The Scenario
You're the BI team lead setting up a new product analytics workspace in Metabase. The structure is already mapped: four collections and eight dashboards, two per collection, with names and descriptions in a spreadsheet. You know exactly what needs to be created. What you don't want is to click through Metabase's UI twelve times to build it.
The bad version:
- Open Metabase, navigate to New Collection, type the name, enter the description, save.
- Repeat for three more collections.
- Navigate to New Dashboard, type the name, select the target collection from a dropdown, save.
- Repeat for seven more dashboards.
- Realize the dropdown didn't highlight the right collection for dashboard 5 and you need to edit it after the fact.
Twelve creation sequences, one cleanup. The output is exactly what the spreadsheet already described — just slower.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Excel workbook. It can read collection names and dashboard names from the workbook and create them in Metabase in one pass — writing the new IDs back into the workbook as it goes.
For each row in Sheet1 (collection name in column A, description in column B), create a Metabase collection and write the new collection ID into column C
What You Get
- One Metabase collection per row in Sheet1.
- Named from column A, described from column B.
- New collection IDs land in column C for use in the next prompt.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
You're ready to create the dashboards now that you have collection IDs
Read dashboard names from column A and target collection IDs from column B of Sheet2, create each dashboard in Metabase, and write the new dashboard ID and URL into columns C and D
The IDs written by the collection-creation prompt feed directly into this one. Two prompts, full workspace built.
You need nested subcollections under parent collections
For each row in this workbook with a parent collection ID in column C, create a Metabase subcollection using the name in column A and description in column B, nested under the parent in column C. Write the new subcollection ID into column D.
Hierarchical workspace structures created from a flat workbook with a parent ID column.
You want to skip rows where the item already exists
For each row in Sheet2, check whether a Metabase dashboard with the name in column A already exists in the collection ID in column B. If not, create it and write the new ID into column C. If it already exists, write ALREADY EXISTS in column C.
Safe to run more than once without creating duplicates.
Full workspace setup in one shot
Create Metabase collections for each row in Sheet1 (name in column A, description in column B) and write new IDs into column C. Then create dashboards for each row in Sheet2 (name in column A, target collection ID from column B) and write new dashboard IDs and URLs into columns C and D. In Sheet3 write a summary: collections created, dashboards created, any failures.
One prompt sequence, full workspace, confirmation receipt.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open the Excel workbook where your new Metabase workspace structure is mapped, then ask it to create everything in one pass. Also useful: bulk-creating Metabase saved questions from a workbook, and the hub overview on connecting Metabase to Excel.