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Quick Start Guide

Build your first survey in 10 minutes. By the end you'll have a published survey collecting real responses.

This guide assumes Community Surveys is already installed. If not, do that first via Installation & Configuration.

1. Open the admin​

In Joomla's admin sidebar, Components → Community Surveys. The first time you land, you'll see the dashboard with quick-start cards.

The admin is a single-page app, so once it loads the page never reloads — you navigate between Dashboard, Surveys, Responses, Analytics, Contacts, Invitations, Email Templates, Themes, Integrations, Presets, and Settings using the left rail.

Tip: press ⌘K / Ctrl+K anywhere in the admin to open the command palette. Type a survey title, a setting name, or an action to jump straight there.

2. Create a survey​

Click Surveys in the left rail, then New survey in the top-right.

You'll be prompted for:

  • Title — what your respondents see at the top of the survey.
  • Description — optional preamble shown above the first question.
  • Category — pick a Joomla category for organisation (optional).
  • Language — defaults to your site's default content language.

Click Create. The builder opens with an empty survey scaffold.

3. Add your first question​

The builder has five tabs along the top: Builder, Design, Logic, Translations, Results.

You're on Builder. The middle pane is your survey canvas; the right rail is the question-type palette. Drag any type onto the canvas, or click it to append.

For a quick start:

  1. Drag Short answer onto the canvas. Type the question title, e.g. "What's your name?".
  2. Drag NPS below it. Title: "How likely are you to recommend us?"
  3. Drag Long answer below that. Title: "Tell us why."

Each question has an Inspector panel (right side) where you can mark it required, add validation, change orientation, etc.

The canvas saves every change as you go — there's no Save button to click for question edits.

4. Preview​

Click Preview in the builder's top bar. A new tab opens with the survey rendered exactly as a respondent will see it. Resize the window to check mobile.

5. Style it​

Click the Design tab. The left side picks a base theme; the right side lets you override the accent colour, fonts, and surface tones for this survey only. Themes ship in matched light + dark pairs — you can preview both with the toggle above the canvas.

If none of the themes feel right, you can create your own in Themes (left rail → Themes) and pick it here.

6. Publish​

Click Publish in the top-right of the builder. The survey moves to the Live state and a public URL appears. Two ways to share it:

  • Public link — copy from the Publish dialog; open in any browser.
  • Joomla menu item — create a menu item of type Community Surveys → Single Survey and pick your survey.

Both routes hit the same index.php?option=com_communitysurveys&view=survey&id=X URL.

7. Collect responses​

Take the survey yourself (in a private browser window so you're not seen as the admin). Then return to the admin → Analytics.

Pick your survey from the picker in the top-left. You'll see:

  • Overview — total responses, completion rate, NPS, median time, drop-off, plus a responses-over-time chart.
  • By question — per-question distribution charts; for free-text questions, the actual answers.
  • Segments — completion status / duration breakdowns.
  • Cross-tab — pick two questions, see how respondents combined them.
  • Responses — the raw table; view any response, download as PDF, or export the whole set as CSV.

8. Invite people​

If you want to send invitations rather than just sharing a link, go to Contacts (left rail), import a CSV or add contacts manually, optionally group them, then go to Invitations → New campaign:

  1. Pick the survey.
  2. Pick the contact groups or individual contacts.
  3. Review the invitation email (the wizard shows a live preview; you can override the subject and body just for this campaign).
  4. Send invitations — the system queues + dispatches one tracked email per recipient.

Each invited recipient gets a unique survey URL. From the campaign detail you can see who opened, started, completed, or bounced, and send reminders to people who haven't started yet.

What's next?​

You've built and shipped a survey. From here, branch into whichever feature matters most:

  • Conditional logic — show/hide questions or skip pages based on earlier answers. See Conditional rules.
  • Translations — translate your survey into any installed Joomla content language. See Translating surveys.
  • Branding — customise themes site-wide. See Themes & customisation.
  • Email templates — rewrite invitation / reminder / receipt emails to match your voice. See Email templates.
  • Integrations — pipe responses into Slack, Google Sheets, Webhooks, AcyMailing. See Integrations overview.
  • AI authoring — let AI draft survey questions for you. See AI features.

If you get stuck, the FAQs cover the common questions.