The Scenario
The team lead spent Tuesday's planning session identifying blocking dependencies. The result: a two-column Excel worksheet with 15 pairs of issue identifiers — the issue on the left blocks the issue on the right. Those relationships need to exist in Linear before engineers start pulling work.
The bad version:
- Open Linear, search for the first issue in column A, open the ticket, scroll to Relations, click "Add relation," select "blocks," search for the issue in column B, confirm.
- Go back to the worksheet, read the next pair, navigate to Linear, search again.
- Fifteen pairs. The "blocks" vs "is blocked by" dropdown is easy to reverse under time pressure. A single wrong direction sends an engineer down a dead end.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Excel workbook. It reads each pair of identifiers from your worksheet and creates the relationship in Linear — directional, accurate, and in bulk.
Create a "blocks" relationship in Linear between each pair of issue identifiers in columns A and B of this workbook
What You Get
- 15 blocking relationships created in Linear, each correctly directional — column A blocks column B.
- Pairs where either identifier doesn't exist surface as warnings.
- A confirmation summary with the count of relationships created.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
The relationship type varies by row
For each row in this workbook, create a Linear relationship between the issue in column A and the issue in column B using the relationship type in column C (blocks, duplicate, or related)
You want to preview before committing
For each row in this workbook, write a description in column C of what the relationship would be: "Issue in column A blocks issue in column B" — do not create any relationships yet
Duplicate relationships need to go both ways
For every row in this workbook where column C says "duplicate", create a duplicate relationship in Linear between the issue in column A and the issue in column B in both directions
Full dependency map with validation and writeback
For each row in this workbook: check that both issues in columns A and B exist in Linear — if both exist, create a "blocks" relationship and write "linked" in column C; if either is missing, write "not found" in column C
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any Excel workbook with pairs of Linear issue identifiers and the relationship type between them — then ask it to create all the relations at once. If you're also loading these issues into a sprint, the assign-to-active-cycle guide covers that next step.