The Scenario
You are a design ops manager. The product launch board needs to be set up in Basecamp before the kickoff tomorrow morning.
Your Excel workbook has 50 rows in the Board tab: each row has a column ID, a card title, a step title, a step assignee email, and a step due date. Multiple rows share the same card title, meaning each card has multiple steps.
The bad version of today:
- You open Basecamp, navigate to the card table, click "Add a card" in the first column
- You type the card title, open the card, add the first step, assign it, set the due date
- By card 6 you have lost track of which steps you have added
- You are still building the board at 11 PM.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook that reads the Board tab, groups rows by card title, and creates every card with its full step list in Basecamp.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
For each unique card title in column B of my Excel table, create a card in the column ID from column A, then add steps for each row with that card title using columns C, D, and E.
SheetXAI groups the 50 rows by card title, creates each card in the right column, adds the steps with assignees and due dates.
What You Get
Fully built Basecamp card table cards with steps, assignees, and due dates:
- One card per unique title — correctly placed in the column from column A
- All steps created — each row with that card title becomes a step
- Step assignees and due dates set — from columns D and E
- Confirmation written to column F — which cards were created and how many steps each has
The board is ready for the kickoff. No card is missing its steps.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Launch-planning workbooks are always shifting.
When step due dates are missing
A few rows have blank due dates because those steps are not scheduled yet.
Create Basecamp cards and steps from the Board tab: column A is column ID, column B is card title, column C is step title, column D is step assignee, column E is step due date. Group rows by card title. For steps where column E is blank, create the step without a due date. Write confirmation to column F.
When step assignees are names, not emails
Your workbook has first names in column D, not email addresses. The People tab has name-to-email mappings.
Look up each name in column D of the Board tab against the People tab (column A is name, column B is email). Replace the name with the matching email. Then create Basecamp cards and steps grouped by card title using columns A through E.
When some cards already exist and you only need to add steps
The card table already has some cards from a previous setup.
For each unique card title in column B of the Board tab, check if a card with that title already exists in the Basecamp card table for project ID 44556677. If it exists, add the steps from the matching rows. If not, create the card first, then add the steps. Write "created" or "steps added" to column F.
When step titles need to be generated from the card title and a category
Your workbook has a category per step (e.g., "design," "review," "legal"), not full step titles.
For each row in the Board tab, read the card title in column B and the step category in column C. Generate a specific step title based on both. Then create Basecamp cards and steps grouped by card title using the generated step title, assignee from column D, and due date from column E.
The pattern: one prompt, one board, fully built. Fifty rows, one instruction.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any card-and-step planning workbook, then ask it to build the Basecamp board for you. The Basecamp integration is included in every plan. See also how to bulk-move Basecamp cards after a sprint review in Excel or the Basecamp in Excel overview.