Building Smart Lists and Filters

Smart lists let you slice your full patient database down to exactly the group you need, whether that is everyone who has not booked in six months, patients with a specific tag, or anyone who came in through a recent ad campaign. Once you build a filter, you can save it as a named smart list and reuse it any time.

How Smart Lists Work

Inside the Contacts tab, every patient record you have ever added or imported lives in one master list. Smart lists do not move or copy those records. They apply a set of filters and show only the contacts that match, in real time. When new patients meet the criteria, they appear automatically. When a patient no longer matches (for example, they book an appointment and you were filtering for unscheduled patients), they drop off.

You can build as many smart lists as you like and give each one a clear name so your front desk can pull up the right group in seconds.

Opening the Filter Panel

1. Click Contacts in the left menu.
2. At the top right of the contact list, click the Filters button (it looks like a funnel icon).
3. A panel slides open on the right side of the screen. This is where you add, combine, and remove filter conditions.

Adding Filter Conditions

Each condition narrows the list by one attribute. You can stack as many conditions as you need.

1. In the filter panel, click Add Filter.
2. Choose a field from the dropdown. Common options include:
   • Tag - match patients who have (or do not have) a specific tag
   • Last Activity - filter by how recently a patient had any contact with your practice
   • Date Added - useful for isolating a recent intake window
   • Source - see which patients came from your website form, a campaign, or a manual entry
   • Custom Fields - any fields your team has created, such as insurance type, preferred provider, or referral source
   • Contact Status - active, unsubscribed, or do-not-contact
3. Set the condition logic. Most fields give you options like is, is not, contains, is before, or is after, depending on the field type.
4. Enter or select the value. For date fields, pick a specific date or use a relative option like 30 days ago.
5. Repeat steps 1 through 4 to add more conditions. By default, all conditions must be true (AND logic) for a patient to appear in the list.

Saving a Smart List

Once your filters show the right group of patients, save the view so you can return to it without rebuilding the filters.

1. With your filters applied, click Save as Smart List near the top of the filter panel.
2. Type a descriptive name, for example Inactive 6 Months or Implant Inquiries.
3. Click Save. The new list now appears in the left sidebar under Smart Lists so anyone on your team can open it with one click.

Editing or Deleting a Smart List

1. Click the smart list name in the sidebar to open it.
2. Open the Filters panel and adjust any condition as needed.
3. Click Update Smart List to save the changes, or click the three-dot menu next to the list name and choose Delete to remove it entirely.

Putting Smart Lists to Work

Smart lists are most useful when paired with an action. A few practical examples your front desk or practice owner might use:

• Build a list of patients tagged New Patient who were added in the last 30 days, then send them a welcome text through a campaign.
• Filter for patients with no activity in the past year to identify who to reach out to for a reactivation push. See reactivating old patients for how to follow through.
• Use a custom field filter to pull everyone who mentioned a specific service (like teeth whitening or implants) so you can send a targeted message.
• Combine a tag filter with a date filter to see everyone from a recent campaign who has not yet booked an appointment, then take bulk actions like sending a follow-up text to the whole group at once.

Once you have your list, you may also want to export the filtered contacts to a spreadsheet for reporting or to hand off to another team member. For a broader look at how all the pieces of your contact database fit together, start with Contacts Overview.