openedx / openedx/openedx-core
[FE] Confirm every edit to a competency criterion or criteria group
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- Dominant language
- Python
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Description
User Story
As a course author, I want to confirm before I change a competency rule, in order to understand that my change affects future evaluations only and does not alter what learners have already earned.
Acceptance Criteria
Scenario: Editing a criterion asks for confirmation before saving
Given an author has changed a competency criterion
When they submit the change
Then a confirmation explaining that only future evaluations are affected is shown
And the change is not yet saved
Scenario: Confirming saves the change
Given the confirmation is shown for an edited criterion
When the author confirms
Then the change is saved
And the confirmation closes
Scenario: Cancelling abandons the save and keeps the author's edits
Given the confirmation is shown for an edited criterion
When the author cancels
Then the change is not saved
And the author's unsaved edits are still on screen
Scenario: Editing a criteria group asks for confirmation too
Given an author has changed a competency criteria group
When they submit the change
Then the same kind of confirmation is shown before saving
Scenario: The confirmation appears whether or not any learner has been evaluated
Given a criterion that no learner has been evaluated against
When an author edits and submits it
Then the confirmation is still shown
Scenario: A save that fails does not claim to have succeeded
Given the author has confirmed an edit
When saving fails
Then the failure is shown to the author
And the author's edits are still on screen
Scenario: The confirmation is usable by keyboard and screen reader
When the confirmation is shown
Then focus moves into it
And its message and buttons are announced
And it can be dismissed from the keyboard
Description
Editing a competency criterion or criteria group on the Competency Management page saves immediately with no confirmation. An author has no indication that their change applies only going forward, and that learners already evaluated against the old rule keep the status they earned.
This ticket adds the confirmation step. The wording and behavior come from the design spike #775.
Technical Details
This section is background and a suggested approach, not the ticket's source of truth. The User Story and Acceptance Criteria define what must be true when the work is done.
In short
Why the warning is unconditional. It appears on every criterion and group edit, not only when learner statuses already exist. Product chose that deliberately: a dialog that appears only sometimes trains authors to expect saves to be silent and then surprises them, and the frontend would need to know whether any learner had been evaluated in order to decide, which is information it does not have on this screen.
What the wording has to be true about. An edit changes future evaluations only. It never rewrites a status a learner already earned, and it never removes anything. That is the whole content of the message, and it is why this dialog is worded differently from the delete confirmation in #786.
The two edit surfaces, confirmed against the actual Competency Management UI (not assumed): a criterion's rule threshold (operator and percentage, in the "Competency Completion Rule" panel under a course/content association) and a criteria group's combining logic (the "any"/"all" dropdown). These are two different controls, not one shared save path — see the open complication below for what that means for this ticket.
Take the wording from the design spike rather than this ticket. The starting text is a draft that #775 refines, along with the responsive and accessible behavior. Do not treat the sample copy in the spike as final without checking what #775 concluded.
Open complication, not yet resolved: there is no distinct save action to gate. Both edit surfaces above currently auto-apply on change; there is no visible "Save" step to intercept, which is what "gate the submit, not the field" below assumes exists. Confirming before a change takes effect may mean intercepting every field's change handler directly rather than a single submit action, which is a materially different (and likely harder) interaction than what #775's starting design (a dialog with Cancel/Save Changes buttons) assumes. This probably needs to go back to #775 before this ticket's own implementation approach can be trusted, rather than being resolved here.
Implementation specifics
- Gate the submit, not the field. Let the author edit freely; intercept the save. (See the open complication above: it's not yet clear this ticket has a "submit" to gate.)
- Use the dialog #775 specifies, including its final wording, button labels, focus behavior, and small-screen layout. If #775 has not landed, block on it rather than inventing copy: the wording is the substance of this ticket.
- Reuse the project's existing modal component rather than building one, so focus trapping and screen-reader announcement come for free and match the rest of the authoring frontend.
- Cancelling preserves form state. Do not reset the form, refetch, or navigate away.
- Show the confirmation for both record types, a criterion and a criteria group, from whatever edit surfaces exist for each.
- Do not condition it on learner status. No extra request to find out whether anyone has been evaluated; the dialog is unconditional.
- Surface a save failure to the author and leave their edits on screen. Do not close the dialog on failure in a way that loses the change.
- Tests: submitting shows the dialog and does not save; confirming saves; cancelling does not save and preserves edits; both record types show it; a criterion with no learner status still shows it; a failed save reports the failure and keeps the edits; focus moves into the dialog and it is keyboard dismissible.
- Out of scope: the delete confirmation for an association (#786), the design itself (#775), the backend update endpoints, which #759 and #760 provide, and any change to what an edit does server-side.
- Context #775 is the design spike that produces this dialog's wording, responsive behavior, and accessible behavior.
- The approved implementation approach on #655, for the decision that edit warnings are unconditional and that tag and taxonomy edits get none.
- #759 and #760 provide the update endpoints this gates.
.claude/frontend-app-authoring-architecture-overview.mdfor the authoring frontend's conventions and existing modal patterns.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reading design spike #775 and .claude/frontend-app-authoring-architecture-overview.md, then locate the criterion threshold and criteria-group combining-logic edit surfaces and the project's existing modal patterns. Confirm the save interaction before implementing, since the issue notes that both surfaces currently auto-apply. Done means the specified tests cover confirmation, cancellation, failure handling, both record types, preserved edits, and keyboard and screen-reader behavior.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Domain
- accessibility, frontend
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Active
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 38/100