How to bulk inactivate courses after End Of Life for Course Updater tool?

Birgitte.B.96
Birgitte.B.96 Posts: 41 🧭
edited 2:57PM in Release Notes

Hi. I have just seen in the Product and Services Preview that an end-of-life for the Course Updater tool is planned for March 2026. We did not know that it the CU tool had been given a sunset adn were planning to use it for our housekeeping process. We had planned step 1. to be: inactivate the courses that are within scope of our housekeeping criteria (they would all be children of the same semester). By inactivating before purging, we would simulate the purge and users (who do not have access to inactivated courses) would experience that the courses are gone. If any mistakes in identifying the courses to be purges ahed been made, then we would still be able to correct it, because the course had only been inactivated and not purged.
Where can we bulk inactivate courses (preferably by semester) once the Course updater tool is no longer available? I do not see the potion in Courses or in the Org Unit Editor.

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  • Brielle.H.672
    Brielle.H.672 Posts: 61 image

    Hello - you can now do this with the Courses tool - see here for more information: https://community.d2l.com/brightspace/kb/articles/32695-manage-courses-and-course-templates-with-the-courses-tool#bulk-update-course-status-and-dates

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  • Birgitte.B.96
    Birgitte.B.96 Posts: 41 🧭

    Hi @Brielle.H.672 Thank you for reminding me. Yes, there is an option to search for and select courses and set the status. However, when we first explored the new Courses tool, we did not really consider it for our house keeping (data deleting) workflow. As mention we plan to delete by semester. A semester's worth of courses is likely to be around 3000 courses here at Aarhus University. In the Courses tool we can only load and select 50 courses at the time and therefore it is not useful for our housekeeping workflow. Course Updater was able to perform bulk update the status of "all courses that have semester X" in one action.
    Do you know if there are any plans to enable that type of bulk update in Courses?
    As mentioned "per semester" would be very useful for us and all other clients who plan to purge courses rather than archiving, and probably even for those who do plan to archive outside of BS, since it is much easier to correct a mistake by simply activating a course than recovering it from an external archive and try to return it to its previous state.

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  • Sangeetha.T.629
    Sangeetha.T.629 Posts: 178 🤝🏼 image

    Hi @Birgitte.B.96 ,

    Thank you for reaching out to us through the community!

    Currently, you can filter by semester to view the list of courses offered in that term. Additionally, selecting “Load More” will allow you to see other available courses.

    Would this approach meet your requirements, or do you foresee any challenges with this option?

    Looking forward to your feedback.

    Thanks,

    Sangeetha

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  • Birgitte.B.96
    Birgitte.B.96 Posts: 41 🧭

    Hi @Sangeetha.T.629 Yes I see a challenge. As described above a semester's worth of courses is typically around 3000 courses. It is not possible to bulk inactivate them by use filtering by semester and then "load more" (which adds 50) until all 3000 are selected.

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  • Sangeetha.T.629
    Sangeetha.T.629 Posts: 178 🤝🏼 image

    Hi @Brigette.B.143,

    Thank you for the update. This appears to be a PIE (Product Idea Exchange) request.

    I also noticed the feature request listed under the PIE category: https://desire2learn.brightidea.com/D12869

    I would recommend adding a comment or upvoting the request so that the development team can consider it for future enhancements.

    Thanks,

    Sangeetha

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  • Birgitte.B.96
    Birgitte.B.96 Posts: 41 🧭

    Hi @Sangeetha.T.629 Yes, the PIE

    https://desire2learn.brightidea.com/D12869

    does mention the need to be able select (export) all without having to "load more" until all items are on the screen. It happens to be a PIE that I have created myself, so I guess I cannot upvote. But I will add a comment to make it clear that "not-having-to-load in order to be able to manage large amounts of records" is important.
    I will also create a new PIE - specifically about the need to be able to bulk-inactivate courses. Inactivating has high value as a first step when planning to purge courses without archiving. Therefore, removing the Course Updater leaves a critical gap, since large-scale bulk-inactivating is not possible in the Course Tool.

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  • Birgitte.B.96
    Birgitte.B.96 Posts: 41 🧭
    edited January 13

    Hi again @Sangeetha.T.629 To be clear - it is the Course Updaters ability to search by semester (or other unit with high number of child org units) and then "Update All" that I am looking for. The selection cap of 50 in Courses has been removed. This was good, but it is key that the "Update All" option (i.e. without having to load all) in Course Updater is also transferred to Courses.
    Can you please find out if that will be the case? That would allow us to inactivate all 3300+ courses in one bulk action, just as it is the case today in Course Updater.

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  • Sangeetha.T.629
    Sangeetha.T.629 Posts: 178 🤝🏼 image

    Hi Birgitte.B.96 ,

    Thanks for your update. This appears to be a feature request for the Courses tool, as bulk‑selecting a large number of courses, especially around 3000+ is currently not supported without load more selection.

    I would recommend raising a PIE request so the product team can review it and share any updates from the development side.

    Thanks,

    Sangeetha

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