The Scenario
You are a merchandising manager at a retail company. Engineering is migrating to a new Algolia index next quarter. The old index has 150 active rules: pinning rules, redirects, filter overrides. Before the migration, your VP wants to know which rules to keep and which to retire.
You have three weeks to review them. You need every rule exported to an Excel workbook, one row per rule, conditions and consequences visible. You have never called the Algolia Rules API.
The bad version of this week:
- You page through the dashboard rules section, 20 rules at a time
- You copy rule IDs and descriptions into Excel by hand
- By rule 50 you lose track of which ones you have already captured
- The dashboard list view does not show full consequence detail
- You click into each rule individually to read it
- By Friday you have 80 of 150 rules captured and the review timeline is already slipping
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook that exports every Algolia rule into the workbook in one go, no paging through the dashboard required.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Export all rules from my Algolia index 'products' into the Rules Export tab of this workbook with one rule per row. Include objectID, condition query, condition anchoring, and a plain-English description of the consequence. Sort by objectID ascending.
SheetXAI calls the Algolia Rules API, paginates through all 150 rules, and writes each one into the Rules Export tab.
What You Get
A complete rules inventory:
- objectID — the rule identifier for cross-referencing with engineering
- Condition query — what search term triggers the rule
- Condition anchoring — whether the query must match at start, end, or anywhere
- Consequence description — written in plain English so non-technical reviewers can act on it
- 150 rows — every rule, exported in one shot
Plain-English consequences are what make this reviewable. "Pins product ID 4821 to position 1 when query contains 'blue jeans'" is something your VP can act on immediately.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Rules audits usually surface questions the raw export does not answer.
When you want to tag each rule by type for the migration plan
Pinning rules, redirect rules, and filter rules have different migration paths.
Export all rules from my Algolia index 'products' into the Rules Export tab. For each rule, infer whether it is a pinning rule, a redirect rule, or a filter rule based on the consequence. Write the type to column E. Sort by type then by objectID.
When you want to identify stale rules that have not been triggered recently
Low-activity rules are candidates for deletion before the migration.
Export all rules from my Algolia index 'products' to the Rules Export tab. Then fetch Algolia analytics to find which rule objectIDs had zero trigger events in the last 90 days. Write "STALE" in column F for any rule with no recent activity.
When you want to find rules in the old index that are missing from the new one
The new index was pre-populated with a subset of rules. You want to find the gaps.
Export all rule objectIDs from my Algolia index 'products' to column A. Export all rule objectIDs from my Algolia index 'products_v2' to column C. Write any objectID in column A that does not appear in column C to column E and label it "Missing from new index."
When you want to re-import approved rules into the new index after review
You have finished the review. Column G of the Rules Export tab now says "Approved" for the rules to migrate.
Read all rows in the Rules Export tab where column G says "Approved." For each row, create a rule in my Algolia index 'products_v2' using the objectID, condition, and consequence from the workbook. Report how many rules were created successfully.
The pattern: export everything, review in the workbook, push only what you approve. The workbook is the review layer between the old index and the new one.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open a blank workbook, then ask it to export all rules from your Algolia index. The Algolia integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related workflows, see how to export your full Algolia index for data quality auditing in Excel or the Algolia in Excel overview.