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Hollie C.
Active Advisor I
Hollie C.
Active Advisor I
Oct 28, 2026 6:20 PM UTC
Question

Smart List Field vs. Form Linking

I’m wondering if anyone has experience using Smart List fields versus linking forms and could share some insights!

We currently maintain a master list of schools that participants can enroll in. To track enrollment, we use a linking field on a Tier 2 form under each participant’s profile called “Education Outcomes.” This form links to a separate Tier 1 form called “Schools,” which essentially serves as a profile for each school participants can enroll in.

I’m working on building a new system, and it seems like using a Smart List field that pulls from the Name field on the “Schools” Tier 1 form might be a simpler approach.

Is there any reason to keep the current setup as a linking field rather than switching to a Smart List? The only real reason to keep it as a linking field that I can come up with is if we might need to pull additional information from the “Schools” form for reporting purposes, which could make maintaining the link more useful.

I’d love to hear from anyone who has experience with Smart List fields and can share the pros and cons of each approach. Thanks!

 

Also, just as a sidenote for Bonterra staff: It still asks if this is a product question or discussion question when creating a topic, which I don’t think is applicable anymore, due to recent changes to the site. It might make sense to edit the “Create new topic” page, since things have changed! (:

1 reply

Naomi Katz
Active Advisor I
Naomi Katz
Active Advisor I
Oct 29, 2026 8:30 PM UTC

Hi Hollie. We use the same system, a tier 2 linked to a “school profile” tier 1 with all the schools entered. I have 1 program that we tested smart lists with about a year ago so it may have improved since then. My experience at the time was they’re not super reliable especially if you’re on a slightly slower internet connection. This particular program was in Southern Delaware where the internet connection is not as fast. They had regular challenges with that one field type not fully loading so the benefit of a simple dropdown instead of a linking field wasn’t ultimately worth it.

I’m not sure if your staff are located in schools or not but we have a few programs where staff are in a school all week. They have not had any issues with connectivity and linking but we didn’t test the smartlist presets with them. They have occasionally reported slower internet / internet issues though. I just assumed this is an issue at most public schools due to security settings, old systems, etc.

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