The Scenario
You're an agile coach who just finished a calendar planning session with a new team. You've got the next eight two-week sprints mapped out in an Excel workbook: iteration names in column A, start dates in column B, end dates in column C. The team's planning ceremony is in three hours and the iterations need to exist in Shortcut before anyone can start assigning stories to them.
The bad version:
- Open Shortcut. Navigate to Iterations. Click "Create Iteration."
- Type the name. Click the start date field. Use the date picker. Click the end date field. Use the date picker again. Save.
- Repeat seven more times. Mistype a date on iteration 5, catch it only after saving, go back and edit.
- Finish and realize one iteration name doesn't match the naming convention the team agreed on. Rename it.
The ceremony is starting and you spent the last 40 minutes clicking through date pickers.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Excel workbook. It reads the iteration plan and creates all eight iterations in Shortcut in one call — writing back the new iteration IDs.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Bulk-create all 8 sprint iterations from my Excel table in Shortcut with names, start dates, and end dates from columns A–C
What You Get
- A Shortcut iteration created for every row in the workbook
- Each new iteration ID written back into column D
- Any row where the date format was invalid flagged instead of silently created with wrong dates
- A sidebar count of how many iterations were created
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Dates are formatted as text rather than recognized date values
Before creating iterations, parse the dates in columns B and C — they're formatted as "May 18, 2026" — and convert them to ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD). Then create the Shortcut iterations using column A as name and the parsed dates for start and end.
Some iterations should be linked to specific Shortcut teams
For each row in this workbook, create a Shortcut iteration using column A as name, column B as start date, column C as end date, and associate it with the team whose ID is in column D. Write the returned iteration ID into column E.
You want iteration names auto-generated from the date range
For each row in this workbook, create a Shortcut iteration where the name is generated as "Sprint YYYY-MM-DD" using the start date in column A, and use the start and end dates from columns A and B. Write the new iteration ID into column C.
Create iterations and immediately add a description comment
Create a Shortcut iteration for each row using name from column A and dates from columns B and C. After creating each iteration, post the comment "Planned during Q3 kickoff session" on it. Write the iteration ID into column D.
The key thing is all eight iterations get created before the ceremony starts rather than during it.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open your sprint calendar workbook before your next planning ceremony, then ask it to create the iterations. See also Bulk Create Shortcut Stories From an Excel workbook or return to the Shortcut integration overview.