What a spreadsheet is good at
A spreadsheet is a good record of decisions a person made. It is a poor copy of data a machine can read. That difference decides what you keep.
The mapping, filled in
Northline Studio, one client sheet, 240 rows, exported and retired on 2026-09-26.
sheet column where it goes now
page url the work item, from the crawl
issue text the work item's change, kept verbatim
owner the person who decides
date raised the item's created date
date shipped the item's shipped date
notes the review thread on the item
impressions column dropped: read from Search Console, with a date
position column dropped: read from Search Console
rank column dropped: read from the rank tracker
status dropdown replaced by queue states
kept as history
- 240 rows exported to maintenance-history-2026-09.csv
- 41 open rows re-created as items
- 199 closed rows left in the export, not re-created
one column kept in a sheet
- "never doing this", 17 rows, with reasons. Reviewed twice a year.
The migration, in order
- Export the sheet, and keep the file where the client can reach it.
- Connect the sources before importing anything.
- Re-create only the open rows. Closed rows stay history.
- Run one cycle before adding rules or automation.
- Keep one sheet for deliberate refusals, and review it twice a year.
Acceptance: the migration is finished when
- the export exists and is dated
- every open row has a matching item, with the same owner
- no closed row was imported, and the count matches
- the manual metric columns are no longer maintained
- one cycle has run since the import
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Duplicate items after import | Two people maintained two sheets | Reconcile open rows first |
| Owners are unknown | The sheet used initials | Map each initial to a person |
| Items arrive with no context | The notes column was dropped | Keep the notes as the first comment |
| Someone keeps typing metrics | The old sheet is still shared | Retire it, with a read-only copy |
| The refusal list grows | Nothing is reviewed | Put a review date on it |
Limits
A migration cannot recover history the sheet never recorded.
If the client is attached to the sheet, keep it read-only for a quarter. The goal is to stop maintaining data by hand, not to win an argument.