The Scenario
The merchandising manager wants 20 new smart collections live before the fall catalog drops. She's built a Google Sheet mapping collection names to their automated rules — tag-based, vendor-based, product-type-based. The sheet is organized, the rules are confirmed. What's missing is someone to create 20 smart collections in the Shopify admin.
That someone turned out to be you, two hours before the catalog launch.
The bad version:
- Open Shopify's Collections section, click Create collection, enter the collection title, switch to Automated, add the first rule field, set the condition, enter the value, save.
- Return to the collections list, create the next one.
- 20 times. Each one requiring title entry plus at least one rule condition plus a save.
The catalog page goes live at noon. It's 10 AM.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Google Sheet. It reads the collection rules and creates each Shopify smart collection via the API — titles, rule fields, conditions, and values — in one batch, without touching the admin.
Create a Shopify smart collection for each row in my Smart Collections sheet using column A for title, column B for the rule field (tag/vendor), column C for the rule condition, and column D for the rule value
What You Get
- A Shopify smart collection created for each row, with the automated rule applied exactly as specified in the sheet.
- The collection ID written back into column E once each is created, so you have a reference for further configuration.
- All 20 collections appear in your Shopify admin immediately and start pulling in matching products automatically.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Some collections have two rules and need to match all of them
Create Shopify smart collections for each row in my Smart Collections sheet — use column A for title — apply rule 1 from columns B, C, D and rule 2 from columns E, F, G (skip rule 2 if column E is blank) — write the collection ID into column H
The sort order needs to be set to best-selling for all collections
Create Shopify smart collections for each row in my Smart Collections sheet — use column A for title, column B for rule field, column C for condition, column D for value — set sort_order to 'best-selling' for each — write the collection ID into column E
Some collections already exist and should be updated, not duplicated
For each row in my Smart Collections sheet where column E is blank, create a Shopify smart collection using columns A through D — if a collection with the same title already exists, update its rules instead — write the collection ID into column E
Full launch prep: two rules per collection, sort order, skip existing, and confirm
For each row in my Smart Collections sheet where column H is blank, create a Shopify smart collection with title in column A — apply rule 1 from columns B, C, D and rule 2 from columns E, F, G (skip if column E blank) — set sort_order to 'best-selling' — skip if a collection with the same title already exists — write the collection ID into column H
Running the duplicate check alongside the creation means you can re-run the same prompt after edits without worrying about creating duplicates.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open the merchandising rule sheet before the next catalog launch, then ask SheetXAI to create all 20 smart collections in one operation. When the next seasonal collection set is planned, you'll use the same pattern. Also worth reading: how to bulk add products to custom collections, or the hub overview for all Shopify workflows.