Crisis Response

Crisis Response is a tool for planning, approving, and sharing a crisis communication protocol - a structured response plan you build in HIVE, get signed off by a final approver, and share with the people who need it. It lives on the Risk & Reputation screen, below the monitoring alerts.

Available to everyone - no add-on needed

Crisis Response is a standard feature, available to every company. It does not require the Risk & Reputation add-on, even though it sits on the same screen - you can use it whether or not monitoring is switched on for your company. Any team member can view crisis protocols; an Editor can create, send, and manage them.

Something you start deliberately

Crisis Response is user-triggered - you open it yourself when you need it. There’s no automatic trigger: a monitoring alert never starts a crisis response for you, and starting a protocol does not pull in an alert’s details. You begin with a blank, structured plan and fill it in.

Starting one

From your dashboard, choose Open risk and crisis response on the Risk & Reputation strip. That opens the screen - it doesn’t start anything on its own.

On the Risk & Reputation screen, scroll to the Crisis Management panel - “Take quick action with pre-set crisis communication workflows.” - and choose Start Crisis Response.

The Crisis Response Workflow opens in place, replacing the screen. Exit (top right) returns you to the Risk & Reputation screen at any time.

The guided workflow

The workflow walks you through seven steps, shown on a numbered progress rail across the top:

1. Define Situation - capture what happened, when it started, what triggered it, and whether it’s ongoing. On screen: Define the Situation - “Create a single source of truth for the crisis.”
2. Classify Crisis - tag the crisis category: Reputation, Legal / Regulatory, Product / Service, People / Culture, or External event.
3. Stakeholder Mapping - pick the groups affected: Customers, Media, Employees, Regulators, Investors, Partners.
4. Response Strategy - choose your overall approach.
5. Messaging - set your key message, what you can say now, what you can’t say yet, and the tone.
6. Channel Planning - choose the channels to respond on (Social media, Press release, Website statement, Direct Email, Internal comms) and draft a note, owner, and timing for each.
7. Approval - on screen, Approval & Responsibility: choose the Final Approvers (at least one is required), and optionally a Decision Owner and Spokesperson, plus any Additional Information the team or approver should know.

The one thing HIVE insists on

You can move back and forth between the steps, leave fields blank, and stop whenever you like - while the protocol is a draft, Save as draft keeps your progress so you can pick it up later, and it doesn’t need an approver. The one thing HIVE insists on is at least one Final Approver before you move on from the Approval step to the preview. Choosing Next without one stops you with Final Approver required - “Pick at least one Final Approver before continuing.”

Choosing the Final Approvers

The Final Approvers field on the Approval step takes one person or several - up to 20. The helper text under it sums up how approval works: “Required. Each approver receives the approval request when the protocol is sent. Any one of them can approve, and the first approval is final.”

• Pick contacts, contact groups, or both. Open Add approvers… and search contacts and groups in one list. Picking a contact group adds the people in it as individual approvers; changing the group afterwards doesn’t change who approves this protocol. Contact groups are set up by an admin in Settings → Contacts - see Contact groups.
• Each person counts once. Someone you pick directly and who is also in a picked group is one approver, not two. The label shows the running total: Final Approvers (N selected).
• Up to 20. A pick that would take the protocol past 20 approvers - a whole group included - is refused with “A protocol can have at most 20 approvers.”
• Any one of them decides. Every approver gets their own approval link. Whoever approves first approves the protocol for everyone, and nobody else needs to act.

The Decision Owner and Spokesperson are one person each, and either of them can also be one of the Final Approvers.

The lifecycle: draft → active → approved

A protocol moves through three states:

State	Where you see it	What it means
Draft	The Drafts list (with Resume / Delete)	Still being edited. Saved and resumable; not yet sent.
Active	An Active badge in Response Protocols	Sent for approval - waiting for one of the Final Approvers to sign it off. The line under the badge says who it’s waiting on (see below).
Approved	An Approved badge in Response Protocols	Signed off by one of the Final Approvers - whoever approved first - and locked (read-only). The row reads “Approved by [name] on [date]”.

A protocol ends at Approved - there’s no separate close, resolve, or archive step. To change an approved protocol you make a revision, which starts a fresh draft (covered below).

Who an active protocol is waiting on

The line under an Active badge counts the approvers who can approve right now - the ones holding a working approval link:

The row reads	What it means
”Awaiting approval from [name]“	One person can approve, and this is who.
”Awaiting approval from one of [n] approvers”	Several people can approve. The first of them to approve decides.
”No active approver”	Nobody holds a working approval link any more - for example because the only approver was removed from Contacts. Nobody can approve the protocol until you give it an approver again with Update (see Changing a sent protocol).

Sending it for approval

Once a draft is ready, you send it to your Final Approvers for sign-off - this is what moves it from Draft to Active.

1. On the final screen - Preview, “Review the protocol below, then pick recipients and send.” - check the protocol laid out in full, then move to the Send to card: “The Final Approver is included automatically. Pick any additional contacts to copy in.” With several approvers it reads “The Final Approvers are included automatically. Pick any additional contacts to copy in.”

2. Every Final Approver you chose on the Approval step is listed and included automatically. Add any Cc recipients to keep informed - optional, and as many as you like. Open Add contacts to copy in… and search contacts and contact groups; a picked group adds the people in it. Final Approvers are never listed as cc recipients. If a group you pick contains one, the group sends to fewer people and says why - for example “Leaves out the Final Approver, who receives the approval request instead.”

3. Choose Finish and send. A short Send protocol? dialog confirms who it’s going to - for example “Send this protocol to the Final Approver?” or “Send this protocol to the 3 Final Approvers and 2 other recipients?” - and notes “Emails are sent now and the protocol moves to Active status.” Confirm with Send.

HIVE then emails every approver their own approval link and every cc recipient their own view-only link, and the protocol moves to Active. You can’t send without a Final Approver - HIVE blocks it until one is set. If one of your approvers was removed from Contacts after you picked them, sending is refused - for example “The selected Final Approver is no longer in Contacts. Pick another approver.” - go back to the Approval step and change the approvers.

About the emails

The approvers and any cc recipients are emailed as you send, and the protocol goes Active straight away. HIVE can’t guarantee that every email arrives. If one doesn’t go out, the protocol is still Active and HIVE tells you who it didn’t reach, with a Resend for each (see If an email doesn’t go out). The emails go through HIVE’s own email service; optionally an admin can send from your company’s own domain, set up under Settings → Email. When they go from HIVE, crisis emails use HIVE’s main address, mail.hivecomms.app - the same one your sign-in codes use, and deliberately not the address newsletters and surveys come from, so a crisis message is never held back by what happened to a newsletter.

Crisis emails carry no unsubscribe link, and nobody can opt out of them. That’s intentional: the way to control who receives them is the recipient list itself, which your company maintains and can change at any time. Someone who has unsubscribed from your newsletters still receives crisis emails.

What the emails say

The emails are in English.

• Approvers receive “Approval needed - Crisis Response Protocol: [what happened]” with a Review and approve button. When a protocol has several approvers, the email tells each of them they’re one of several, that any one of them can approve, and that the first approval is final.
• Cc recipients receive “For your awareness - Crisis Response Protocol: [what happened]” with an Open protocol button. It tells them they don’t need to take action and ends “Open this link again at any time to see whether it has been approved.” - HIVE doesn’t email cc recipients when the protocol is approved.

If an email doesn’t go out

If any email doesn’t go out when you choose Finish and send, HIVE opens a list instead of its usual confirmation: Not every email went out (or No email went out, if none did). Each person is listed by name, marked Final Approver or Cc, with the reason if HIVE has one. The protocol is Active either way, and their link already works - “Their link works: resend it here.”

Choose Resend beside a person to email them the same link again. It doesn’t create a new link or change the protocol. The result shows under the button: “Link re-sent to [name].”, or “The email to [name] did not go out. Try again in a moment.” if it failed again. Choose Done when you’ve finished.

The same list opens after an Update whose approval email didn’t go out. After a share, the Add recipients dialog shows its own version - for example “1 email failed to send” - with each person’s address, the reason if HIVE has one, and a Resend beside each person (see Adding recipients later).

Resend before you close the list

Resend is only offered in these lists. Once you close one, HIVE has no other place to re-send an approver’s email, so resend it before choosing Done. A cc recipient can be emailed their link again by adding them in Add recipients.

Who gets it: the approver and cc recipients

There are two kinds of recipient, and the difference matters:

• Final Approvers - one or more people, up to 20, and the only people who can approve the protocol. Each gets their own approval link, and any one of them can approve - the first approval is final for everyone. Always included when you send.
• Cc recipients - optional, any number of people kept informed. They get the protocol to read but can’t approve it - their copy is view-only.

Everyone who receives a protocol gets their own private link to it.

When someone is removed from Contacts

Removing a contact in Settings → Contacts (an admin task) immediately revokes every crisis protocol link that person holds - approval links and cc links alike, on draft, active and approved protocols. So a cc recipient also loses read access to protocols that are already approved. A revoked link opens “Invalid or expired link”.

• Adding the same email address again brings the contact back, but not their links. To give them access again, send them a new one: an approver still on an active protocol gets a new approval link from the next Update (the confirmation names them), and a cc recipient gets a new link when you add them in Add recipients.
• A decision already made stands. An approved protocol stays approved and still shows who approved it, even if that person is later removed.
• An active protocol can be left with nobody to approve it. If the person removed was the only approver who could still approve, the row reads “No active approver” until you give the protocol an approver again with Update.
• A removed contact can’t be picked for a role. The pickers list only current contacts. If a workflow that was already open tries to save someone removed since, the save is refused with, for example, “The contact picked as Final Approver has been removed. Pick someone else.” When you open a draft or a revision whose approvers include someone since removed, a notice above the steps names them and says they “will be taken off this protocol’s approvers when you save it.”
• The recipient’s page names only approvers still in Contacts. In HIVE, Open protocol still lists every approver the protocol was set up with, including anyone removed since.

The confirmation you see when you remove a contact doesn’t mention crisis protocol links, so check your active protocols before removing someone who approves them.

The recipient’s link and approval page

Each recipient is emailed a private link, just for them, that opens the protocol on a public page - no HIVE login needed, so recipients can be people outside your company. The page is in English.

Each link is personal

A recipient’s link is tied to that one person, so it shouldn’t be forwarded. To give someone else access, add them as a recipient (see below) so they get their own link - don’t pass yours on.

The page shows the protocol under the heading Crisis Response Protocol, marked “Shared via HIVE”. What the recipient can do depends on their role:

• A Final Approver sees an action bar with an I approve button while the protocol is Active:

  • With one approver, it reads “You are the Final Approver.” - “Review the protocol above, then approve.” Choosing I approve opens a Confirm approval step: “This is final and recorded for audit. Once you approve, the protocol is locked from further edits.”
  • With several approvers, it reads “You are one of several Final Approvers.” - “Review the protocol above. Any one of you can approve it, and the first approval is final.” The Confirm approval step reads “This is final and recorded for audit. Once you approve, the protocol is approved for everyone and locked from further edits.”

  Confirming with Approve records the approval.

• Cc recipients see the same protocol view-only - no approve action.

If a link is opened without its personal part, the page shows “Incomplete link” (“Please open the link from your email.”). A link that has been revoked - because the person was removed from Contacts or taken off the approvers - or is no longer valid for another reason shows “Invalid or expired link” (“This link is no longer valid. Please request a fresh link from the sender.”).

When the approver approves

The first Final Approver to approve decides for everyone. The protocol becomes Approved and locks - no further edits. The page shows a green Approved by [name] banner, and back in HIVE the row reads “Approved by [name] on [date]”. The approval is kept on record for audit.

• Another approver who approves at the same time, or on a page they opened earlier, is told “Someone else approved this protocol first. Nothing more is needed from you.”, and the banner shows who approved.
• An approver who opens their link after the approval sees the approved protocol with the banner and no I approve button.
• An approver who approves again from their own link, in a second tab for example, sees “Your approval was already recorded. Nothing more is needed from you.”

Changing a sent protocol

To change an Active protocol, choose Edit on its row in Response Protocols. The workflow reopens with everything filled in. Once a protocol has been sent, Save as draft isn’t offered - a sent protocol can’t go back to being a draft. Instead, the button on the Approval step reads Update: it saves your changes and closes the workflow. The protocol stays Active.

Changing the approvers. You can add and remove Final Approvers here:

• Anyone you take off loses their approval link at once - it opens “Invalid or expired link”.
• Anyone on the protocol without a working approval link - someone you’ve just added, or someone whose link was revoked and who is back in Contacts - is emailed a new one.

When an Update is going to email someone, HIVE asks first. Update protocol? names them - “[name] will be sent an approval link.” or “[A, B and C] will each be sent an approval link.” - and notes “Emails are sent now and the protocol stays active.” Confirm with Update. When every email goes out, you’ll see “Approval link sent to 1 approver.” (or “Approval links sent to [n] approvers.”); if any doesn’t, the list from If an email doesn’t go out opens. An Update that emails nobody saves straight away.

Changing the content. When you change what the protocol says, its row shows Changes not yet sent (“This protocol has been edited since it was last sent. Re-share to notify recipients of the changes.”) until you next share it with Share. Changing only the approvers doesn’t show it - the new approvers are emailed by the Update itself.

If a workflow was left open on a draft in another tab while the protocol was sent from somewhere else, saving from that tab is refused with “This protocol has already been sent. Save your changes with Update.” Choose Exit, then Edit on the protocol’s row to reopen it.

An Approved protocol can’t be edited - make a revision instead.

Adding recipients later

You can copy more people in after sending - on an Active or Approved protocol, use the Share action in the Response Protocols list.

The Add recipients dialog explains who is already covered. On an active protocol with one approver it reads “The Final Approver receives the approval request and is not listed here. Pick additional contacts to copy in.”, and with several, “The Final Approvers receive the approval request and are not listed here. Pick additional contacts to copy in.” On an approved protocol it reads “The Final Approver is not listed here. Pick additional contacts to copy in.” (or “The Final Approvers are not listed here. Pick additional contacts to copy in.” with several). When none of the protocol’s Final Approvers is still in Contacts, it reads only “Pick contacts to copy in.”

Search for contacts or contact groups, or use Select All Contacts (Select All Matching while you’re searching), which adds to what you’ve already picked. The protocol’s approvers are never listed - not even inside a group you pick. Choose Send to [n] people: each person is emailed their own view-only link, and you’ll see “Sent to N recipients”. Anyone whose email didn’t go out is listed by name with their address, the reason, and a Resend. The dialog stays open until the send has finished.

You’re adding cc recipients only here. Someone who used to be an approver and is picked here gets a view-only link, never an approval link. To change who approves an active protocol, use Edit and Update (see Changing a sent protocol).

Revising an approved protocol

An approved protocol is locked, so to change one you make a revision. In the Response Protocols list an approved row shows a lock - “Approved - read-only. Use New revision to make changes.” - and a New revision action.

Choosing it asks “Create new revision?” (“This makes a fresh draft you can edit. The current approved protocol stays untouched.”); confirm with Create revision. HIVE copies the protocol into a fresh draft for you to edit and send anew, while the original approved version stays exactly as it was.

Note

A revision keeps the Final Approvers - they’re already picked when the draft opens (anyone since removed from Contacts is named in a notice and taken off when you save). It doesn’t carry over the cc recipients, so pick those again when you send the revision. Everyone gets a new link when the revision is sent.

AI “Suggest actions”

Suggest actions is an AI helper that proposes next steps for a protocol. It opens a Suggested next actions dialog: “One-off AI suggestions based on the current state of this protocol. Not saved.”

It’s assistive only - it doesn’t gate or change anything, it isn’t part of sending or approval, and nothing it produces is stored on the protocol. It’s available once the protocol has been saved, and it’s lightly rate-limited, so a burst of repeated requests may briefly pause before you can ask again.

Who can do what

Who can do what

• Editor - create protocols, send them (Finish and send), change a sent protocol and its approvers (Update), share them (add recipients), resend an email that didn’t go out, and revise them.
• Admin - manage Settings → Contacts and contact groups. Removing a contact revokes every crisis protocol link they hold.
• Any team member - view protocols.
• Recipients (the Final Approvers and cc) - act through their own private link with no HIVE account. Any one of the Final Approvers can approve, and the first approval is final; cc recipients are view-only.