Admin Tour
A guided walkthrough of every page in the Community Surveys admin. If you've used 7.x before, this is where you'll learn where everything moved.
The admin is a single-page app — once it loads, it never reloads. Navigate via the left rail; every screen has a global search and consistent toolbar layout.
Tip: press ⌘K / Ctrl+K anywhere to open the command palette. Search surveys, jump to settings, or fire common actions without leaving the keyboard.
The shell
Every admin screen shares three pieces of chrome:
- Top bar — workspace title, dark/light mode toggle, AI credits indicator (if connected to shondalai.com), notification bell.
- Left rail — the primary navigation. Collapsible: click the chevron at the bottom to shrink to icons-only.
- Toolbar — page-specific filters, view tabs, search, and primary action button. Sticky to the top so it stays visible as you scroll long lists.
Below those, every page renders its own content.
Dashboard
Your landing page. Three sections:
- KPI tiles — response volume, completion rate, languages active, integrations connected, all for the workspace's last 30 days.
- Recent activity — a live feed of survey edits, response submissions, campaign sends, integration syncs.
- Quick start — cards that link straight into the most-common next actions (create a survey, import contacts, configure Google integration, …).
The Dashboard is read-only — no edits happen here.
Surveys
The full survey list. Filter by status (Live / Draft / Closed), folder, language, or owner.
Each row shows the title, owner avatar, status badge, response count, last-updated date, and a small sparkline of the last two weeks' submissions. Click any row to open the builder; click the kebab menu for duplicate / archive / delete.
The top-right + New survey button creates a blank survey and drops you straight into the builder.
Builder
The five-tab survey editor:
- Builder — the canvas. Drag-and-drop questions, edit titles inline, organise into pages. Right rail is the question-type palette; selecting a question swaps the palette for that question's Inspector.
- Design — pick a base theme, override accent colour, surface tone, and typography for this survey. Mode-aware preview toggle (light/dark).
- Logic — conditional rules. "When question X equals Y, do Z." Z is one of: show/hide a question or page, skip to a page, end the survey, or require an answer. Build complex rules with nested AND/OR groups.
- Translations — side-by-side editor. Source language on the left, target language on the right. Translate every visible string (titles, descriptions, option labels, validation messages) without leaving the builder.
- Results — embedded analytics overview for this one survey. Useful while you're iterating — no need to switch to the Analytics page.
The top bar carries Preview, Publish/Close, and Delete actions plus a language switcher when translations exist.
See the Survey Builder guide for a deeper tour.
Responses
The cross-survey responses page (different from the Responses tab inside Analytics, which is scoped to one survey).
Two view modes:
- Individual — master-detail split. Pick any response on the left to see the full answers + metadata on the right. PDF download per response.
- Aggregate — workspace-wide rollups.
Filter by survey, status (complete / partial), search by respondent or response id.
Analytics
A five-tab analytics workbench scoped to one survey. Pick a survey from the top-left picker; tabs:
- Overview — KPIs, responses-over-time chart (daily / weekly / cumulative modes), per-question distribution snapshots.
- By Question — two-pane: question list on the left, full distribution / free-text drill-down on the right. Renders matrix grids for grid-style questions.
- Segments — completion-status + duration breakdowns side-by-side. Language section appears only when your responses carry language data.
- Cross-tab — pick two finite-answer questions, render a heat-shaded matrix of how respondents combined them.
- Responses — paginated list of every response with per-row PDF download and a top-of-page CSV export of the whole survey. Each row has a Trash button; bulk-select multiple rows for batch delete.
When you first open Analytics without a survey selected, you get a landing page with a hero greeting, recent surveys as one-click cards, and a feature preview grid.
See Analytics & Reports for the full reference.
Contacts
Per-admin contact lists with strict isolation — you only see contacts you created or imported. No admin (no matter their role) can see another admin's contacts.
Features:
- Add a contact — name, email, phone, company.
- Import CSV — paste a CSV blob or upload a file. Headers are auto-detected; you can map columns into name / email / phone / company. Duplicates (by email, scoped to you) are silently skipped.
- Contact groups — categorise contacts into named groups. A contact can belong to multiple groups.
- Search + filter — search by name/email; filter to a specific group.
- Bulk actions — multi-select rows to delete or move into a group.
The data is yours alone. The Contacts page is the source of the audience picker in invitation campaigns.
See Contacts & Groups.
Invitations
The outreach console. Campaigns + per-campaign recipient management.
The top stats strip shows campaigns / sent / opened / completed across your whole workspace. Below that:
- Campaign list (left) — one card per batch, with title, survey, send date, and progress chips (Pending / Sent / Opened / Started / Completed / Bounced).
- Campaign detail (right) — recipients table with funnel progress per row, send-reminder + delete actions per row, plus bulk-select for sending reminders or deleting recipients in batches.
The New campaign dialog walks through:
- Pick the survey (server-driven picker — scales past hundreds of surveys).
- Pick recipient sources — contact groups and/or individual contacts.
- Customise the invitation email — the wizard pulls the saved
invitation_sendtemplate, lets you tweak subject + body just for this campaign, and shows a live rendered preview. - Send.
Email Templates
Author the transactional emails that go out automatically.
Templates ship for: invitation, invitation reminder, response receipt to respondent, response notification to author, survey published, survey closed, survey new (admin notify). Each carries:
- Subject — supports
{{variable}}placeholders. - Body (HTML) — full HTML editor with syntax highlighting.
- Body (text) — optional plain-text alternative.
The right pane is a live preview rendered through the actual template engine, so what you see is exactly what will be sent. Brand colours, logo, and header/footer come from Settings → Email and are applied automatically; you don't reauthor them per template.
The variable picker at the top lists every placeholder available for the template you're editing.
See Email Templates.
Themes
The two-pane theming workbench:
- Theme list (left) — every theme available on this site, including the built-in catalogue and any you've created.
- Theme editor (right) — accent colour, surface tones, typography, button radius, and a live preview that updates as you tweak.
Themes ship in matched light + dark pairs — flip the preview toggle to verify both modes look right.
Use this page to set up reusable themes. Per-survey overrides happen on the Builder's Design tab.
Integrations
The framework dashboard. Two tabs:
- Active — your configured integrations across every survey. Per-row: adapter icon, label, sync status badge, last-sync timestamp. Click any row to open the configure pane with Settings / Activity tabs, Test connection button, Enable/Disable toggle, Edit, Delete.
- Marketplace — every adapter installed on this site, grouped by category. Click any card to open the new-integration wizard.
The wizard renders entirely from the adapter's declared config schema — you'll see different fields depending on which adapter you pick.
See:
- Integrations overview — concepts: adapters, events, retries, logs.
- Google Sheets integration — OAuth setup + per-survey config.
- Webhook integration — universal HTTP POST.
- Slack integration — channel notifications.
- AcyMailing integration — add respondents to mailing lists.
Presets
Reusable answer sets — e.g. "5-point agreement scale", "NPS 0–10 with labels", "common languages list". Once defined, you can apply a preset to any choice-style question (radio / checkbox / dropdown / image / rank / Likert / matrix) in one click from the builder.
Presets are language-aware: define answer labels in your default language and add translations for each enabled site language. When the preset is applied to a translated survey, the correct language version shows up.
The Presets page is a list + editor. Edit one in place; the preview shows how the preset will render as a question.
Settings
Site-wide configuration. Eight sections:
- General — workspace name, default privacy setting, response retention.
- Privacy — anonymous responses, IP collection, GDPR notices.
- Appearance — admin density (compact / medium / airy), default colour mode.
- Email — sender identity (from name + address), reply-to, brand colours, logo, header title + subtitle, footer text. Every transactional email picks these up automatically.
- PDF — paper size, orientation, header/footer for the per-response PDF export.
- AI — shondalai.com account connection, master toggle for AI features, per-feature gates.
- Google — one-time OAuth setup for Google Sheets / Drive integrations. 5-step walkthrough with deep-links into Google Cloud Console; once Client ID + Secret are pasted, every new Google Sheets integration becomes a one-click "Connect" flow.
- Developer — toggles for verbose logging, raw API access, dev-mode banner.
All settings require core.admin on com_communitysurveys.
See Settings reference.
Where things moved (from 7.x)
| 7.x location | 8.x location |
|---|---|
| Surveys → Edit → Questions tab | Builder tab (in the same builder workspace) |
| Surveys → Edit → Reports button | Builder → Results tab, OR Analytics page |
| Components → Community Surveys → Settings (system plugin params) | Settings page in the admin SPA |
| Database queries for integration config | Integrations page → marketplace + wizard |
email_templates PHP override files | Email Templates page (DB-backed, with live preview) |
| Contact import via custom plugin | Contacts page → Import CSV |
| Survey-published notification plugin | Built into Email Templates (survey_published_user) |
| Survey results PDF via add-on | Built-in; PDF download per response on the Responses tab |
| AcyMailing audience plugin | Integrations → AcyMailing adapter (framework-managed) |
Google Sheets via API key in configuration.php | Integrations → Google Sheets (OAuth via Settings → Google) |
Existing 7.x data migrates automatically on first run of the 8.x admin — no manual import required.