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Community Surveys

A complete survey platform for Joomla. Build surveys with 30+ question types, distribute them by link or email campaign, collect responses, and analyse the results — all from a single admin workspace inside your Joomla install.

Community Surveys 8 is a ground-up rebuild of the legacy 7.x branch. The admin runs as a single-page application inside Joomla's administrator area; survey responses still live in your own database, your branding stays consistent, and nothing leaves your site unless you wire up an integration that says otherwise.

What you can do with it​

  • Author surveys visually with a drag-and-drop builder, 30+ question types (choice, grid, NPS, slider, file upload, signature, location, …), conditional logic, multi-page flow, and live mobile/desktop preview.
  • Theme every survey to match your brand. Pick from a library of pre-built themes, tweak per-survey colour and typography overrides, or author your own theme from scratch in the Theming page.
  • Translate into any Joomla content language. The translation editor sits side-by-side with the source survey so you can see exactly what you're translating.
  • Distribute four ways: public link, Joomla menu item, embed in a Joomla article, or invite-only campaign emails sent to your contacts.
  • Manage contacts — import from CSV, organise into groups, send targeted invitations. Each admin only sees their own contacts (strict per-user isolation).
  • Customise transactional emails — every notification (invitation, reminder, response receipt, survey published, …) ships as a template with live preview and a brand-driven header/footer.
  • Analyse responses with a five-tab analytics dashboard: KPIs and timelines on Overview, per-question drill-downs and free-text browsing on By Question, breakdowns by completion/duration/language on Segments, two-question matrices on Cross-tab, and a full responses table with per-row PDF + bulk CSV export on Responses.
  • Integrate with the rest of your stack via the integration framework. Built-in adapters for Webhook, Slack, Google Sheets, and AcyMailing; third-party adapters can be added via Joomla plugins.
  • AI-assisted authoring (optional) — when connected to a shondalai.com account, the builder offers one-click question generation, answer suggestions, and bulk translation.

What's different in v8​

If you're upgrading from 7.x, the headlines:

  • The admin is a modern single-page app — every action is faster, every screen has a global search, and form errors surface inline instead of as page-reload toasts.
  • The survey builder is fully visual. No more "build the survey, then theme it, then test it" cycle — the preview updates as you author.
  • Analytics ships out of the box (no add-on required).
  • Email templates are admin-editable with a live preview iframe.
  • Integrations use a pluggable framework — the old hard-coded Google Sheets and AcyMailing handlers have been replaced with adapter classes that share a common contract, with new adapters (Slack, Webhook) added in v8 and the door open for third-party plugin contributions.
  • A new "Responses" table per survey lets you browse, view, delete, and export individual responses or the whole set as CSV.

Getting started​

If this is your first install, start with Installation & Configuration, then the Quick Start Guide.

Already running 7.x? The installer detects your existing data and migrates it forward — all surveys, questions, responses, contacts, and email templates transfer cleanly. Read the Admin Tour to learn where your familiar features moved.

Documentation map​

  • Getting started — install the extension, take the admin tour, build your first survey.
  • Creating surveys — the builder, themes, question types, logic, translations.
  • Distribution — public links, menu items, embedded articles, invitation campaigns.
  • Contacts & email — the contacts page, contact groups, email templates.
  • Analytics & reports — the five-tab analytics page, response browsing, CSV export.
  • Integrations — the framework overview plus per-adapter guides (Webhook, Slack, Google Sheets, AcyMailing).
  • Configuration — every setting documented, including the one-time Google OAuth setup.
  • Advanced — extending Community Surveys with plugins, custom adapters, custom themes.
  • Help & support — FAQs, changelog, support channels.