Cohort Manager for Moodle
A unified, reactive interface for managing everything about Moodle cohorts — in a single plugin.
Moodle ships cohort management scattered across multiple screens: one page to create cohorts, another to assign members, a separate admin section for cohort sync enrolments, and yet another for cohort-based role assignments (via tool_cohortroles). Cohort Manager brings all of these workflows into one modern, fast, single-page application built with Vue 3 + TypeScript + Pinia and served directly inside Moodle.
Why Cohort Manager?
| Without this plugin | With Cohort Manager |
|---|---|
| Cohort CRUD lives under Site administration > Users > Cohorts | Full CRUD with search, pagination, and instant navigation — one click from the Moodle nav menu |
| Adding members means navigating away from the cohort page | Add/remove members with a searchable modal, inline, without losing context |
| Cohort sync enrolments are buried per-course under Enrolment methods | View, create, edit, delete, and toggle enrol instances for all courses from a single tab |
| tool_cohortroles role assignments live in a separate admin page | Manage role assignments with sync status visible directly on the cohort detail view |
| Custom fields require visiting the core custom fields manager | Access custom fields management from the plugin's own navigation |
| No role management for user-context roles tied to cohorts | Create, edit, and delete user-context roles from within the plugin |
Key Features
Cohort Management (Full CRUD)
- List all cohorts with real-time search and server-side pagination
- Create cohorts with name, ID number, description (TinyMCE rich-text editor), visibility toggle, context/category selector, and optional theme assignment
- Edit any cohort inline with pre-populated forms
- Delete cohorts with confirmation dialogs
- Cohort Portrait — at-a-glance dashboard showing member count, enrol instance count, total enrolments, and role assignment count
Member Management
- Add members via a searchable user-picker modal
- Remove members individually or in bulk with confirmation
- Dynamic members table with sortable columns (name, username, email, city, country), configurable column visibility, and pagination
Cohort Sync Enrol Instances
- View all enrol instances linked to a cohort across every course — with course name, role, status, enrolled user count, group, and group member count
- Create enrol instances in multiple courses at once: search and select courses, pick a role, and optionally assign to a group (or auto-create a new one)
- Edit existing enrol instances (change role, group)
- Toggle enrol instance status (active/inactive) with one click
- Delete enrol instances with warnings about affected user enrolments
- Filter enrol instances by status (all / active / inactive) and search by course name
Cohort Role Assignments (tool_cohortroles Integration)
- List all role assignments for a cohort with user info, role name, and assignment count
- Assign users to cohort roles with a searchable user/role picker
- Delete role assignments (takes effect after next scheduled sync)
- Sync status — last and next sync times displayed with a note about background processing
Roles Management
- List all user-context assignable roles with search and pagination
- Create new roles scoped to user context
- Edit role descriptions
- Delete roles (with system-role protection)
Custom Fields
- Direct access to Moodle's custom field manager for cohorts, embedded within the plugin's navigation
Cohort Themes
- When
Allow cohort themes is enabled, a theme selector appears on cohort create/edit forms
Architecture
Cohort Manager is a progressive SPA that boots inside Moodle's standard page layout:
index.php ' Moodle page shell ' Vue 3 app mounts on #cohort-manager-app
- Frontend: Vue 3.5 + TypeScript + Pinia + Vue Router (HTML5 History mode), built with Vite 7
- Backend: 30+ Moodle Web Service APIs (AJAX) exposed through
db/services.php
- Integration points:
core_cohort APIs, enrol_cohort plugin, tool_cohortroles API, core_customfield
- State management: Pinia stores for app configuration and i18n strings (loaded from Moodle's language system)
- Transitions: Smooth fade transitions between routes
Requirements
- Moodle 4.5 (supported:
[405, 405])
- PHP 8.1+
- PHP extensions:
ext-zip, ext-zlib
- Required plugins:
enrol_cohort (ships with Moodle core)
tool_cohortroles (ships with Moodle core)
Installation
cd /path/to/moodle/local/
git clone <repository-url> cohortmanager
Then visit Moodle's notifications page to complete the installation.
After installation, the plugin appears under Site administration > Users > Cohort Manager and in the navigation under Accounts.
Building the Frontend
The Vue application source lives in app/ and builds to amd/build/:
cd app/
npm install
npm run build
For development:
npm run dev
Web Server Configuration
Because the app uses Vue Router with HTML5 History mode, the web server must route non-file requests to index.php.
Apache
A .htaccess file is included at the plugin root with the required rewrite rules. No additional configuration is needed when mod_rewrite is enabled.
Nginx
Add the following to your server block:
location /local/cohortmanager/ {
try_files $uri $uri/ /local/cohortmanager/index.php?$query_string;
location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico|svg|woff|woff2|ttf|eot)$ {
expires 1y;
add_header Cache-Control "public, immutable";
}
}
location /local/cohortmanager/index.php {
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
Routes
| Route | Description |
|---|---|
| /local/cohortmanager/ | Cohort list with search and pagination |
| /local/cohortmanager/cohort/{id} | Cohort detail — tabs for Details, Members, Enrol Instances, Role Assignments |
| /local/cohortmanager/cohort/{id}/edit | Edit cohort |
| /local/cohortmanager/cohort/create | Create new cohort |
| /local/cohortmanager/custom-fields | Custom fields manager |
| /local/cohortmanager/roles | User-context roles management |
Multilingual Support
Ships with language packs for 13 languages: Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, and Simplified Chinese.
Strings are loaded dynamically from Moodle's language system via a dedicated Web Service API, so any Moodle-supported language works automatically.
Capabilities
The plugin respects standard Moodle capabilities:
moodle/cohort:manage — create, edit, delete cohorts
moodle/cohort:assign — add/remove members
moodle/cohort:view — view cohorts and members
enrol/cohort:config — manage cohort sync enrol instances
moodle/role:manage — manage roles and cohort role assignments
License
GNU GPL v3 or later — same as Moodle core.
Credits
