Requirements import

Most teams don’t start from a blank slate — they have requirements in spreadsheets and documents already. The Import Center brings those in as governed records, so you start from the work you have rather than retyping it.

Tabular mode

When your requirements are in a spreadsheet — CSV or Excel — you import them in tabular mode. Each row becomes a requirement, and each column is mapped to a field on the item. This is the fastest path when your data is already structured as a table: one import turns a sheet of requirements into a set of real, versioned records.

Document mode

When your requirements live inside a document — Word or HTML — you import them in document mode. Rather than treating the file as one blob, the importer parses its structure to pull out the individual requirements, so a specification document becomes a set of discrete records you can trace, verify, and control. This is how you migrate a legacy requirements document into the platform without re-creating it by hand.

The import flow

Whichever mode you use, the import follows the same path: select the file, let the importer parse it, map the incoming data to the right fields, preview the result, and then commit. The preview is your safety check — you see exactly what will be created before anything is, so a mismatched column or an unexpected row is caught before it lands in the project.

Into governed records

What you import isn’t a copy of a file — it’s a set of full requirement records, each with its own identity, fields, lifecycle, and history from the moment it’s created. From there they behave like any requirement authored in the tool, ready to be linked, reviewed, and verified. The mapping step that makes this work is covered next in ReqIF & field mapping.