Key Concepts & Glossary

What This Is

A reference guide to the key concepts and terminology you’ll encounter throughout FSRevs. Understanding these terms will make every other page in this documentation clearer.

Core Concepts

Workspace

Your workspace is everything in your FSRevs account — it’s the top-level container that holds your entire business. Your locations, team members, customers, flows, forms, links, branding, and data all live inside your workspace. It’s where your team does their work, and where your customers go through the review flows and experiences you create.

When you signed up and chose a Workspace ID (e.g., came-co), that became your workspace’s identity — visible in your portal URL, your smart links, and everywhere your team and customers interact with FSRevs.

See Creating Your Account for details on setting up your workspace.

Locations

A location represents a physical business location or branch. Locations are the organizational backbone of FSRevs — almost every feature can be configured globally (across all locations) or scoped to a specific location.

Every FSRevs account has at least one location. One location is always marked as the primary location.

See Understanding Locations and Managing Locations for details.

Review Flows

A review flow is a multi-step experience you design for your customers. Despite the name, review flows are much more than just collecting reviews — they’re flexible engagement tools that can be tailored in many ways.

A review flow can include any combination of:

Sentiment capture — Ask customers how they feel about their experience
Review site links — Direct customers to leave reviews on Google, Facebook, or other platforms
Social links — Encourage customers to follow you on social media
Custom links — Send customers anywhere — a booking page, loyalty program, or any URL
Direct feedback — Collect private messages, suggestions, or concerns from customers
Photo collection — Let customers share photos of their experience
Employee attribution — Track which team member the experience was with

You design the flow, choosing which of these elements to include and in what order. The experience can be entirely about reviews, entirely about social engagement, a mix of both, or something else entirely. It’s up to you.

The customer experience does not have to stop when the Flow ends. Review Flows can use followup destinations that send customers into another Flow, a Custom Form, a Simple Page, or a My Link.

Review flows are also a powerful source of marketing and social content. With marketing consent, you can collect customer photos, testimonials, and stories — then publish them to your website through review widgets, feature them on your public page, or export them for use in social media campaigns and marketing materials.

See How Review Flows Work for the full guide.

Sentiment

Sentiment is a lightweight satisfaction signal collected during a review flow. It can be captured with the standard star widget or the Customer Recommendation Score widget, giving you structured data you can sort, compare, and trend over time.

Unlike written feedback, sentiment is fast to aggregate. Unlike public review behavior, it gives you an internal signal you control. That makes it useful when you want to better understand the customer experience across your business.

Sentiment can help you:

Compare results across locations
Spot patterns tied to specific employees when employee tracking is enabled
See which services, campaigns, or flow setups create stronger customer experiences
Identify which responses may need follow-up and which may be strong candidates for testimonials or public visibility
Build a simple internal benchmark you can review over time

Sentiment is most valuable when you plan to use it as an operating signal. It can help reveal trends, surface weaker experiences earlier, and show where your strongest customer outcomes are happening.

Just as importantly, it is optional. Every extra step adds some friction, so some businesses choose to collect sentiment for insight, while others keep the flow faster and simpler.

Sentiment should not be treated as a perfect grade for a location, employee, or service. It is a signal, not a verdict.

See Review Flow Settings Guide for the configuration options.

Employee Attribution

Employee attribution connects a customer interaction to the specific team member involved. When used well, it adds context that helps you understand not just what happened, but who was part of the experience.

That can be useful when you want to:

Connect feedback, reviews, and sentiment to the right employee
Support coaching, recognition, and internal follow-up with better context
Compare patterns across employees, locations, services, or campaigns
Understand whether an issue looks isolated or more widespread

Employee attribution is most valuable when the connection is accurate and appropriate for how the business actually operates. In some businesses, that relationship is clear. In others, customers may interact with multiple staff members, teams, or rotating roles, which can make single-person attribution less reliable.

That is why employee attribution is optional. The right setup depends on balancing three things:

Visibility into who was involved
Friction added to the customer experience
Accuracy of the attribution itself

Used thoughtfully, employee attribution can make customer experience data much more operational. Used carelessly, it can create messy or misleading data.

Employee attribution should also be interpreted responsibly. It is a useful signal for context, coaching, and recognition, not a perfect score for employee performance.

See Review Flow Settings Guide for the configuration options.

Custom Forms

A custom form is a flexible data-collection tool you build from customer fields, questions, uploads, and display-only content.

Custom forms aren’t limited to customer feedback — they can be sent to anyone. Use them for:

Customer surveys — Post-visit satisfaction surveys or detailed feedback
Employee forms — Internal checklists, incident reports, or performance evaluations
Vendor forms — Supplier questionnaires or procurement requests
Intake forms — New client onboarding or service request forms

Like review flows, custom forms are standalone experiences that can be sent via request or accessed through a smart link. They have their own followup destinations, so completing a form can lead into a review flow, another form, or any other destination.

Custom Forms and Review Flows can be combined into Customer Journeys — for example, a customer completes a Review Flow and then moves into a detailed survey Form.

See How Custom Forms Work for the full guide.

Smart Links

A smart link is a short, memorable URL that can point to one or several Review Flows, Custom Forms, simple pages, or websites. Smart links look like your-workspace.fsrevs.com/go/review and are one of the most versatile tools in FSRevs.

What makes smart links powerful:

Update without reprinting — Add, remove, or replace destinations without changing the Base URL.
Distribute visits — Rotate new visitors equally across several available destinations.
Track engagement — Compare Base URL, configuration, destination, campaign, and customer-outcome results.
Add reusable context — Give a location, employee, sender, or campaign its own saved configuration URL.
Multiple formats — Use smart links as a plain URL, generate QR codes from them, or use them in NFC tap-to-open experiences on phones and signage.
Easy to control — Enable, disable, or redirect any smart link instantly from the portal.

Smart links are the primary way customers access your flows and forms outside of direct email/SMS requests.

See Smart Links for the full guide.

Flow Activity

Flow activity is the record of every customer interaction with a review flow. Each time a customer enters a review flow, a flow activity record is created — capturing everything that happened during their experience.

From a flow activity record you can see:

The customer’s rating, feedback, and any photos they submitted
Which review sites they visited and interacted with
The employee linked to the request and who sent it
Whether the request was delivered via email or SMS, and the full message history — including any replies the customer sent back
A detailed activity log of every step the customer took through the flow
Any images or content the customer provided with marketing consent, ready to use in your campaigns

You can also reply to and edit feedback (with the proper permissions), toggle a review’s public or private visibility, and publish testimonials to your website through review widgets, to your public page, and more.

Flow activity data is fully exportable with powerful filtering — use it in your other systems, email campaigns, external software, or feed it into AI tools to generate social and marketing content automatically.

In the portal, you’ll find flow activity under Collected Data > Flow Activity. See Flow Activity for the full guide, including Message History and Activity Logs.

Form Responses

Form responses are the records of submissions to your custom forms. Each response captures the data the respondent entered, along with rich context about the interaction.

From a form response you can see:

The submitted data — all answers to your form’s questions
The employee and location linked to the response, if applicable
Which followup was shown and the observed Journey recorded after submission
Any images and content gathered with marketing consent — a great source of material for social media campaigns, marketing collateral, and contests

Form response data is also fully exportable with the same powerful filtering and column selection as flow activity.

In the portal, you’ll find form responses under Collected Data > Form Responses. See Form Responses for details.

Data Exporting

Both flow activity and form responses can be exported with extensive customization. Use the filter controls to narrow your data to exactly what you need, then export with your choice of columns — from core review data and customer identity to organizational context and delivery status.

Exported data can be used to feed external systems, power email campaigns, integrate with business intelligence tools, or leverage AI models for content generation and analysis.

See Exporting Data for a complete guide to filters, available columns, and export workflows.

Followups

A followup is what happens after a customer completes a flow or form. You configure the followup destination when building your flow or form. Options include:

A review or social site — Redirect the customer to leave a review on Google, leave feedback on Facebook, or visit any of your linked platforms. See Managing Your Links.
A simple page — Show a branded page you build through FSRevs, with rich content blocks, videos, links, and more. See Simple Pages.
A smart link — Start a new interaction or continue an existing Journey by directing into another Flow or Form. See Smart Links.
Any external URL — Redirect to any site on the internet — your own website, a booking page, a loyalty program, or any other tool you use. This is a powerful way to extend customer engagement beyond FSRevs.

See Followup Destinations for the full guide.

Customer Journeys

A Customer Journey is the path FSRevs actually observed across Review Flows, Custom Forms, Simple Pages, Smart Links, and My Links. You configure possible Connections through completion settings, Rich Editor Customer destinations, Link Lists, and Smart Link assignments.

The observed Journey on a Review Record or Form Response contains only the steps that customer entered. It remains separate from the possible Connections shown on configuration resources.

See Customer Journeys for routing, continuation, and timeline details.

Links connect your FSRevs account to external platforms. They’re organized into three categories:

Review Links — Platforms where customers leave reviews (Google, Facebook, and other review platforms)
Social Links — Your social media profiles (Instagram, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)
Custom Links — Any other destination (booking pages, loyalty programs, websites, etc.)

Links are used throughout FSRevs — in review flows, on public pages, in widgets, and as followup destinations. You manage them all from My Links in System Configuration. See Managing Your Links for details.

Customers

A customer is someone who has interacted with one of your flows or forms. FSRevs automatically creates and maintains customer records by matching incoming name, email, and phone information — you don’t need to manually enter customer details, though you can if you’d like to.

Each customer record tracks their full interaction history across all your flows and forms, making it easy to see the complete picture of their engagement with your business.

See Customers for details on viewing and managing customer records.

Message Templates

Message templates control the content of emails and text messages sent to customers when you send review or form requests. FSRevs provides sensible default templates, but the real power is in customization.

You can create custom templates for each channel (email and SMS) and for each type of message — initial requests, reminders, and form submissions. Templates support dynamic variables that automatically insert customer names, business details, flow information, and more, so each message feels personal even when sent at scale.

Templates can be assigned globally, per location, or per individual flow — giving you fine-grained control over what every message says and how it looks. Combined with automated reminders and multi-channel delivery, message templates let you build sophisticated, hands-off communication sequences.

See Message Templates for the full guide.

Team Workspace

The team workspace is a set of tools for internal collaboration — notes, tasks, issues, and reminders. Workspace items can be attached to customers, locations, or flow records, and can be assigned to team members.

Branding

Branding controls how your flows, forms, and public pages look to customers. You can set your logo, brand colors, and header layout. Branding can be configured globally or overridden per location.

See Branding for details.

Public Pages

A public page is a dedicated, search-optimized page for your business hosted on BestLocalReviews.com. Unlike simple pages (which you build yourself), public pages are designed specifically for maximum visibility across Google search, AI search engines, and AI assistants.

Public pages automatically showcase your collected reviews, testimonials, and business information in a format optimized for:

Traditional search — Local and organic Google search rankings
AI search and assistants — Visibility in AI-powered search results and recommendation engines
Image search — Optimized media presentation
AI training data — Getting your business reputation into the knowledge base of major AI models

Each location can have its own public page with customizable settings — control which reviews are displayed, show or hide reviewer photos, taglines, owner replies, and additional media. You can also feature your review and social links to drive further engagement.

See Public Pages for the full configuration guide.

Simple Pages

Simple pages are quick, easy-to-build web pages where you can publish content to the internet using your FSRevs branding. They’re commonly used as followup destinations after a flow or form, but they can also stand alone as shareable pages.

Simple pages use a block-based editor with several content types:

Rich text blocks — Use the Rich Editor for formatted content, Customer destinations, and images
Link list blocks — Offer managed Review Flows, Custom Forms, Simple Pages, Smart Links, or My Links as clickable choices
Video embeds — Embed YouTube or Vimeo videos
Click-to-copy blocks — Text that customers can copy with one click (great for promo codes or instructions)

Each simple page is branded to your business and can be assigned to a specific location. You can also generate smart links that point directly to your simple pages.

See Simple Pages for the full page-building guide and Rich Editor for formatting, links, and images.

Review Widgets

Review widgets are highly configurable snippets of code you can embed on your own website to automatically display your collected testimonials, stories, Q&A, and other customer content. When new reviews come in, your widgets update automatically — no manual work required.

Widgets offer extensive customization:

Two responsive layouts — Simple editorial stack or Cloud gallery
Filtering — Show reviews from specific locations, flows, or employees
Curated mode — Hand-pick and order exactly which testimonials to display
Display options — Control star ratings, reviewer photos, taglines, owner replies, additional photos, and more
Pagination — Choose simple or detailed pagination styles

See Review Widgets for embedding and styling, and Review Widget Settings for configuration.

Roles Overview

FSRevs uses a role-based permission system. The main roles are:

Role	Can Do
Owner	Full access to all settings, all locations, and team management
Full Access	Full access to all features within assigned locations
Proxy Sender	Send requests on behalf of others; manage flow data
Sender	Send and manage their own review/form requests
Employee	Appears in flow attribution; limited portal access
Data Handler	View and interact with collected data

Roles can be assigned globally or per location. See Roles & Permissions for details.

Portal Section	What You’ll Find
Collected Data	Flow activity, form responses
Team Workspace	Notes, tasks, issues, reminders
Flows and Forms	Review flow builders, custom form builders
Content Management	Public page settings, simple pages, review widgets
System Configuration	Review sites, smart links, message templates
Global Settings	Locations, team members, branding
Reports & Analytics	Dashboard and manager feedback report

What is FSRevs? — Product overview
Creating Your Account — Get started
Setting Up Your Business — First-time setup walkthrough