Decide & stage removal of waffle flag: `enableCourseOptimizer`

[farhan]

• Flag name: enableCourseOptimizer
• Flag details: Gates the Course Optimizer page (broken-link checker, found in Studio's Tools menu).
• Removal date: It has been passed (2025-05-30).
• Current status: Currently disabled by default; can be enabled via the waffle flag contentstore.enable_course_optimizer.

Feature Details:

Course Optimizer — a Studio tool (under the Tools menu) that scans a course for broken links and helps authors fix them. It also has sub-feature flag enableCourseOptimizerCheckPrevRunLinks

What to do in this ticket

1. Involve stakeholders / product owners to discuss and decide on the future of this flag.
2. If we decide to enable it by default:
   1. Enable it by default in openedx-platform.
   2. Roll it out and gather feedback from the community.
   3. As a follow-up step, remove the waffle flag controlling this feature — provided we confirm it should remain an out-of-the-box feature.

Testing Notes:

Testing notes are give in comment below

References

• Original feature PR: Feat course optimizer page #1533
• Flag PR: feat: add course optimizer waffle flag openedx-platform#35884
• Community proposal: [Proposal] Course Optimizer (checks for broken links and images) platform-roadmap#388

/cc @jesperhodge — what are your thoughts on the removal of this flag?

[bradenmacdonald]

Do we know why this hasn't been enabled by default so far?

[farhan]

I did a quick (shallow) end-to-end test of the feature. Here are my testing notes:

Testing Steps

1. Enable the feature via the waffle flag

Set contentstore.enable_course_optimizer to Yes for everyone in the waffle-flags table:

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2. Navigate to the feature (Studio course page → Tools → Course Optimizer)

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3. Feature page

[farhan]

FYI @feanil — testing notes and references (@claude assisted) have been added. This is ready to forward to the product wg for feature decision.

My experience summary:
This feature looks like a good candidate to enable by default to me.