FAQ
Getting Started
How long does it take to get a working exam?
A few minutes. Install the package, open Components → Next Exams, create a subject, add some questions, build an exam, and publish a menu item pointing at it. Nothing needs configuring first — every setting ships with a working default and all thirteen plugins are enabled during installation.
Where are the component options? There is no Options button.
There is deliberately no Joomla Options screen. Next Exams has no config.xml, and all configuration lives in the application's own Settings page, backed by its own settings table. This keeps every setting in one place rather than split between Joomla's options dialog and the application.
Can I try it with realistic data first?
Yes. Configuration → Demo data installs a complete sample dataset — subjects, questions of every type, exams, attempts, certificates and integrations. It also switches on a demo mode that blocks writes so nothing can be broken while you explore. Removing the demo data restores the site cleanly and preserves your own configuration.
Do authors have to work in the Joomla administrator?
No. The identical management application also runs on the front end through the NextExams - Management App menu item type. It is the same codebase, not a reduced second interface. Reaching it requires Joomla's core.manage permission and a Next Exams role.
Authoring
What question types are supported?
Nine: multiple choice with a single answer, multiple choice with several, true/false, short answer, essay, ordering, matching, extended matching (EMQ) and cloze. All except essay are graded automatically.
Can I reuse a question across several exams?
That is the point of the bank. Questions live independently of exams, filed against the subject tree, and an exam references them. Editing a question updates it everywhere it is used — except in attempts already under way, which hold a frozen copy of the paper.
Can questions be selected at random?
Yes. An exam can pin specific questions, draw a number at random from a subject or tag pool, or combine both. The draw happens once, when an examinee starts, and is then frozen for that attempt.
Can I import questions I already have?
Yes — CSV with your own column mapping, Aiken, GIFT, Moodle XML and QTI 2.1. Export offers the same formats. A Next Exams to Next Exams QTI round trip is lossless, because the native answer key travels inside the file alongside the standard QTI interactions.
Can I use mathematical notation?
Yes. LaTeX is typeset with KaTeX in question stems, options, explanations and results. Maths rendering is a switchable app, and the maths library is only downloaded on pages that actually contain notation.
Can I keep a history of changes to a question?
Yes. Question versioning records the history of each question, and an approval workflow lets changes be reviewed before they go live.
Taking Exams
What happens if someone closes the browser mid-exam?
Their answers are already saved. The runner autosaves as they work, so they can return and continue where they left off — until the time limit, the exam's closing time, or the exam's inactivity period is reached.
If they never come back, the attempt does not sit open forever. Each exam decides what happens: the saved answers are marked, or the attempt is voided and the examinee gets that attempt back. See Auto-close.
Does the exam work without JavaScript?
Yes. The runner is a server-rendered HTML form with real named inputs and a working submit. JavaScript adds the timer, autosave, paging and the floating question navigator — it is an enhancement, not the mechanism. With scripting disabled the examinee still gets a working navigator, rendered as a plain panel above the questions, and can complete and submit the paper.
Can examinees pause an exam?
If you allow it per exam. Pausing freezes the clock and records the remaining time; resuming restarts it. You can cap both the number of pauses and the total paused minutes, and a resume attempted after the exam has closed finalises the attempt instead.
What is practice mode?
An exam can be set to practice rather than assessment. Practice attempts ignore the time limit, the attempt cap and the cooldown, never auto-lock, and can reveal feedback per question the moment an answer is locked rather than only at the end.
Can an examinee flag questions to come back to?
Yes. Any question can be marked for review, using the flag button in the corner of its card. Flags appear on the question navigator with a distinct badge, are counted on the review step with a shortcut back to the first of them, survive a pause or a reload because they are persisted server-side, and are carried by the same autosave that saves the answers.
Can the exam detect cheating?
It records signals, and stops there. Focus-loss, paste, tab-switch and fullscreen-exit counters plus time-to-first-answer per question are captured when you enable them, and shown read-only on the attempt. They never fail, lock or flag anyone automatically — that judgement stays with you. Webcam proctoring and biometric capture are explicitly out of scope.
Results & Certificates
When do examinees see their score?
Whenever you decide, per exam: immediately, after the exam closes, at a scheduled time, or only when you release it by hand. Revealing the correct answers is a separate switch, so you can publish a score while keeping the paper itself hidden.
How does essay grading work?
Essays are marked by a person. The attempt is flagged as needing grading, an optional email notifies you, and the examinee's review stays locked until every essay is marked — so nobody ever sees a partially-marked paper.
Is partial credit supported?
Yes. Questions can score proportionally or all-or-nothing. Short answers support numeric tolerance and regular-expression matching, and the advanced types — ordering, matching, EMQ and cloze — award credit per correct element where the policy allows.
Are certificates verifiable by a third party?
Yes. Each certificate carries a QR code linking to a public verification page showing the recipient, exam, number and dates, and reporting revoked or expired certificates honestly. The page is keyed by a random token rather than the sequential certificate number, so nobody can enumerate the series to harvest names.
Will editing a certificate template change certificates already issued?
No. Each certificate is rendered from a snapshot frozen at the moment it was issued. Template edits apply to future certificates only.
How do I find out which questions are badly written?
Item analysis reports each question's difficulty alongside its item-total discrimination. Together these expose questions that everyone gets right, that everyone gets wrong, or that strong and weak candidates answer identically — the ones measuring nothing.
Access & Enrollment
Can people take an exam without a Joomla account?
Yes. An exam can be opened to guests, optionally collecting a name and email so the attempt and any certificate remain attributable. You can also require a shared access code.
How do I restrict an exam to specific people?
Build a cohort — a hand-picked list of users, a mirror of an existing Joomla user group, or a set of email invitations for people who have not registered yet — then set the exam's access to restricted and point it at that cohort.
Can I stop someone retaking an exam immediately?
Yes, with a maximum attempt count, a cooldown period between attempts, or both. Practice attempts deliberately ignore both, so practising never consumes a real allowance.
Can I invigilate without giving someone a Joomla account?
Yes. Issue a monitoring grant as a link or a PIN. A grant is always scoped to a single exam — there is no all-exams grant, because an unscoped link would expose every examinee in the system to whoever received it. Grants can view, extend time, allow a resume and leave notes; they can never force a submit or pause an exam, however the grant is configured.
Integrations
Can I launch exams from my LMS?
Yes. Next Exams is a full LTI 1.3 tool provider. Register the platform, launch an exam from any LTI 1.3 LMS, choose exams from within the LMS using Deep Linking, and scores return to the gradebook automatically through Assignment and Grade Services.
Can other systems react when someone finishes?
Yes. Webhooks fire on submission, grading and certificate issue. Each request is signed with HMAC-SHA256 over the raw body so the receiver can verify it came from you, failures retry with backoff, and every attempt is recorded in a delivery log.
Is there an API?
Yes. The JSON API accepts bearer tokens carrying per-scope permissions, so external automation can maintain the question bank or pull results with no browser session. Scopes are default-deny: a token reaches only what you explicitly granted, and nothing else.
Does it integrate with the rest of Joomla?
Yes — an article macro that embeds an exam launch card, a Smart Search adapter that indexes publicly-discoverable exams, GDPR export and erasure through Joomla's privacy component, and five site modules for exams, results, search, leaderboards and certificates.
What if I do not want all of this?
Switch it off. The App Manager turns twenty-six capabilities on and off individually. A disabled app disappears from the interface and its endpoints refuse requests, but no data is touched, so re-enabling restores it exactly as it was.
Technical
Which Joomla and PHP versions are supported?
Joomla 4.4, 5.x and 6.x, on PHP 8.1 or later. That PHP floor comes from the libraries bundled with the component rather than from preference. The codebase uses modern Joomla architecture throughout — namespaced PSR-4 MVC, dependency injection through service providers, and the WebAssetManager — which is what lets one build serve all three releases.
Joomla 4.4 rather than 4.0: the mailer service Next Exams sends notifications through arrived in 4.4, so the installer refuses anything older instead of leaving you an install that fails at the first email. Bear in mind that Joomla 4.4 reached end of life in October 2025; support for it is here to serve sites still on that branch, and a new install is better placed on Joomla 5 or 6.
Which databases are supported?
MySQL and MariaDB. Next Exams ships a MySQL schema only, so PostgreSQL is not supported.
What is actually in the package?
Nineteen extensions: the component, thirteen plugins and five site modules. All thirteen plugins are enabled automatically during installation. The package blocks individual child uninstalls, so the whole suite is removed together rather than leaving a half-removed installation.
What languages are included?
English (en-GB). Every string is translatable — add any language by creating standard Joomla .ini files, for both the administrator and site sides.
Is it accessible?
Yes. The whole exam-taking flow — access gate, runner and result — was remediated to WCAG 2.1 AA. That includes a skip link, screen-reader live regions, managed focus when paging between questions, unique accessible names on every control, state conveyed by more than colour alone, and reduced-motion support.
Where do I look when something fails silently?
Enable the com_nextexams log category in System → Global Configuration → Logging. Operational failures — a webhook that would not send, a certificate that would not render — are written there. They are inert until you enable the category, deliberately, so no site writes a log file on every install for a failure it never hits.
Is it open source?
Yes. Next Exams is licensed under the GNU General Public License v2 or later. The source is readable and you are free to modify it.