feanil
July 31, 2026, 4:42pm
1
The non-MFE learner dashboard had a feature that let you search through all your enrolled courses. That feature was never migrated to the learner dash when we moved to the MFE.
I’m proposing that we deprecate that feature rather than porting it but if you are stuck on the old dashboard because you use this feature, or have other reasons why you want to keep it, please chime in on the DEPR ticket.
opened 04:31PM - 31 Jul 26 UTC
depr
## RFC Start Date
2026-07-31
## Target Plan Accepted Date
2026-08-14
## Target… Transition Unblocked Date
Estimated 2026-09. Sooner if there are no objections and we drop it; later if we decide to rebuild it in the MFE first.
## Earliest Breaking Changes Unblocked Date
2027-01-31, or one month after the ticket moves to Transition Unblocked, whichever is later.
## Earliest Open edX Named Release with Breaking Changes
Xylon - 2027-04
## Rationale
The new learner dashboard has been the default for a while, and we'd like to finish the job and remove the legacy dashboard. Cross-course "Search Your Courses" is the one capability that only lives on the legacy dashboard - it lets a learner search courseware content across all of their enrolled courses at once. There's no equivalent in the new dashboard or the learning MFEs (in-course search exists, but only within a single course).
It's off by default (`ENABLE_DASHBOARD_SEARCH`), so I expect relatively few sites use it, though I don't have hard usage numbers. Removal is the plan, but this is the piece I'm least sure about - if you rely on cross-course search, please chime in on this ticket. Either way the legacy dashboard itself is going away: if there's real demand, we'll build cross-course search into the new frontend as its own story and still remove the legacy dashboard; if not, this capability goes away with it.
## Removal
Just the dashboard cross-course search UI and its flag:
- The "Search Your Courses" widget on the dashboard (`lms/templates/dashboard.html`, gated by `ENABLE_DASHBOARD_SEARCH`).
- The legacy Backbone UI it uses (`openedx/features/course_search/static/course_search/js/dashboard_search_factory.js` plus its views/collections) and the RequireJS build entries in `lms/static/lms/js/build.js`.
- The `ENABLE_DASHBOARD_SEARCH` feature flag.
Explicitly **not** removed: the courseware content index (`ENABLE_COURSEWARE_INDEX`) and the `/search/` endpoint. Both stay - they're shared with in-course search - so this frees no search infrastructure; it only removes the cross-course entry point.
## Replacement
None today. In-course search (scoped to a single course) already exists in the learning MFE, but cross-course search does not exist in any MFE. If we decide it's worth keeping, the replacement would be a net-new cross-course search built into the new frontend.
## Additional Info
Dashboard search is just the shared `/search/` endpoint (edx-search `do_search`) called without a `course_id`, so it returns results across the courses a user is enrolled in. Because the index is shared with in-course search, there's no data migration or index teardown involved.
Related: openedx/openedx-platform#38936 - legacy learner dashboard removal, which this decision blocks.
Discussion post: https://discuss.openedx.org/t/deprecation-legacy-learner-dash-courseware-search/19188
DEPR acceptance date is 2026-08-18T04:00:00Z . Please speak up before then if you need this feature and believe it should be ported.
P.S. If you need this feature, please be ready to help with the porting process. Either with development or testing of the new version of the feature.
system
July 31, 2026, 4:48pm
2
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