Undelete or recycler for all deleted items?

Undelete or recycler for all deleted items?

Matt Jenner tomonidan -
Number of replies: 15

The Moodle User Group Greater London (MUGGL) met today and discussed institutional backup policies. It would seem most of us either turn off regular backups or have only disaster recovery in place. Ultimately the majority of people who need to restore content need to restore things from 'a moment ago' or 'not sure, I dont know who deleted it'. Therefore, I wanted to ask the wider Moodle community - why does Moodle delete anything anyway? 

  • Delete a user - it says and is flagged as deleted. 
  • Delete a role assignment (yes, unassign) - student data remains but is 'invisible' 
  • Delete a resource - it's gone!
  • Delete user data (say from the Quiz Results table) - it's gone!

I wanted to ask, would Moodle benefit from having a 'recycle bin' - i.e. once something (anything) is deleted it's only flagged as deleted. Then when cron jobs run they check for 'deleted data' which is set to a period of time (day, week, month, year, forever) and only then is it properly and fully deleted. 

Does that make sense? I think it could save some huge problems for Moodle users, and support staff. It may be hard to implement but it could be very useful. 

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In reply to Matt Jenner

Re: Undelete or recycler for all deleted items?

Jason Robinson tomonidan -

<p><p>Would make absolute sense. Having no undelete for stuff is one of the biggest features missing from Moodle as usability goes, IMHO.<p><br>Hope someone has time to add this at some point Tabassum

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In reply to Matt Jenner

Re: Undelete or recycler for all deleted items?

Peter Roberts tomonidan -

Hi Matt

That's an interesting idea. It would be great for occasions when staff delete things and ask for them back days / weeks later. Makes sense, given that disk space is getting cheaper these days and staff time getting ever more pressured.

What would happen in the event of a course reset? Maybe a global admin setting could be 'safe reset'. If this was set - resetting a course would basically clone it and hide the old one.

Pete Roberts
GLEU

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In reply to Matt Jenner

Re: Undelete or recycler for all deleted items?

Mira Vogel tomonidan -

Certainly where I work there are enough inadvertent deletions, followed by incredulity that it could be that easy, to make this a really good idea.

Mira

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In reply to Matt Jenner

Re: Undelete or recycler for all deleted items?

Emma Richardson tomonidan -
Documentation writers rasmi Particularly helpful Moodlers rasmi Plugin developers rasmi

I agree that this would be a great feature.  I suggest you create a feature request on tracker and post the link so that we can all vote for it.

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In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Undelete or recycler for all deleted items?

Matt Jenner tomonidan -

OK - thanks all for the input, I've made the Tracker entry  - I just wanted to see if I'd missed anything, or misunderstood the concept, but it seems we agree Tabassum

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In reply to Matt Jenner

Re: Undelete or recycler for all deleted items?

Leo Havemann tomonidan -

We are always asked about the location of the ‘undo’ button, so I think this would be a brilliant development Matt – thanks for following up.

Best, Leo

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In reply to Matt Jenner

Re: Undelete or recycler for all deleted items?

Derek Chirnside tomonidan -

OK, voted, although I think the specifications may need to be fine tuned a little as to the exact workflow needed to get this into Moodle and nice and smooth.  Dare I say intuitive.

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In reply to Matt Jenner

Re: Undelete or recycler for all deleted items?

Rodolfo Siles tomonidan -

We definitively need that functionality. I accidentally deleted and activity that took me an hour to create. If only it had a delete warning or a place where I can recover it. I will post this request on the forums, or even better a petition with the White House.

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In reply to Rodolfo Siles

Re: Undelete or recycler for all deleted items?

Kinde Mekuria tomonidan -

Does this mean I cannot recover my forum post and all replies I have just deleted by accident?

Don't say yes!

I can even see everything fine when a click the back button on the browser. Since this forum post was made a year a go there might be some solution since then.

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In reply to Matt Jenner

Re: Undelete or recycler for all deleted items?

Bonni Shuttleworth tomonidan -

I would love a recycle bin or some way to undelete an item. I deleted an assignment link, which included PoodLL feedback and a grade in the gradebook. Students are worried about it as am I, but fortunately I keep a paper log. It would be so easy to go to the recycle bin, litter box or whatever it would be called and restore that assignment. Perhaps it could be called RoodLL - restore.

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In reply to Bonni Shuttleworth

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In reply to Deleted user

Re: Undelete or recycler for all deleted items?

Derek Chirnside tomonidan -

Marc Z, Tracker: http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Tracker_guide ie create an account, browse the items, follow them and create a new issue if you like.  Some people post in the forums first as sort of a canvas of opinion, and shaping the words.  If you want to run something pas us, post again here.

There are two views on tracker: developers think it is an easy process.  Others hate it.  And a few inbetween views.

Tips on creating tracker items, and interfacing with developers:

https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=43952

-Derek

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