The Scenario
Your agency just standardised on a 5-column workflow: Backlog, Design Review, Dev In Progress, QA, Done. Twenty new BugHerd projects were created this morning for the latest client wave, and every one of them needs those five columns added before the clients start submitting feedback.
Creating workflow columns through BugHerd's UI is a project-by-project operation. You open a project, go to settings, find the columns section, add each column one at a time, save. Then move to the next project.
The bad version:
- Open Project 1, navigate to the workflow settings, type 'Backlog', add it, type 'Design Review', add it — five times — save
- Open Project 2, repeat the exact same five column names in the exact same order
- Around Project 12, mistype 'Dev In Progress' as 'Dev In Progres' and not notice until someone on the dev team wonders why their filter isn't working
Twenty projects, five columns each. That's a hundred individual column additions, and the only thing stopping you from making a typo is that you're paying very close attention to a task that doesn't deserve that much attention.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Google Sheet. It reads the project list and the column configuration, then applies the columns to every project in one operation — consistent, no typos, no clicking.
For each project ID in column A, create the columns listed in the Config sheet (B2:B6) in that BugHerd project
What You Get
- Five workflow columns created in every BugHerd project listed in column A: Backlog, Design Review, Dev In Progress, QA, Done — in that order
- A confirmation written to column B for each project ID: 'Columns added' or an error message if the project wasn't found
- Projects that already have one of the column names are skipped for that column to avoid duplicates
- The column names come from the Config sheet, so changing the standard workflow in one place updates all future runs
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Different client types need different column configurations
For each row in this sheet, look up the client type in column B (either 'Standard' or 'Enterprise'). Apply the column set from the Config tab that matches the client type — Standard columns in D2:D6, Enterprise columns in E2:E8. Use the project ID in column A.
Some projects in the list already have partial column configurations that need to be checked first
For each project ID in column A, check which of these columns already exist: Backlog, Design Review, Dev In Progress, QA, Done. Add only the missing ones. Write the result to column B: list which columns were added and which were already present.
The column names need to be created in a specific order so they appear correctly in BugHerd's board view
Create columns in every BugHerd project in column A in exactly this order: Backlog first, then Design Review, then Dev In Progress, then QA, then Done. Write 'Done' to column B when each project is complete.
Kill chain: validate project IDs, create all columns, handle errors, summarise
For each project ID in column A: verify the project exists in BugHerd. If it does, add columns Backlog, Design Review, Dev In Progress, QA, Done in order. Write the result to column B: 'Columns added', 'Project not found', or a specific error. After all rows, write to cell D1: total projects updated and total failures.
The summary in D1 is the confirmation you need before you tell the team the new projects are ready for client access.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open a sheet with your new BugHerd project IDs in column A and your standard column names in a Config tab, then ask SheetXAI to apply the workflow to all 20 projects at once. Also see: Bulk Create BugHerd Projects From a Client Sites Sheet and the BugHerd hub.