The Scenario
Sprint planning wrapped this morning. The backlog lives in an Excel workbook — a table called "SprintBacklog" with 80 rows: 20 user stories and 60 subtasks. Column C marks each row as "Story" or "Subtask." Column D has the parent story name for subtask rows. The sprint starts tomorrow.
The engineering lead needs every item in Asana with the correct nesting before the afternoon kickoff. He was hoping to spend the morning on architecture decisions.
The bad version:
- Open Asana, start creating parent tasks for each story row.
- Switch back to the Excel workbook to read the next story name, switch back to Asana, type it in.
- After finishing the stories, start adding subtasks — each one requires opening the parent task, clicking "Add subtask," typing the name, setting the assignee.
- Lose track of which subtask belongs to which story on row 40 and spend 15 minutes re-checking the workbook to sort out the nesting.
The backlog exists in the workbook because that is where it was built. Manually recreating its structure in Asana is a translation tax the engineering lead should not be paying the day before a sprint.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook. It reads the "SprintBacklog" table, identifies parent stories and their subtasks, and creates the full hierarchy in Asana — correct nesting and all.
Read the Excel table 'SprintBacklog' — rows with 'Story' in column C are parent tasks, rows with 'Subtask' are children. Create all tasks and subtasks in Asana project [ID], linking each subtask to the parent task listed in column D.
What You Get
- Parent tasks created first, in table order
- Subtasks created and linked to their correct parent via Asana's subtask relationship
- A new column in the table receives the GID of each created item — parents and subtasks separately — for reference
- Any subtask row where the parent name in column D doesn't match a created story gets flagged with "Parent not found"
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Each row has its own due date and assignee that need to carry through
Read the Excel table 'SprintBacklog'. Column C is "Story" or "Subtask", column D is the parent story name for subtask rows. For all rows, use the name column for task name, assignee email column for assignee, due date column for due_on. Create stories as Asana tasks and subtasks nested under their parent. Write all GIDs back into a new column.
Some stories have no subtasks and should still be created
For each "Story" row in the 'SprintBacklog' table, create an Asana task in project [ID]. For each "Subtask" row, create a subtask under the parent whose story name matches column D. If a parent match isn't found, create it as a standalone task and flag it with "Orphan" in a new column.
Story point estimates are in column E and need to be set as an Asana custom field
Read the 'SprintBacklog' table. For "Story" rows, create Asana tasks in project [ID] and set the custom field "Story Points" from column E. For "Subtask" rows, create subtasks under the correct parent story and set story points from column E. Write GIDs and results into a new column.
Validate parent-child consistency, create the hierarchy, and write a summary in one pass
Before creating anything, scan the 'SprintBacklog' table for "Subtask" rows where the parent name in column D does not match any "Story" row in column A. List mismatches in a new sheet called "Errors". Then create all valid stories and subtasks in Asana project [ID] and write a summary to cell A1 of "Errors": total created, total skipped.
One prompt that catches structural problems in the backlog before they propagate into Asana.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open your sprint backlog workbook — ask SheetXAI to build the full parent-subtask hierarchy in Asana before the afternoon kickoff. You can also look at how to bulk-create tasks from a flat campaign plan, or return to the Asana hub for the full workflow list.