Assignment

I have an interesting one! Bonus points for anyone who can offer a creative solution!

Moodle v4.1.9

1. Teacher creates Groups and Groupings for assignment1
2. Teacher sets assignment1 to allow students to submit in groups but forgets to assign the grouping
3. Students submit files to assignment and they all get grouped correctly
4. Teacher grades assignments and grades and feedback all get grouped correctly
5. Teacher creates new set of groups for next assignment2
6. Teacher goes into assignment1 to grade a late submission
7. Assignment1 reverts to using the "default set of groups"
8. All the students' files, grades, feedback have now been overwritten with one file, grade and feedback comment belonging to the last student that was graded

I know this is all expected behavior but here is where I am struggling - we were able to revert some of the changes by removing the new groups (from step 5 above). assignment1 reverted back to the proper group submissions and we can rebuild the grades and feedback using the gradebook history. However, here is my question: how can the teacher now move forward with new sets of groups and groupings without losing the file data from this first assignment again?

I see no way to apply a grouping to an assignment after submissions have been made, and no way to lock the submissions in place so the state of the uploaded files do not change. Note: I CAN lock the grades and feedback comments in the gradebook so this data can be preserved, but the student file submissions still disappear once new groups are created due to no grouping association.

I suspect there is nothing we can do here other than get the students to re-submit the past assignment using a new Assignment activity, with the proper group and grouping in place first, but wanted to throw it out to the community just in case I was missing something.

Thanks in advance!