The Scenario
You are a creative director. A new client project just started and the team will begin uploading deliverables on Monday.
You need 6 top-level vaults and 3 sub-vaults each, 24 folders total, in the new Basecamp project, named according to the agency's standard folder hierarchy. Your Google Sheet has the structure: column A is the parent vault ID (blank means top-level), column B is the vault name. The project ID is in cell D1.
The bad version of this Friday:
- You open Basecamp, navigate to the new client project, go to Docs and Files
- You click "New Folder," type the first top-level vault name, save
- You create the second top-level vault
- After the sixth top-level vault, you start creating sub-vaults, but you need to navigate into each parent vault first to create the sub-vault inside it
- On the third sub-vault, you realize you created it inside the wrong parent vault and have no "move" option in Basecamp
- You delete it and recreate it, and you are still on parent vault 3.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your spreadsheet that reads the folder hierarchy and creates every vault in Basecamp, top-level and nested, in the right order.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Create Basecamp vaults for each row in my sheet: column A is the parent vault ID (blank means top-level), column B is the vault name. Create all 24 vaults in the project ID in cell D1.
SheetXAI reads the sheet, creates the top-level vaults first, captures their new vault IDs, then creates each sub-vault under the correct parent. All 24 folders appear in the right hierarchy.
What You Get
24 Basecamp vaults created in the correct structure:
- 6 top-level vaults — created first, in order
- 18 sub-vaults — created under the correct parent vault, using the parent vault ID from column A
- New vault IDs written to column C — so you can reference them in future operations (adding sub-sub-vaults, sharing links, etc.)
The team opens Basecamp on Monday and the folder structure is exactly what the folder hierarchy sheet specified. No drag-and-drop, no recreating vaults in the wrong place.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Folder hierarchy sheets from previous projects or agency templates always need some adjustment.
When the parent vault ID column is empty for all rows because IDs are not known yet
You have the hierarchy defined by depth level (0 for top-level, 1 for sub-vault) and parent name, but not by ID.
Read the folder hierarchy in this sheet: column A is the depth (0 = top-level, 1 = sub-vault), column B is the vault name, column C is the parent vault name for depth-1 rows. Create all depth-0 vaults first in project ID from cell D1, then create each depth-1 vault under the vault whose name matches column C. Write all new vault IDs to column D.
When some vault names duplicate across different parent vaults
You have a "Deliverables" sub-vault under each of the 6 top-level parents. The names are the same but the parent contexts are different.
Create all vaults from this sheet: column A is the parent vault ID, column B is the vault name. Where column A is blank, create a top-level vault. Where column A has a value, create the vault as a sub-vault of that parent. If two rows have the same name in column B but different parent IDs in column A, create both. Write the new vault ID to column C.
When the hierarchy needs to be replicated from a previous project
You want to copy the exact folder structure from a previous Basecamp project rather than rebuilding from the sheet.
Fetch the full vault folder structure from Basecamp project ID in cell E1. Write the hierarchy to this sheet: column A as parent vault ID, column B as vault name. Then recreate that structure in the new project ID from cell D1, and write the new vault IDs to column C.
When you need the full vault URL for each folder written to the sheet
The creative team wants direct links to each vault folder in the handoff document.
Create all vaults from this sheet as before (column A is parent vault ID or blank, column B is vault name, project ID in cell D1). After each vault is created, write the direct Basecamp vault URL to column D. I will include these links in the client onboarding document.
The pattern: the hierarchy sheet is the single source of truth. SheetXAI builds the folder structure in Basecamp in one prompt, top-down, in the right order.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any folder hierarchy or folder naming sheet, then ask it to build the Basecamp vault structure for you. The Basecamp integration is included in every plan. See also how to create multiple Basecamp projects from a template or the Basecamp in Google Sheets overview.