We had found in the past that if we remove the course out of all catalogs, channels and learning plans that our power users weren’t able to see if their users had previously completed the archived course because our power users have permissions to manage enrollments in courses that are in visible catalogs.

Our way around that was this process:

• Put the course under maintenance
• Update course title to say “Archived” at the front
• Under Advanced Settings in the Catalog Options, set the maximum subscriptions quota (under Catalog options) to the number of people that had enrolled in the class, set the subscriptions to Closed and set the option for Only Admins can subscribe users
• Move the course to a catalog that we have designated power users can see (but we don’t have that catalog linked anywhere so that users are not stumbling upon the catalog).

This way our power users could still see if their users had previously enrolled in the course.  

We came up with this process a while back, so I don’t know if this visibility issue has changed, if it has, let me know!  

I didn’t think about using the Additional field for the course though, I like that!

@Annarose.Peterson I like that idea of archived catalog. I hadn’t thought of that, our process is nearly the same as @danwinter. Thanks for sharing those!

Already the great ideas flowing! I’m glad to hear it’s not just us who have gotten inventive with our process. It’s that fine line between keeping enough data to report on historically, and keeping TOO MUCH data that nobody will ever touch  . 

I agree that an “Archive” catalogue works best as you can control who has access to those courses without compromising the completion history. Not sure I would change the course title as this would affect user transcripts and reports. We have created an additional text field called “Admin Notes” where we task admins to track significant changes to the course in the format below...it helps admins understand what changes, updates, etc. were done to the course without having to research or ask others:

2021-04-21: Course archived. Replaced with XXX (MDB)

and we keep them in descending chronological order so the most recent updates are always on top

Dear all,

we have the same problem and I’m trying to find the best solution.

Thank you very much for your shares and ideas….very helpful.

Anyway I think it is very important to have an easy way to archive courses: in my Company, for example, we have a lot of old courses related to phased out products, so we need to archive them (in order to maintain the tracking, but to keep a clear and fluid user experience).

There is an idea to vote:

I’ve just voted...hoping to have this implementation in the next releases. 

I am running into the SAME issue. My course archive process is similar to yours. I added Last Revised Date, Revision Due Date, and Retired Date for my yearly Maintenance and Revision process as additional fields. However, I wish there was an archive feature or Retired status. I can’t unenroll learners who are not complete because then it will erase all history of them ever being assigned the training. I wish that you could mark the course as retired and it would hide the course from the My Courses and Learning Plans page (or show a retired status). 

Speaking of course catalog visibility for power users and reporting, this is actually a big issue we are currently facing. We created a Reporting profile for all supervisors and above which assigns visibility to All Courses and Learning Plans. We did this because we wanted our supervisors to be able to pull full completion history reports. Many of our courses are not in catalogs (hundreds). There isn’t a way to assign courses to a catalog en masse from course management, and I can’t pull a report to determine which courses are assigned to catalogs...The issue is that now these power users can enroll in ANY course that is published and set to free enrollment from the Global Search Bar, regardless of whether it is in a catalog or not...I can’t change it to Courses and Learning Plans in Visible catalogs because then they would not be able to see all courses in the report. Has anyone else experienced this issue?

This thread is awesome! 

We have just switched the course status to “Under Maintenance” and removed them from public catalogs.  We wanted to be able to preserve the record of who it was assigned to and which users did not complete the assignment.  However, it is frustrating for them because the archived courses still show up in their pending tab and there is nothing they can do to clear it.  I really wish there were a better way.

Yep we are starting to encounter similar issues in which we need to archive the course so that no new enrollments can happen but we can still pull data from the course.

It would also be ideal to be able to schedule when this happens...so that we can automate this process. If we retire a series of courses on a given date then we should be able to automate that as well as the incoming replacement going active.

As far as capturing course archival (or any sort of administrative notes) for a course, what about having a hidden training material, like an html page where you have a table or list of the course changes, versions, or what replaced it. This could capture administrative notes on open courses, too. 

Example: We archived a course because it was replaced with a newer version but we just republished it because someone in a singular department uses it as reference material for onboarding a specific type of employee. I imagine it will be archived again because we’ll eventually forget this nuance. So we’re toying with the idea of creating a hidden html page in the course to capture our admin notes. 

Does anyone see any issue with this? 

Hi everyone,

Really useful info and tips in this discussion, thanks.

One area that is tricky is the learning plans currently in one massive long list in the admin page. I’m finding it hard to use that admin interface and really hope this is improved ASAP, much like the courses.

I use Learning Plans a lot and these are hard to maintain over many years with them all appearing in a long list, and limited control over them.

I use an archive catalogue and do similar tasks to others in retiring an older course.

Updating this thread:

The Archive and Unenroll feature which has been active for several months allows you to archive/unenroll people who are not complete, saving their enrollment history but unenrolling them from the course.

@JKolodner thank you! I was having trouble trying to find a way to keep these off of reports and that did it! 

I agree with JKolodner.  We don’t remove learners for that reason as well.  We add the archive information to the course description.  Using a field is a great idea and so is setting up a catalog.  We update the settings to show only to enrolled learners and no longer available for self-enrollment.  There’s also a “Retired” thumbnail that was available for use.  Thanks Everyone!