Before: four tools and a lot of messages
With more than 300 students printing every month, The Hive was running everything through shared network drives, an online Excel form and Slack. A submission could start in one place, get reviewed in another, and need a separate conversation whenever a student wanted to know how it was going.
Failed prints were the worst of it. The outcome and the student's details weren't part of one record, so letting someone know their print failed, and starting another attempt, meant piecing the context back together by hand.
After: one process everyone can see
Students now upload their sliced files in one place. Each job carries its print details and who it's for, and the lab's peer instructors review work in the same system that holds the queue.
Students check their own job status instead of asking. When a print fails, the result stays with the original job, and the notification points the student straight back to it.
What changed for staff
The lab has a current queue and a searchable history in the same place. Staff spend less time reconciling a spreadsheet, a drive and a message history, and the reports are built from the jobs that actually ran.
