The Scenario
You are a project manager at a 20-person agency. It is Friday at 4 PM and the Monday kickoff call starts at 9 AM sharp.
Your sprint-planning workbook has 80 tasks in the Sprint tab, across 5 to-do lists, each row with a to-do list ID, task title, description, assignee email, and due date. The sprint is agreed. The workbook is finalized. The tasks just need to be in Basecamp before Monday.
The bad version of this Friday afternoon:
- You open Basecamp, navigate to the first to-do list, click "Add a to-do"
- You read row 1 from the Sprint tab, fill in the title, assign the person, set the date, save
- You do it again for row 2
- You rotate between five to-do lists for 80 rows
- You finish row 47, realize you added three tasks to the wrong list, fix them
- You are still there at 7 PM. The weekend is gone.
The fast version is one prompt before you close your laptop.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook that reads the Sprint tab and creates every Basecamp to-do for you, so you do not have to touch Basecamp's UI once.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Create Basecamp to-dos from the Sprint tab of this workbook: column A is the to-do list ID, column B is the task title, column C is the description, column D is the assignee email, column E is the due date. Create one to-do per row for all 80 rows.
SheetXAI reads every row in the Sprint tab, calls Basecamp's API for each one, and writes confirmation back to column F. All 80 tasks land in the right to-do lists before your weekend starts.
What You Get
80 Basecamp to-dos created and confirmed:
- Correct list assignment — each task lands in the to-do list whose ID was in column A
- Assignee set — each task assigned to the email in column D
- Due date set — each task due on the date in column E
- Confirmation written to column F — the Basecamp to-do URL for each created task
You did not open Basecamp once. The Sprint tab drove the whole operation.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Sprint-planning workbooks pulled from project tools are rarely clean.
When some assignee emails are missing
Half the rows have assignee emails, the rest are blank because resource assignments are still pending.
Create Basecamp to-dos from the Sprint tab: column A is to-do list ID, column B is task title, column C is description, column D is assignee email, column E is due date. If column D is blank, create the to-do unassigned and write "unassigned" to column F. Write the Basecamp to-do URL to column G for successfully created rows.
When due dates are in mixed formats
Some rows use "May 20," others use "2026-05-20," others use "20/05/26."
Normalize all dates in column E of the Sprint tab to ISO format YYYY-MM-DD, then create one Basecamp to-do per row using the to-do list ID in column A, title in column B, description in column C, assignee in column D, and normalized due date. Write the created to-do URL to column F.
When you only want tasks flagged as ready
The workbook has 80 rows but 20 are marked "blocked" in column F. You do not want blocked tasks in Basecamp yet.
Filter the Sprint tab to rows where column F is not "blocked." Create one Basecamp to-do per filtered row using columns A through E. Write confirmation to column G. For blocked rows, write "skipped — blocked" to column G.
When descriptions need to be generated from sparse notes
Column C has one-line notes, not full task descriptions. You want richer context in Basecamp.
For each row in the Sprint tab, read the short note in column C and write a 2-3 sentence task description including the goal, expected output, and any dependencies mentioned. Then create a Basecamp to-do using the to-do list ID in column A, title in column B, the expanded description, assignee in column D, and due date in column E. Write the Basecamp URL to column F.
The pattern: normalize, filter, and create in one prompt. Eighty rows, one instruction.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any task list workbook, then ask it to create the Basecamp to-dos for you. The Basecamp integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related workflows, see how to sync project access in Excel or the Basecamp in Excel overview.