The version 7 release rebuilds the admin around a modern React app, adds AI helpers that suggest options and summarise results, ships file-based email templates that you can edit and preview from the admin, and adds new poll types so you can ask better questions.

What you can build with it

• Editorial polls placed inside articles using the content plugin shortcode, the editor button, or the random-poll module.
• Community polls that registered users can submit from the front end. You can auto-publish them or hold them for moderation.
• Multi-question grid polls when one question is not enough — perfect for short surveys.
• Private polls that only people with a shared link and key can vote on.

Poll types

• Single choice (radio buttons)
• Multiple choice (checkboxes with min/max selections)
• Grid (rows of questions sharing a column of answers)

Voting

• One-vote-per-visitor enforced by cookie, IP, or login — pick what suits your site.
• Cooldown period before the same voter can vote again.
• Optional vote modification so people can change their mind before a poll closes.
• Optional anonymous voting that hides the voter's name from results.
• Public, registered, or special-group access tied to Joomla view-level permissions.

Live results

• Bar, donut, pie, polar, and column chart styles.
• Twelve colour palettes plus a monochrome option.
• Configurable per poll, with a fallback default in component settings.
• Optional voter list with a who-voted view.

Admin experience

• React-driven admin with a dashboard, polls list, audience view, settings page, and email templates manager.
• Bulk publish, feature, and delete from the polls list.
• Per-poll vote breakdown, daily activity charts, and CSV export.
• Site-wide settings cover voting rules, default chart and palette, list layout (with admin-configurable column counts for the public polls and categories pages), email branding, and AI access.

AI helpers (optional)

Community Polls connects to Shondalai AI services with a single subscription that covers every Shondalai component on your site. The AI features add three buttons inside the admin poll editor:

• Suggest options — give the AI your poll title and it returns a starting set of answer options. You can accept, reject, or edit each one.
• Summarise results — turns the result distribution into a few plain sentences you can paste into a follow-up article or email.
• Cluster custom answers — when a poll allows free-text answers, the AI groups similar responses together so you can see themes instead of scrolling through every entry.

AI features are off by default, can be disabled per site, and run only when an admin explicitly clicks one of the buttons.

Email notifications

• File-based templates for new polls, new votes, and moderation requests.
• Live HTML preview, sample-data preview, and test-send from the admin.
• Editable header logo, title, subtitle, brand colour, body and page colours, and footer copy from the Settings page — every template inherits them.
• Reset-to-default for any template.
• Token-based approve and reject links in moderation emails so admins can action the queue without logging in.

Publishing in articles, modules, and other pages

• Content plugin shortcode — {poll id=12} drops the poll into any article. Optional attributes set the chart style, mode (vote form or results), and whether to show the poll-page link.
• Editor button — click the Poll button in the Joomla editor to pick a poll from a searchable list and have the shortcode inserted for you.
• Random Poll module — shows one published poll, optionally filtered by category. Use it in any module position.
• Latest Polls module — list the most recent or most-voted polls in a sidebar.
• Categories module — surface poll categories with poll counts and a glimpse of the most recent poll per category.

Privacy and GDPR

A dedicated privacy plugin plugs into Joomla's Privacy Suite. Export and removal cover polls created by the user, options on those polls, votes cast, resources uploaded, the per-user activity counter, and abuse reports filed by the user. Anonymous reports filed by email are reachable from email-only privacy requests as well.

Smart Search

Polls are indexed in Joomla's Smart Search with author, category, poll type, and featured-status taxonomies, so visitors can find them through the site search bar.

Plugin events for developers

Community Polls dispatches lifecycle events on save, delete, state change, approval, vote save, and vote delete. The bundled plg_communitypolls_polls plugin uses these events to award points, stream activity, send branded emails, and trigger badges through the Shondalai Core integration. You can write your own plugins against the same events.

What is included in the package

• Component — admin and site-side code, dashboard, polls manager, settings, email templates manager, audience view, stats.
• Modules
  • Random Poll module (single-poll widget)
  • Community Polls module (latest / most-voted listing)
  • Categories module (categories with poll counts)
• Plugins
  • Content plugin ({poll id=...} shortcode)
  • Editor button plugin (Poll picker)
  • Smart Search plugin (Finder)
  • Privacy plugin (GDPR export and removal)
  • Community Polls events plugin (points, activity, email notifications, badges)
• Email templates — base wrapper plus three default fragments (new poll, new vote, moderate poll), all editable from the admin.
• Languages — English (en-GB) shipped. Other languages can be added by translating the INI files.

Requirements

• Joomla 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, or later
• PHP 8.1 or later
• MySQL 8 or MariaDB 10.5 or later
• Modern browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge — current or one previous version)