Axim Funded Contribution: ProctorTrack Removal

Development Collaborative Proposals
1

Hello all! Axim Collaborative is pleased to announce a new funded contribution project to help advance the Open edX platform.

The goal of this project is to assist in the removal of explicit ProctorTrack references and dependencies from the core codebases while maintaining compatibility with the existing edx-proctoring-proctortrack plugin.

We expect this project can be accomplished with one or a small number of software engineers. No UX development and minimal project management is required. There will be a small number of updates to documentation and user-facing display strings that software developers should be able to manage themselves.

Technical spec

Milestones:

  1. Introduce a requires_escalation_email option

  2. Introduce a show_review_rules option

  3. Remove or modify comments and display strings that reference Proctortrack

  4. Search for and remove any remaining Proctortrack references or dependencies

Please see [DEPR]: edx-proctoring-proctortrack and create_zendesk_tickets for context and details. In particular, the Axim FC Tasks section of the DEPR issue contains more details on each of the four milestones.

The best proposals will have technical details about how this specification will be implemented (links to relevant code areas would be ideal), with a breakdown of level of effort and hours required for each milestone.

Timeline

We are seeking proposals from existing community members as well as qualified organizations looking for a first project to join the community. All proposals from providers interested in undertaking this work must be submitted by 9/24/2025 and Axim expects to choose a provider by 10/8/2025.

Those interested in submitting proposals should send them to Kyle McCormick (kyle@axim.org) and Sarina Canelake (sarina@axim.org). Questions about this project should be directed in the comments section below.

2

Hello Kyle!

My team has been reviewing your post and have some questions as we are building a proposal:

Thank you,

Chris

3

Thank you for the great questions @Chris_Beach .

What is the definition of ‘Done’ for this effort (Merged PR, Open edX release, etc)

PRs merged.

What is the timeline for the work to be completed?

Before the Teak cutoff (April 2026) would be ideal.

Software_secure

Software Secure is another proctoring backend that has some hard-coded references in edx-platform. We are not looking to clean that up as part of this FC, but we would definitely not want to add any new Software Secure references nor make it the default. For that particular script you linked, I would prefer for the script to fail if no backend is provided rather than assuming software_secure.

No need to test Software Secure as part of this RFP.

Mockprock

Mockprock is our fake proctoring backend, which we use to manually test the Open edX proctoring interface without having to interface with real provider. It would be useful to confirm that the changes in this FC do not break Mockprock.

It’s OK to have some hard-codings of Mockprock, as long as they are only in test code.

There are quite a few open edX repos affected (ie that ‘proctortrack’ appears in). Are there any repos that are out of scope?

All repos are in scope, but if a proctortrack reference has no impact on the platform, the build, or the docs, then it does not necessarily need to be removed. For example, the references in openedx-translations, openedx-repo-health, and edx-enterprise are all downstream artifacts of our automated tooling, and will be updated automatically over time. And this bit of a readme is harmless, and could be left in place. There will be some judgement involved.

There are a sizable number of translated user-facing message files with ‘proctortrack’. Is it in scope to translate the English user-facing messages into the non-English languages?

Nope, translating the new strings is out of scope.

Since ProctorTrack will still be able to be included as an external dependency, should additional tests be set up, or leave that testing to the adopters?

We would like to be confident that the external ProctorTrack plugin still works at the end of the FC. From my knowledge of the plugin, I believe manual testing would be sufficient. If you feel that new automated tests are warranted, though, feel free to include that in your proposal and we’ll consider it.

Where should the ‘requires_escalation_email’ option be leveraged?

Currently, we ask authors for an escalation email if-and-only-if the backend is proctortrack. The requires_escalation_email is flag is meant to be the drop-in replacement for “if-and-only-if the backend is proctortrack”.

Where should the ‘show_review_rules’ option be leveraged?

It should be used whenever we need to determine whether to include “Review Rules” as a field on the proctoring configuration form. Currently, this logic includes reference to a waffle flag (SHOW_REVIEW_RULES) and check that the backend is ProctorTrack, both of which we’d like removed.

4

I appreciate the reply @kmccormick !

Could you also offer some guidance on the question:

Regarding the 4th milestone in the CFP, besides the work 2U is handling, what is an example of a ProctorTrack dependency that would need removal?

An additional question:

  • What environments (OSes) should the FC be tested on? I know there is a manual test matrix for browsers to test against ( GitHub - openedx/browserslist-config ) , but I haven’t seen a manual test matrix for OSes.

Thank you!

Chris

5

Hi @kmccormick in addition to the two questions above, could you provide insight into:

  • For the kinds of PRs that this CF will entail, would you want mobile testing to be included?
  • Are there Open edX sandbox site(s) available that we could deploy our changes to for ease of QA?
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Hi @kmccormick ! With the impending FC proposal deadline coming up, could you please provide insight into my additional questions soon?

Thanks,

Chris

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Here’s one reference: edx-platform/Makefile at master · openedx/edx-platform · GitHub

As for dependencies, I’ve done a cursory search and did not find any, so there may be none to fix.

No need.

There are not.

8

We will be extending the deadline for proposals to end-of-day Friday, 26 September.

1 Like
9

Thanks for the additional details @kmccormick !