Learn how to connect Hivelight to Smokeball to manage matters efficiently.
Hivelight is a productivity platform built for legal teams. With Hivelight, you can:
- Project-manage matters for your team
- Gain visibility on the progress of all matters
- Run dashboards to track KPIs, team milestones and urgent deadlines
- Create roadmaps to assign work to team members
Learn more about Hivelight on their website.
Connecting Hivelight to Smokeball
To get started with the integration:
- Log in to Hivelight or create a new account.
- Complete the verification steps to access your Hivelight account.
Once you are in, the Hivelight onboarding process will begin. - Select your Jurisdictions and Practice Areas and click Next.
- Select Smokeball from the list of practice management systems.
Alternatively, you can skip this, and Hivelight will generate an account with dummy data - matters, contacts, and users - so that you can try it out. If you selected Skip, refer to Connecting to Hivelight if the onboarding process was skipped below to continue setting up the integration. - Choose United States of America from the Smokeball hosting region list.
- Enter your Smokeball login details. Ideally, this should be a Firm Owner's credentials.
- Hivelight will now sync your data from Smokeball. For more information on what gets synced, refer to What data is synced to Hivelight? below.
- If you have a large amount of data to import, it may be best to leave the process running and come back to it later.
- Contact card imports may contribute to a long processing time (e.g. importing 8000 contact cards from Smokeball could take an hour during business hours).
- Sometimes, refreshing can keep the process moving.
- Once complete, a list of the matters you have recently viewed in Smokeball will be displayed on the screen.
- For each matter, select a roadmap to use and the most recently completed milestone in that matter.
- A roadmap is a set of one or more milestones with tasks under each, for the work that needs to be done to complete them. They help with documenting the progress of your work.
- Hivelight provides a library of roadmaps that you can choose from to get started. To see more roadmaps, remove the jurisdiction and/or matter type filters.
If you're unsure, use the 'General Matter' roadmap, which works for most matters. - Once you select a roadmap, click on Add. You can remove it and select a different one later.
- A roadmap is a set of one or more milestones with tasks under each, for the work that needs to be done to complete them. They help with documenting the progress of your work.
- Select the most recently completed milestone to indicate where the matter is up to.
- Select Import to import and sync the matter with Hivelight. If there are matters in the list that you do not want to import, click on the Ignore button for that matter.
- Once you are done with assigning roadmaps and milestones to your matters, select Show Matters to continue to the Hivelight app.
Connecting to Hivelight if the onboarding process was skipped
If you created a Hivelight account without connecting it to Smokeball (i.e. selected Skip during the step to connect Smokeball), your account will be populated with dummy matters, contacts and users.
To start using Hivelight with Smokeball for your real matters:
- Select the plus icon on the left panel in Hivelight to create a new workspace.
- Name the workspace and select Create.
- Navigate back to the previous workspace (which has the dummy data in it). Select the gear icon to enter settings, then navigate to Workspace > Danger Zone. Select Delete.
- Next, we will delete the dummy contact data. Select the Contact Card icon from the left panel.
- In the Filter search bar, type in the term 'dummy'. This will bring up all the dummy contacts. Select the three dots icon next to the contact's name and select Delete contact.
- Connect to Smokeball by navigating back to the Settings page and selecting Integrations from the left panel.
Importing additional matters into Hivelight
To import more matters into Hivelight from Smokeball, select Import matters on the top of the Hivelight app.
You can also import matters by navigating to Settings > Integrations > Smokeball menu.
Syncing a Hivelight matter back to Smokeball
If you create a matter in Hivelight, you can sync it to Smokeball by selecting the three dots icon next to the matter name in Hivelight. Then, select Sync to Smokeball.
You will need to validate the data entered in Hivelight before you can sync the matter to Smokeball. Complete these requirements and then select Sync. 
To view the matter in Smokeball once it has been synced over, select the three dots icon next to the matter name and select View on Smokeball.
Note: This will open the matter in the Smokeball Web App.
What data is synced to Hivelight?
When you connect Hivelight to Smokeball, the following data points are synced between the two apps:
- Matter Name
- Matter Type
- Whether the item is classified as a 'matter' or 'lead' in Smokeball
- Contact cards
- The role of a contact on a matter
- Matter Description
Important Notes:
- Changes to the matter name in Hivelight will not stick. Once you make changes to any other item on the matter, such as the matter description, the matter name in Hivelight will be overridden by what is displayed in Smokeball.
- Contacts created in Hivelight will sync back to Smokeball, and vice versa.
- Due to the nature of the integration, data may not sync if it does not match the logic in Smokeball. For example, if the role given to a contact in Hivelight does not match the roles that Smokeball allows in the matter type, then the contact will not be added to the matter in Smokeball.
- As a best practice, use Smokeball to enter all matter-related information. Hivelight is where you manage and coordinate what you need to do, and Smokeball is where you do the work that needs to be done.
Getting support for the integration
If you need help with the Hivelight integration, you can contact Hivelight Support via email at support@hivelight.com or start a chat from the bottom-right corner of the Hivelight app.