Course Archiver

Administration tool ::: tool_coursearchiver

Maintained by

Matthew Davidson

Archive and remove past courses with this handy tool that can also be used to send notifications to course teachers, hide courses in bulk, and has the ability for course teachers to opt out of the archiving.

Latest release: 4 months

784 sites

686 downloads

85 fans

Current versions available: 1

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Course Archiver

This tool is used to search for courses, notify the course owners, and mass hide or archive (backup and remove) courses. The courses are stored with Moodle's backup file extension ".mbz". These files can then be manually found in the user defined folder and can be restored using Moodle's built in restore feature.

Install

copy the coursearchiver folder into the admin/tool folder.

Settings

Folder path

A folder created within the moodledata folder. The tool will create this folder, however it is recommended that the folder be created outside the moodledata folder, and a shortcut be placed in the moodledata folder.

Course Hide Email

This is the template email that will be sent to the owners of the selected courses to notify them that their course(s) will be hidden. There are two required variables in the email %to (name of the recipient) and %courses (a list of courses with mailto hyperlinks to notify the site administrator that the user wishes to opt out)

Course Archive Email

This is the template email that will be sent to the owners of the selected courses to notify them that their course(s) will be archived. There are two required variables in the email %to (name of the recipient) and %courses (a list of courses with mailto hyperlinks to notify the site administrator that the user wishes to opt out)

Course opt out persistence

A course can be opted out of the archival process and future archiver searches. This setting determines how many months the opt out with last.

Archive deletion delay

When an archived file is selected for deletion, the actual removal of the file will be delayed by x days.

Archive search limiter

Archives can get very large. This limits the amount of records returned to screen at one time.

Useful links

Screenshots

Contributors

Matthew Davidson (Lead maintainer)

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Awards

Automated testing support

Early bird 3.11

Early bird 4.2

Early bird 4.3

Comments

Blair F.
Thu, 12 July 2018, 12:33 AM
Could the Folder Path point to a completely different server?
Matthew Davidson
Thu, 12 July 2018, 12:35 AM
@Blair F. On our setup, we have a network folder shortcut as the Course Archiver folder. That way it goes to a seperate server.
Blair F.
Wed, 18 July 2018, 1:02 AM
Thanks, Matthew. I'll talk to our I.T. guy about that possibility. At least we'd then be able to see a directory of files, if we needed to restore.
Jerry Lau
Fri, 3 Aug 2018, 12:56 AM
@Mathew.. Thank you for this plugin. Does the folder have to owned by apache? or root? etc.? We're planning to create a new storage platform and mount that as a shortcut in moodledata folder as opposed to creating one within moodledata (i.e.: not mkdir "afolder" within /moodledata folder. Would that work? Thanks
G J
Wed, 3 Oct 2018, 11:12 PM
When Opt-out email is sent, faculty receive "Access Denied" error when trying to opt out. It works when an admin opt out so I'm thinking its a permission thing. But what permission need to be giving for the teacher to opt out?
Matthew Davidson
Wed, 3 Oct 2018, 11:15 PM
@GJ Check what version you are running. That bug was fixed on version 2018081700.
G J
Thu, 4 Oct 2018, 10:28 PM
@Matthew (Build: 2016090200) (2018081700) Thats probably the issue. Will update. Thanks
G J
Tue, 16 Oct 2018, 12:46 AM
Is there a way to also check a log for the errors when a course not able to be archived? I'm successfully archiving courses that are put in manually in our Moodle system, however, the courses that are uploaded into Moodle through a flat file not archiving. I receive a message "processing complete" but then "errors: Course: .... could not be archived". I'm not sure why the archiving can't be successful.
Stefan Erlachner
Thu, 22 Nov 2018, 3:15 PM
Hi Matthew, nice work. Love the plugin.
One thing that would be cool though, is to have the option to include sub-categories when filtering by category. Maybe you want to consider this as a new feature.
Cheers and thanks!
Liana Shpani
Sat, 19 Jan 2019, 12:15 AM
Hi, I was wondering if the version for Moodle 3.6 was also compatible with Moodle 3.5? I only see versions of the plugin for 3.4 and 3.6. Thanks!
Jerry Lau
Thu, 7 Mar 2019, 2:02 AM
Does this tool use the automated backup classes or the same ones used to create the course backups? If the course are large, I would suspect that the problem is still there with trying to backup large files, correct? This is just a way to call the backup.php for a specific course and move it to another location outside the moodledata designated folder. Am I correct?
Matthew Davidson
Thu, 7 Mar 2019, 2:03 AM
@Jerry Lau Yes, this plugin uses the Moodle built in backup classes and procedures. If the course fails to backup manually, it won't backup via this tool.
Brad Nielsen
Fri, 8 Mar 2019, 6:03 PM
I quite like this tool, but it would be nice if you could bulk Restore and Reset, or alternatively Archive but not Delete and simply Reset the existing course in Bulk.
Otaku Dude
Thu, 11 Apr 2019, 8:09 PM
I would have to agree with Brad, great tool but could be even better if I could archive and not delete (bulk would be awesome too).
Blair F.
Thu, 29 Oct 2020, 3:19 AM
Does anyone know how to delete Save Points? I've accumulated quite a few and don't see a way to delete them from the drop-down list.