Smart Links

What Is a Smart Link?

A Smart Link is a reusable public URL that can open one or more customer destinations. Share its short URL directly, turn it into a QR code, or program the same URL into an NFC tag.

A Smart Link can:

Collect reviews through a Review Flow.
Open a Custom Form.
Redirect to a website.
Show a simple page.

Unlike a personalized email or SMS request, a base Smart Link is not created for one known customer. Tracking begins when someone visits it. Saved configurations can add reusable preferred location, employee, sender, and campaign context.

Create a Smart Link

Open Smart Links in the portal.
Select New Smart Link.
Choose its purpose: Collect reviews, Open a form, Redirect to a website, or Show a simple page.
Select the first destination.
Review the proposed URL suffix. Enable Customize URL if you need a different suffix.
Confirm the link is enabled and save it.

URL suffixes use lowercase letters, numbers, and dashes. Choose something short enough to type and broad enough to remain useful if the destination changes.

The chosen Flow or Form determines whether location context is available. A global destination can be used in more than one location context, subject to your access.

The Smart Link Workspace

Open an existing Smart Link to use three pages:

Setup — Manage the Base URL, status, destinations, saved configurations, and expiration.
Link & QR — Copy a URL and create a QR code for the base link, a configuration, or a custom context.
Analytics — Compare visits, destinations, configurations, attribution, and customer outcomes.

Setup and Availability

The top of Setup shows the permanent Base URL, primary destination, default location context, enabled status, expiration, and delivery readiness.

A link can stop opening when:

The Smart Link is disabled.
Its expiration date has passed.
None of its active destinations is currently available.
A configuration is set to show an unavailable page instead of falling back.

Changing status or expiration affects the Base URL and every saved-configuration URL beneath it.

Delivery Readiness

Ready means the link has an enabled route a visitor can currently open. Primary unavailable means the preferred destination cannot open, but another available destination may still receive traffic. Review the destinations list before printing or distributing the URL.

Manage Destinations

A new Smart Link begins with one primary destination. You can replace that destination or add more.

One Destination

With one active destination, every new visit opens it. Replacing the destination preserves the Base URL and retains the old destination in history for attribution and analytics.

Multiple Destinations

With multiple active destinations, FSRevs sends new visits to the available destinations in equal round-robin order.

The primary destination is first after rotation is reset and is used as the preferred fallback.
An unavailable destination is skipped.
A removed destination leaves the active rotation but retains its historical results.
A reactivated destination returns to rotation.
An unfinished Review Record or Form Response stays pinned to the destination it originally opened.

Equal rotation is useful for simple comparisons and distributing traffic. It is not weighted traffic splitting.

When an exact matching unfinished response is available on the same device, the visitor chooses Start a new response or Continue previous response. Prior answers and personal information are not displayed until Continue is chosen. A changed configuration, destination, location, Employee, Sender, permission, or availability rule starts a new response and leaves the older incomplete record unchanged.

Add a Destination

Open the Smart Link’s Setup page.
Select Add Destination or Distribute Traffic.
Choose an available destination.
Confirm any purpose or location warning.
Decide whether the new destination should be primary.
Save.

FSRevs initially recommends destinations with the same purpose. Adding a different destination type requires an explicit mixed-purpose choice. A destination from another location also requires confirmation because it changes customer attribution and reporting.

Make a Destination Primary

Use the destination actions to make an active destination primary. The primary destination does not receive a larger share during normal round-robin operation; it controls the starting and preferred fallback position.

Saved Configurations

A saved configuration is a reusable version of a Smart Link with its own suffix, such as:

your-workspace.fsrevs.com/go/review/front-desk

The configuration still belongs to the same Smart Link and uses its destination rotation. It can store:

Preferred location attribution
Preferred employee attribution
Preferred sender attribution
Campaign source, medium, campaign, term, and content

Configurations are useful for printed placements, employee cards, events, departments, or campaigns that need separate attribution without creating another Smart Link.

Create a Configuration

Open the Smart Link’s Setup page.
In Saved Configurations, select New Configuration.
Enter a recognizable internal name.
Accept or customize the configuration URL suffix.
Add the location, employee, sender, or campaign values you need.
Choose what should happen if the configuration becomes unavailable.
Save and test the configuration URL.

A configuration stores preferred context, not unconditional overrides. FSRevs selects the destination first, then evaluates each preferred value independently against that destination’s current settings.

A Review Flow or Custom Form assigned to a location keeps that location.
A global Review Flow or Custom Form uses a valid preferred location.
Website redirects and simple pages do not use location, employee, or sender context.
A value that does not apply remains stored. It may apply to another destination in the rotation or become usable after destination settings change.

Mixed-location and mixed-purpose rotation is supported. For example, a configuration that prefers Location B opens a fixed Location A flow at Location A, a fixed Location B flow at Location B, and a global flow at Location B.

If a saved employee or sender is no longer valid for a destination, FSRevs may ignore that part of the context while preserving the rest of the valid configuration.

Employee and Sender Rules

Review Flows apply a preferred employee according to their team-member attribution setting:

Review Flow setting	Preferred employee behavior
No team-member attribution	Not applied or persisted.
Customer chooses from photo cards	Preselected when eligible; the customer may change or clear it.
Customer chooses from a list	Preselected when eligible; the customer may change or clear it.
Sender selects; customer cannot change	Applied as locked attribution when eligible.

Custom Forms currently have no public employee selector, so an eligible preferred employee is applied as locked attribution.

Employee eligibility is checked after location is resolved. If the customer changes location, an ineligible employee is cleared. An explicit customer choice or clear is not silently replaced by the preference.

Sender is separate from Employee. A preferred sender is applied when that person may send for the effective location. Without a location, the sender must have global sender permission. Customers cannot change Sender attribution.

Saved and One-Time Context

Destination requirements are evaluated first. A non-empty saved value takes precedence over the matching one-time l, e, or s URL value. If that saved value is incompatible, FSRevs disregards it for the selected destination rather than replacing it with the one-time value. When the saved field is empty, a valid one-time value may apply.

Normal Smart Link defaults, explicit Journey location context, and customer selection continue at their usual precedence when no compatible saved or one-time value applies. Customer input wins only where the selected destination allows the customer to choose.

Use View effective settings from a configuration’s actions to troubleshoot mixed rotation. It shows the stored preferences and the expected result for every active destination without advancing rotation, recording a visit, or creating a customer record. The preview represents a clean configuration URL opening; one-time query context and Journey continuation are not simulated.

Configuration Status

Status	What a visitor sees
Active	Supported preferred context is applied independently to the selected destination and the Smart Link routes normally.
Disabled	The configuration stops applying its context. It either falls back to the Base URL or shows the unavailable page, according to its setting.
Retired	The configuration remains available for history and analytics but no longer applies its context. It uses the same configured fallback behavior.

You can copy, open, create a QR code for, edit, clone, disable, enable, retire, or restore a configuration from its actions.

Fallback or Unavailable Page

Choose one behavior for a disabled, retired, or otherwise unavailable configuration:

Fall back to base link — Ignore saved preferred context and campaign values, then use Base Smart Link destination and context behavior. The known configuration remains identifiable in analytics and in-progress result routing.
Stop with unavailable message — Stop instead of opening a different context.

Use fallback for optional campaign attribution. Use the unavailable page when opening without the promised employee, sender, or location context would be misleading.

Change or Remove a Destination Safely

Before changing live routing:

Review the destination’s status and recent traffic.
Open the Base URL and important configuration URLs in a private browser window.
Check whether active print materials promise a particular experience.
Make the destination change.
Test the Base URL, each important configuration, and every important customer path again.

Changing destinations does not change the Base URL. Changing the base or configuration suffix does.

QR Codes and NFC

Open Link & QR to make a QR code for:

The Base Smart Link.
A saved configuration.
A one-time custom location, employee, or sender context.

Design controls apply to the download rather than the underlying link. See Smart Link QR Codes & NFC for logo, color, contrast, resolution, SVG, print-testing, and NFC guidance.

Analytics

The Analytics page separates Base URL and saved-configuration traffic, retains destination history, and reports customer outcomes appropriate to each destination type.

See Smart Link Analytics for date ranges, configuration comparisons, campaign attribution, and metric definitions.

Common Uses

Put one Base URL on permanent signage, then update its destinations without reprinting.
Give each employee a saved configuration for accurate attribution.
Create separate campaign configurations for receipts, table tents, and social posts.
Rotate between two Review Flows or Forms while retaining destination-level results.
Use a hard-stop configuration for a time-limited event where fallback would be confusing.

Troubleshooting

The Link Shows an Unavailable Page

Check the Smart Link’s enabled status and expiration, then confirm that at least one active destination can accept new visits. For a configuration URL, also check its status and unavailable behavior.

Visits Open an Unexpected Destination

The link may have multiple active destinations. Review the rotation, primary destination, and availability of each destination. Remember that an in-progress Review Record or Form Response remains pinned to its original destination.

Attribution Is Missing

Confirm that the visitor used the configuration URL rather than the Base URL and open View effective settings. Check the selected destination’s fixed/global location behavior, employee-attribution mode, and current Employee or Sender eligibility.

An Old QR Code No Longer Works

Check whether the Base URL or configuration suffix was edited after the QR code was created. QR design changes do not affect routing, but changing the encoded URL does.

A Smart Link Was Pasted into Customer Content

A pasted Smart Link remains an ordinary web link until you deliberately convert it. When FSRevs shows Smart Link detected, open Link, choose Customer destination, and select the Smart Link. See Pasting a Smart Link.