The Scenario
You are a design researcher. The cross-functional review session is Friday at 10 AM. You have fifteen research briefs drafted in an Excel workbook, the Research Briefs tab, with columns for Title, BodyMarkdown, and ProjectID. Each brief needs to be a Dovetail doc inside the Design Research project before the session so the broader team can read them in context.
It is Wednesday at 2 PM.
The bad version of Wednesday:
- Open Dovetail, navigate to the Design Research project
- Click "Add doc," paste the title, paste the markdown body, save
- Switch back to Excel, check the ProjectID for the next brief
- Repeat fifteen times
- Realize on the twelfth brief that the markdown pasted incorrectly and the headers are broken
- You spend forty minutes reformatting the broken docs instead of prepping for the session.
The fast version is one prompt and all fifteen docs are published before your next meeting.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook that reads each row and creates the Dovetail doc, so you do not have to open the Dovetail UI at all.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Read the Research Briefs tab of this workbook (columns: Title, BodyMarkdown, ProjectID). For each row, create a Dovetail doc with the Title as the doc title and BodyMarkdown as the body content, linked to the Dovetail project ID in column C. Write the returned Dovetail doc ID into column D.
SheetXAI reads all fifteen rows, creates one Dovetail doc per row in the specified project, and writes the doc IDs back into column D. Fifteen docs, ready before Thursday morning.
What You Get
Fifteen Dovetail docs, each inside the right project:
- Title — from column A
- Body — rendered from the BodyMarkdown in column B
- Project — linked to the project ID in column C
- Doc ID — written back into column D for reference
The doc IDs in column D let the team share direct links. Once you have the IDs, you can ask SheetXAI to generate the Dovetail URL for each doc and write it into column E — turning the workbook into a clickable directory of everything that was published.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Research brief tabs are drafted in a hurry. SheetXAI handles the content issues before the doc is created.
When some briefs have body content that is plain text, not markdown
Half the briefs were drafted as plain text in Word and pasted in. You want them converted to proper markdown headings and bullet points before they go into Dovetail.
For each row in the Research Briefs tab where the BodyMarkdown column contains plain text (no markdown headers or bullets), convert the body to structured markdown with a ## Summary section and a ## Key Questions section. Write the converted markdown back into column B. Then create one Dovetail doc per row using the updated body content.
When some briefs are missing a ProjectID
A few rows have blank ProjectIDs because the team has not decided which project they belong to yet.
For each row in the Research Briefs tab where ProjectID is blank, write "NEEDS PROJECT ID" into column D and skip the Dovetail doc creation. For all other rows, create the Dovetail doc and write the returned doc ID into column D.
When the briefs should go into multiple projects based on their content
Some briefs belong in the Mobile Research project, others in the Enterprise Research project. The assignment is not in the tab yet.
For each row in the Research Briefs tab, read the Title and first paragraph of BodyMarkdown. If the content mentions mobile, onboarding, or app flows, assign the brief to project 'Mobile Research.' If it mentions enterprise, admin, or API, assign it to 'Enterprise Research.' Otherwise, assign it to 'General Research.' Create one Dovetail doc per row in the assigned project and write the project assignment and returned doc ID into columns C and D.
When the team wants a table of contents doc created automatically after all briefs are imported
After the fifteen individual docs are created, the team wants a single index doc that lists all of them with clickable links.
Create Dovetail docs for each row in the Research Briefs tab (columns: Title, BodyMarkdown, ProjectID). Write the returned doc IDs into column D. Then create one additional Dovetail doc called 'Research Brief Index — Cross-Functional Review' in the Design Research project, with a bulleted list of all fifteen brief titles and their Dovetail doc IDs as a reference index.
The pattern: publish the briefs, create the index, hand the team a single link to the index doc. The session starts with context instead of hunting for files.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any workbook with research briefs, reports, or documentation content, then ask it to publish each row as a Dovetail doc. The Dovetail integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related workflows, see how to batch create Dovetail insights from a workbook or the Dovetail in Excel overview.