doc from within the proofing and approval rounds and indicate approved, or approved with changes from within Hive.
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Maria Steger
Sherry Shifflet: Your work-around is brilliant. Thank you for sharing.
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Sherry Shifflet
Maria Steger: Thanks! We were testing our workaround yesterday and so far it's working with our small team of beta-testers. We're not sure if we'll use this yet to send the word proof to the client before layout as it might seem a bit odd or confusing to them, but it should get the vast majority of our pre-layout proofing rounds to where we can just accept/reject changes in word. If you come up with any other tips or tricks going this route, I'd love to hear about it.
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Maria Steger
Sherry Shifflet: Hello Sherry, can you share your experiences with external approvers that are taken to the Hive Proofing environment, given instructions there and then click on the link to the Word file?
I think the Hive environment with the many tools may be rather confusing, which is why I added a request to deactivate or hide the tools / comments sections: https://hiveteams.canny.io/feature-requests/p/ability-to-deactivate-tool-kit-at-the-top-of-the-proof-area-with-numerous-editin
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Maria Steger
Project Updates
I suspect there might be many more votes if the feature request title specified that we'd like to have approval rounds with linked / attached MS 365 documents (rather than uploaded files).
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Josh Fuller
This would be quite a dream come true. Today my users are confused as to what lives in O365 versus what gets uploaded to Hive, often meaning we have different document revs floating around during audits. It gets messy real quick. If we could use document collab services to build documents and auto rev it, then use Hive for an approval tracking and record keeper with a hard linked connection, that traceability and clarity becomes best-in-class.
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Maria Steger
Would be AMAZING!