Course migration

The Course Migration Tool provides the capability to backup courses in a source Moodle site and restore them in target Moodle site.

This is achieved by uploading a csv file containing a list of courses to be migated from the source site and the category in the target Moodle site.

Backups are created as a scheduled/adhoc task combination on the source site. These backups are placed in a configurable storage location. Currently, only a shared disk is supported.

The source site communicates the availability of courses to migrate to the target site via a web service end point. A web service token from the target site is added to the configuration on the source site.

The target site has a similar scheduled/adhoc task combination to consume the backup files and restore them to the required category.

Activity, progress and results are logged with events and any processing errors. These can be viewed via an included repots section.

Branches

Moodle version	Branch
Moodle 4.4+	MOODLE_404_STABLE
Moodle 3.9 - 4.1	main

Configuration

Site administration > Plugins > Admin tools > Course migration

Backup

• Destination URL - URL for web service end point on the target site
• Web service token - Authentication token created by the target site, used for accessing the web service end point.

Restore

• Restore root category - Default/root category for restoring courses.
• Restore as a hidden course - Option for the restored course visibility.
• Delete successfully restored backups - Option for backup files in the storage location to be deleted after a successful restore.
• Delete failed backups - Option for backup files in the storage location to be deleted after a failed restore.

Storage

• Backup storage - Select one of a list of available storage types. Currently only Shared disk storage is supported.
• Shared disk storage
  • Save to - the full path to the directory on the local file system where you want to save the backup files.
  • Restore from - the full path to the directory on the local file system where the backup files are restored from.

Scheduled Tasks

Site administration > Server > Tasks > Scheduled tasks

These two scheduled tasks are created and run every 1 minute by default.

• Create backup adhoc tasks for course migration
• Create restore adhoc tasks for course migration

Quick start

• Install plugin on source and taget sites.
• Create a shared folder/disk accessible to both sites in their local file system.
• Create a web service Site administration > Plugins > Web services > External services
• Add function tool_coursemigration_request_restore:Request a restore to the service.
• Create a web service token Site administration > Plugins > Web services > Manage tokens
• Add the web service token to the source site configuration.
• Create a CSV file with course id and category id of courses to migrate.
  • An example csv file is available on the Upload course list page.
• Upload the csv file at Site administration > Plugins > Admin tools > Course migration > Upload course list

Installing via uploaded ZIP file

1. Log in to your Moodle site as an admin and go to Site administration > Plugins > Install plugins.
2. Upload the ZIP file with the plugin code. You should only be prompted to add extra details if your plugin type is not automatically detected.
3. Check the plugin validation report and finish the installation.

Installing manually

The plugin can be also installed by putting the contents of this directory to

{your/moodle/dirroot}/admin/tool/coursemigration

Afterwards, log in to your Moodle site as an admin and go to Site administration > Notifications to complete the installation.

Alternatively, you can run

$ php admin/cli/upgrade.php

to complete the installation from the command line.

Warm thanks

Thanks to Monash University (https://www.monash.edu) for funding the development of this plugin.

License

2023 Catalyst IT

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.