The Scenario
You are a demand generation manager. Next Monday is a company-wide blackout week — no outreach, no sequence emails, no LinkedIn touches. Product is doing a major launch and leadership does not want any sales noise during it.
You have six Reply.io sequences that need to be paused by Friday EOD. Your Google Sheet lists them in column A and their desired state in column B: 'pause' for the ones going on hold, 'start' for the two that were already paused and need to be live for the post-launch push.
The bad version:
- Open Reply.io, go to the Sequences tab
- Find the first sequence on the list
- Click the three-dot menu, click Pause
- Go back to the Sequences tab, find the next one
- Repeat
- Accidentally pause the wrong sequence because two have similar names
- One sequence keeps running through the blackout because you confused the name
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your spreadsheet that reads the sequence control list and applies every start or pause action in one pass.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Read the SequenceControl sheet where column A is sequence name and column B is 'start' or 'pause', then start or pause each Reply.io sequence accordingly and log the result in column C.
SheetXAI reads the list, looks up each sequence by name in Reply.io, applies the start or pause action, and writes 'paused', 'started', or the error into column C. Six sequences. One prompt. Done.
What You Get
A completed sequence control run with column C showing the outcome per row:
- 'paused' — the sequence was active and is now paused
- 'started' — the sequence was paused and is now running
- 'already in that state' — the sequence was already at the requested state, no change made
- Error message — if the sequence name did not match exactly
Every action is logged per row. If one sequence name did not match — because of a trailing space or a slight name variation — you see the error immediately and can fix it before the blackout starts.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Sequence control lists change close to the deadline. SheetXAI handles edge cases in the same prompt.
When sequence names are approximate
You typed the names from memory and are not sure they match exactly.
For each row in the SequenceControl sheet, search Reply.io for sequences whose names contain the text in column A. If exactly one match is found, apply the start/pause action from column B. If multiple matches are found, write all matching names in column C and take no action. Log results per row.
When some sequences should only be paused if they have active contacts
You do not want to pause a sequence that nobody is currently enrolled in — it will restart cleanly after the blackout without any action needed.
For each row in the SequenceControl sheet where column B is 'pause', check how many contacts are actively enrolled in that Reply.io sequence. If the count is greater than zero, pause the sequence and log 'paused — N contacts held' in column C. If the count is zero, write 'skipped — no active contacts' in column C.
When you need to schedule the pause, not apply it immediately
The blackout starts Monday but you need to set up the pauses now, on Thursday, for an automated run over the weekend.
For each row in the SequenceControl sheet where column B is 'pause', log the sequence name and planned pause date in column C. Do not apply the pause yet — write 'scheduled' in column D as a flag so I can confirm and run the actual pause command on Sunday.
When a post-blackout re-start list needs to be generated
You want to document which sequences to restart after the blackout, so the Monday re-activation is a single prompt run.
Pause all sequences in the SequenceControl sheet where column B is 'pause'. Log the result in column C. Then write a second list below the paused sequences showing the sequence names that were successfully paused, with column B set to 'start', so I can use that list to restart them after the blackout.
The pattern: instead of hunting through the Reply.io UI sequence by sequence, you maintain the control list in the sheet and apply changes in one prompt.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any sheet with a list of sequence names and desired states, then ask it to apply the changes in Reply.io. The Reply.io integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related workflows, see how to bulk-update contact statuses from a sheet or the Reply.io in Google Sheets overview.