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Survey Builder

The visual editor where every survey lives. Five tabs: Builder, Design, Logic, Translations, Results. The middle of the screen is your canvas; the right rail flips between question palette, inspector, or theme controls depending on what you're doing.

This guide walks through each tab. For an admin-wide overview, see the Admin tour.

Builder tab​

The default view when you open a survey.

Anatomy​

  • Top bar — Title (click to rename), language switcher (for multilingual surveys), Preview, Publish/Close, Delete.
  • Tabs row — Builder / Design / Logic / Translations / Results.
  • Pages strip (just below tabs) — every page in the survey as a horizontal chip. Click to switch pages; right-click for rename/duplicate/delete; + at the end to add a new page.
  • Canvas (centre) — the live survey, rendered exactly as a respondent will see it. Click any question to select it.
  • Right rail (default: question palette) — categorised list of every question type. Drag onto the canvas, or click to append at the end of the current page.

Adding questions​

Two ways:

  1. Drag-and-drop from the palette. Drop targets highlight as you drag — between any two existing questions, at the top, or at the bottom.
  2. Click any palette item to append to the current page.

Every question lands with a placeholder title. Click the title on the canvas to edit it inline. Click the description below the title to add a sub-heading.

Editing a question​

Click any question on the canvas to select it. The right rail flips from palette to Inspector, with three sub-tabs:

  • Content — title, description, options (for choice questions), validation message.
  • Behaviour — required toggle, default value, min/max selections, max length, regex pattern, allow-other, randomise option order.
  • Advanced — CSS classes (per-question, per-title, per-description, per-field), show-in-report toggle, custom width.

Changes save as you type (debounced 250ms). There's no Save button for individual edits.

Question types​

The palette groups types by purpose:

Choice: Radio, Checkbox, Dropdown, Image choice (single), Image choice (multiple), Rank.

Open text: Short answer, Long answer, Rich text (HTML), Email, Phone, Password (masked), Hidden (admin-set, not shown to respondent).

Scales: NPS (0–10), Slider (numeric or text-labelled).

Grids: Likert (rows × scale), Rating grid (rows × scale), Matrix (rows × columns), Checkbox grid (rows × multi-cols), Matching ("match these"), Multi-rating (per-row stars).

Media & data: File upload, Signature pad, Date, Geolocation (lat/lng with map picker), Name (structured first/last), Address (multi-field), Multi-input (labelled rows).

Layout: Page header (section divider, no answer).

For deep-dives on individual types, see:

Pages​

Surveys can be multi-page (one page per "section" with a Next button) or single-page (all questions on one scroll). Choose by adding more pages or keeping just one.

Pages can have:

  • Title — shown above the page's questions.
  • Description — optional intro paragraph.
  • Progress bar — auto-rendered when the survey has 2+ pages.

Right-click a page chip in the strip for Rename, Duplicate, Delete.

Answer presets​

If you have a recurring answer set (e.g. a 5-point agreement scale), define it once in the Presets page (left rail) then click Use preset on any choice-style question. The preset's labels populate immediately, including translations if you've defined them.

AI authoring (optional)​

When your site is connected to a shondalai.com account and AI features are enabled, the builder offers:

  • Build with AI (empty canvas) — type a survey topic, AI drafts the whole survey.
  • Suggest answers (per choice question) — AI proposes 5–10 answer options based on the question title.
  • Build grid with AI (per grid question) — AI fills in rows + columns based on the title.
  • Translate with AI (Translations tab) — bulk-translate every untranslated string.

See AI features for the credit model and setup.

Design tab​

Per-survey theming.

Base theme​

Top of the right rail — a thumbnail picker of every theme available on the site. Themes ship in matched light + dark pairs, so picking "Aurora" gives you both modes automatically.

When you pick a base theme, the canvas re-renders with that theme's defaults.

Overrides​

Below the theme picker, four override controls:

  • Accent colour — the survey's primary action colour (Next button, focus rings, selected option indicator).
  • Surface tone — neutral (default) or warm (slightly tinted backgrounds). Affects every theme.
  • Font family — sans-serif, serif, or system default.
  • Border radius — controls the roundedness of buttons and form controls (square / soft / rounded / pill).

Overrides apply on top of the base theme. Pick a theme you like 90% of, then nudge the accent and you're done.

Mode toggle​

Above the preview, a Light/Dark toggle. Lets you verify both modes before publishing.

Custom themes​

The Design tab picks from existing themes — it doesn't create new ones. Go to Themes (left rail) to author from scratch.

See Themes & customisation.

Logic tab​

Conditional rules that show/hide questions, skip pages, or end the survey based on respondents' answers.

A rule has two parts:

  • Conditions — a tree of comparisons. Each leaf compares a question's answer to a value (equals, does not equal, contains, is empty, …). Wrap leaves in AND / OR groups to compose complex logic.
  • Action — what happens when the conditions match: show a question/page, hide a question/page, skip to a specific page, end the survey (with optional thank-you message), require a question.

Adding a rule​

  1. + New rule in the Logic tab toolbar.
  2. When dropdown — pick a question to base the rule on.
  3. Operator — equals / not equals / contains / etc.
  4. Value — for choice questions, pick from the options; for text/numeric, type the value.
  5. Then — pick the action and target.
  6. Save.

Rules are evaluated top-to-bottom on every respondent interaction. Order matters when actions conflict.

Best practices​

  • Keep rules focused — one condition leaf per concern. Nest AND/OR groups instead of cramming everything into one mega-condition.
  • Use skip to page for branching surveys (e.g. "if customer, jump to page 3; if prospect, jump to page 5").
  • Use end to short-circuit out of irrelevant remainder when an early answer disqualifies the respondent.
  • Use require to make a question mandatory only when a prior answer demands it.

See Conditional rules for worked examples.

Translations tab​

Side-by-side editor for any Joomla content language enabled on your site.

Setup​

  1. In Joomla's admin, enable the content languages you want (Extensions → Languages → Content Languages).
  2. In the survey builder, click Translations tab.
  3. Click + Add language at the top, pick a language. A new locale tab appears.

Translating​

The editor shows the source language on the left, the target on the right. Click any cell on the right to translate it.

Every translatable string is listed:

  • Survey title and description
  • Page titles and descriptions
  • Question titles, descriptions, placeholders, validation messages
  • Choice options
  • Grid row + column labels
  • Slider tick labels
  • Submit / Next / Back button labels
  • End-of-survey messages

Untranslated cells show the source text greyed out — the survey will fall back to the source when serving translated pages.

AI bulk-translate​

If AI is enabled, the Translate all button bulk-fills every untranslated string in one go. You can review and correct individual cells afterwards.

See Translating surveys for more.

Results tab​

Embedded analytics overview for this survey only. Same charts as the Analytics page's Overview tab — useful while you're still iterating, so you don't have to context-switch.

For the full five-tab analytics workbench, click Open full report in the Results tab toolbar or navigate to Analytics in the left rail.

See Analytics & Reports.

Common tasks​

Publishing​

Click Publish in the top bar. The survey transitions to Live state and a public URL appears.

Surveys go through three states:

  • Draft — only admins can view; respondents see a 404 if they try the URL.
  • Live — public; respondents can submit responses.
  • Closed — public URL still works for viewing past responses (if allow_view_results is on) but new submissions are rejected.

You can move between states freely; published once, the URL stays stable.

Duplicating​

From the Surveys list, kebab menu → Duplicate. Creates a copy with " (Copy)" appended to the title, in Draft state. Every question, rule, theme override, and translation copies over.

Deleting​

From the builder's top bar, kebab menu → Delete. Or from the Surveys list, kebab menu → Delete.

Deletion cascades to every response and every integration log row. The action is permanent — no soft-delete or recycle bin.

Importing/exporting​

Surveys export as JSON via Surveys → kebab → Export. The exported file carries the survey + questions + rules + translations + theme overrides. Import via Surveys → Import to restore.

Useful for moving surveys between staging and production sites, or templating a survey across multiple installs.

See Import / export surveys.