Community Surveys 8.0 - The Smartest Survey Platform for Joomla

Build smarter surveys, faster, with AI doing the heavy lifting. Community Surveys 8.0 is a top-to-bottom rewrite of the component, modules, and plugins around a new admin SPA, ten beautiful themes, and a structured rules engine that goes well beyond simple "skip to page" logic. Existing v7 surveys keep working after the upgrade.

🤖 AI Built Into the Survey Builder

Not a chatbot tacked onto a sidebar, but focused helpers that show up exactly where you would otherwise stare at a blank field:

• Generate a complete survey from a description. Tell the assistant "Onboarding feedback for a SaaS product, 12 to 15 questions, mix of NPS, multiple-choice, and free text" and you get back pages, questions, options, the lot. Review in a diff-style modal, keep what you like, edit before saving.
• Suggest answer options for choice questions with one click.
• Suggest grid rows and columns for matrix questions in seconds.
• Translate a whole survey into any language while keeping structure, tone, and validation intact.
• Translate reusable answer presets once and have every survey that uses them pick up the translation automatically.

Every AI result is shown before it is saved. Nothing reaches respondents until you publish.

🎨 Ten Beautiful Themes Plus a Design Tab Per Survey

Survey design used to be the part v7 admins burned the most time on. v8 makes it the easy part:

Ten themes ship out of the box:
- Swiss Sage (default), Ink Slate, Terracotta, Indigo Editorial, Marigold Studio, Coral Bloom, Pacific Mist, Carbon Pro, Midnight Plum, Forest Lab

Each one is fully developed (typography pairings, colour relationships, spacing rhythm, corner radius, dark-mode behaviour).

A new Design tab in the builder lets you customise per survey without touching the theme:
- Accent colour picker
- Font pairing (Inter Tight, Geist, Instrument Serif, Söhne, and more)
- Corner radius slider, from crisp to soft
- Density toggle (compact, medium, airy)
- Surface tone (neutral or warm)
- Custom CSS for the rare edge case
- Live preview that updates as you tweak

🧠 A Rules Engine That Finally Keeps Up

The v7 "Conditional Rules" feature covered the basics: show, hide, skip to page, end. v8 ships 14 rule actions covering every survey workflow our customers asked for. Author rules in a visual Flow graph (each question's outgoing rules render as labelled exits) or a compact Logic list for fast editing. Both surfaces edit the same data.

Answer manipulation:
- Pre-fill / default from URL parameters, earlier answers, or the signed-in user's profile (name, email, username, id)
- Pipe answers into later question titles, descriptions, options, and emails with fallback syntax
- Carry options forward from a multi-pick question into a later choice question (include or exclude mode)
- Randomise options per respondent, with stable per-respondent order
- "Always last" pins for options like "Other" or "Prefer not to say"
- Quota cap an option to N respondents, with race-safe server enforcement

Routing beyond pages:
- Skip to named section by stable slug, surviving page reorder
- Random A/B path with $ab (50/50) or $variant3 (33/33/33), stable per respondent across browser sessions and email links
- Disqualify with reason that persists to the response, surfaces in reports, and ships in CSV exports
- Loop / repeat block authoring (full canvas duplication on the roadmap)

Scoring and calculated fields:
- Hidden score variables with a visual formula composer (literal, question reference, prior-score reference, arithmetic op)
- Segment buckets that emit named tags (detractor, passive, promoter, churn-risk, etc.)
- Conditional required that makes a question mandatory only when a prior answer matches

Validation and quality:
- Cross-field validation (end date after start date, allocations total 100, etc.) with six operand kinds and six comparison operators, mirrored on the server so tampered forms cannot slip past
- Speeder detection with a per-survey minimum completion time
- Straight-line detection for matrix questions
- Honeypot field rendered invisibly to catch bots
- IP throttle that flags responses when the same IP submits too many in an hour

Side-effects when responses arrive:
- Notify via integration (Webhook, Slack, AcyMailing, Email) when conditions match
- Tag response with composable labels for filtering
- Queue a follow-up survey with a dedicated email template
- Auto-close the survey once a goal is reached

Time, locale, and device gating:
- $hour, $weekday, $dom, $month, $year, $now for schedule-based logic
- $locale and $lang for language-aware branching
- $device and $viewport_w for mobile-specific question paths
- $quality.* for reacting to quality flags
- $score. and $segment. for chaining scores across rules

📊 Analytics, Scores, and Segments You Can Act On

Watch insights emerge as responses arrive. Score respondents from a visual formula, classify them into named segments, and filter the dashboard by anything that matters:

• Live charts with response trends and KPI snapshots
• Segment facets for cross-tabbing detractor vs. promoter, by plan, by language, by device
• Quality flag facets to filter out speeders or honeypot trips
• Disqualified status with the end reason in the response inspector and CSV
• PDF reports for offline sharing
• CSV exports with the new end_reason column and disqualified status value

🔗 Five Integrations With a Consistent Setup

The redesigned Integrations screen ships with a marketplace pattern, an Activity log, and adapters that retry automatically:

• Webhook: POST JSON or form-encoded payloads to any URL, with optional HMAC-SHA256 signing so receivers can verify each payload
• Slack: Block Kit messages via incoming webhook URL or chat.postMessage with a bot token
• Google Sheets: OAuth 2.0 with destination picker, header sync, and per-field mapping
• AcyMailing: Add respondents to a list when a rule fires (no HTTP layer, direct Joomla integration)
• Email Notification (new in v8): Free-form transactional email to any address, including respondent-supplied addresses via pipe placeholders, with auto-generated answer summary or custom HTML body

Rules can trigger any integration. Every dispatch attempt is logged in the Activity tab. Failed deliveries retry automatically with exponential back-off.

📧 Beautiful Emails With a Refreshed Template System

Every email Community Surveys sends now flows through a shared base wrapper with your logo, colours, and footer wired in automatically. The output renders cleanly in Gmail, Outlook (including older Outlook with VML fallbacks for the CTA button), Apple Mail, and every major webmail provider.

A dedicated Email Templates screen lists every built-in email:

• Invitation, Invitation reminder
• Response thank-you, New response (to author)
• Survey published, Survey closed
• New survey (to admin), Survey created (to author)
• Follow-up survey invitation (new in v8, used by the follow-up rule)

For each template you can edit subject and body with a side-by-side default-versus-override comparison, browse variables in a picker, use {{#if}} / {{#unless}} conditionals, preview with example data, and revert if needed.

🎯 A Thank-You Page Worth Landing On

The last screen a respondent sees gets its own builder tab with three modes:

• Message: A clean confirmation page with eyebrow, headline, body, and a call-to-action
• User answers: A recap of every answer the respondent gave (useful for forms that double as agreements)
• Consolidated report: A live aggregate showing how everyone's responses add up so far (gated by a one-shot key so URLs cannot be scraped)

Customise the eyebrow, headline, body, what-next chips (with eight icon choices), button labels, and trust footer per survey. Toggle the badge, response stats, what-next section, action buttons, share buttons, and trust line independently.

🛡️ Anti-Spam and Response Quality Built In

Three layers of protection that run on the server (cannot be bypassed by editing the form HTML):

• Honeypot field rendered off-screen so humans never see it but bots fill it in
• Minimum completion time that flags responses faster than your threshold as speeders
• IP throttle that flags responses when the same IP submits too many to the same survey within an hour
• Straight-line detection for matrix answers that map every row to the same column
• Server-side rule mirror for cross-field validation so tampered forms cannot slip past

Quality flags surface in Analytics and as $quality.* context fields, so you can write a single rule like "When $quality.honeypot = 1, end the survey" to convert flags into hard rejection.

📦 Complete Package

Community Surveys ships with everything needed to publish, embed, discover, and operationalize surveys across a full Joomla site:

Component:
- com_communitysurveys (admin SPA + public survey + API)

Modules:
- Survey Listing
- Categories

Plugins:
- Finder (Smart Search) integration
- Content plugin for in-article surveys
- User integration
- Privacy (GDPR)
- AcyMailing integration
- Editor button

Library:
- Shondalai Core (shared integration services, bundled)

🔒 Security and Privacy

Built with security and compliance in mind:

• GDPR compliant with the Privacy plugin
• Anonymous response option per survey
• Response limits per user and per survey
• CAPTCHA integration
• CSRF tokens on every mutation
• XSS protection with proper escaping
• HMAC-SHA256 signing for outbound webhooks
• Race-safe quota enforcement
• Joomla ACL integration with granular per-survey permissions

🌐 Multi-Language Ready

Full internationalisation support:

• AI translation for one-click localisation
• Manual translations interface for fine-tuning
• RTL support for Arabic, Hebrew, and other right-to-left languages
• Per-survey language assignment
• Translatable email templates and validation messages

System Requirements

• Joomla: 5.0+ or 6.0+
• PHP: 8.1+
• Database: MySQL 5.7+ / MariaDB 10.3+
• Browser: Modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge - latest 2 versions)
• Dependency: Shondalai Core Library 1.0+ (bundled with the package)

Key Features List

• AI survey generation from a one-line description
• AI answer-option suggestions for choice questions
• AI grid row + column suggestions for matrix questions
• AI translation into any language
• Ten ready-made themes (Swiss Sage, Indigo Editorial, Pacific Mist, Midnight Plum, and more)
• Per-survey Design tab with accent, font, radius, density, surface, and custom CSS
• Visual Flow graph for authoring rules
• Compact Logic list editor for fast edits
• 14 rule actions covering answer manipulation, routing, scoring, validation, side-effects
• Pre-fill answers from URL parameter, earlier answer, or contact field
• Pipe answers across questions with fallback syntax
• Carry options forward (include and exclude modes)
• Per-respondent option randomisation with "always last" pins
• Race-safe quota caps per option
• Named page sections (skip-to-section that survives reorder)
• Random A/B and A/B/C path assignment, stable per respondent
• Disqualify with reason persisted to response + CSV export
• Hidden score variables with visual formula composer
• Segment buckets that emit named tags
• Conditional required questions
• Cross-field validation with six operand kinds, mirrored on the server
• Honeypot, IP throttle, minimum completion time, straight-line detection
• Notify via Webhook (HMAC signed), Slack, AcyMailing, Email Notification
• Tag response with composable labels
• Queue follow-up surveys with a dedicated email template
• Auto-close on goal reached
• Time, locale, device, and quality-flag context fields
• Live analytics with response trends and KPI snapshots
• Segment, quality, and end-reason facets
• CSV export with disqualified status and end_reason column
• PDF reports for offline sharing
• Custom reports via scheduled tasks
• Redesigned email template system with shared base wrapper
• Three Thank-you page modes (message, answers, consolidated report)
• Save and resume via secure key
• 25+ question types: radio, checkbox, dropdown, image, NPS, Likert, ranking, matrix, grid, sliders, text, email, phone, date, file upload, signature, GPS, and more
• Drag-and-drop survey builder
• Multi-page surveys with progress indicator
• Survey duplication (questions, pages, slugs, rules)
• Survey import / export (JSON)
• Three layouts: single page, multi page, conversational
• Light / dark / auto colour mode that paints correctly on cold load
• AcyMailing integration for invitations
• Smart Search (Finder) integration
• Joomla Task Scheduler support
• GDPR Privacy plugin integration

Technical Specifications

Architecture

• Joomla 5 and 6 native MVC with namespaces
• Service provider dependency injection
• PSR-4 autoloading
• React 19 + TypeScript admin SPA
• Modern PHP 8.1+ codebase

Frontend

• Responsive layouts that flow on desktop, tablet, and mobile
• Light and dark colour modes with auto-detection
• Chart.js for analytics visualisations
• Zero-jQuery component
• Hash-based asset cache busting

Server

• Lazy-migrated rule data (v7 rules upgrade automatically on first read)
• Server-evaluated side-effects (tag, quota, auto-close, notify, follow-up)
• Race-safe atomic counters for quotas
• HMAC-SHA256 webhook signing
• Retry queue with exponential back-off for failed integration calls

Integrations

• Webhook (HMAC signed)
• Slack (Block Kit, webhook or bot token)
• Google Sheets (OAuth 2.0)
• AcyMailing
• Email Notification (Joomla MailerInterface)