Enhance Open edX Commerce Pluign to Handle Open edX Programs Creation, Sync, and Orders

[amirnafees88]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Currently, the Open edX Commerce WordPress plugin does not support managing Open edX Programs (collections of courses) within WooCommerce. Administrators can only manage individual courses but have no native way to create, organize, sync, and sell Programs.

Describe the solution you'd like
I would like to introduce a new feature where:

1. WooCommerce Grouped Products are renamed and adapted to represent Programs.
2. Custom fields are added to capture Open edX Program metadata (e.g., authoring organizations, hours effort per week, program type, status, featured flag, banner image).
3. Linked simple products (courses) are associated with the program.
4. On publish/update of a Program in WordPress, a corresponding Program is created/updated in Open edX Discovery via API, and the UUID is saved in product metadata.
5. WooCommerce orders for Programs include relevant Program metadata (such as UUID, title, associated courses) for better tracking and possible LMS integration.

This will allow admins to fully manage Open edX Programs from WordPress, provide a better purchasing experience for users, and maintain sync with Discovery. Detailed solution document is here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LayTiffIjP9q5sD9HiDhSSSuZVWVjB_xrVIB4E5YhuE/edit?usp=sharing

Describe alternatives you've considered

1. Managing Programs manually in Open edX Discovery and only linking them statically on WordPress — but this would break synchronization, create maintenance overhead, and not capture purchase metadata in WooCommerce.
2. Using an entirely separate custom post type for Programs instead of leveraging WooCommerce Grouped Products — however, this would increase complexity and duplicate e-commerce functionality already provided by WooCommerce.
3. Building a standalone plugin for Programs — but integrating directly into the existing Open edX Commerce plugin provides a more streamlined, consistent, and maintainable solution.

Additional context
Flow Diagrams also added in this document https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LayTiffIjP9q5sD9HiDhSSSuZVWVjB_xrVIB4E5YhuE/edit?usp=sharing.

[MaferMazu]

Hello @amirnafees88, thanks for opening the issue.

Are you interested in grouping products to make them look like programs? Or are you interested in selling Open edX Programs?

I ask because we are currently selling courses, but behind the scenes, we are creating course enrollments in Open edX. Do you want to have similar behavior but using programs? Like having a product called a program and triggering program enrollment creation in Open edX? Or just group courses and create several course enrollments?

I can take a deeper look next week. In the meantime, please share your thoughts about this.

[amirnafees88]

@MaferMazu Thank you for the follow-up.

To answer your first question:
We are specifically interested in selling Open edX Programs, not just grouping individual products to resemble programs. The idea is to utilize the actual Programs feature in Open edX and reflect that in the e-commerce flow.

Regarding your second point:
Yes, our goal is to create a product representing a Program. When a user purchases this Program product, it should trigger a Program enrollment in Open edX via API. This enrollment would automatically include the user in all associated courses that are part of that Program, just as it works natively in Open edX.

We would like to develop this feature to ensure a seamless integration between our product catalog and Open edX Programs, including the automated enrollment process.

[amirnafees88]

@MaferMazu I'm just following up on this. Do you have any updates or thoughts to share?
Thanks You.

[feanil]

Where would you expect the source of truth for the programs data to be and how do you expect the data flow to work? Which services do you think will be involved? In particular, I'm concerned about integrate the course-discovery service since it's so specifc to edx.org right now.

[amirnafees88]

@feanil
– Where would you expect the source of truth for the programs data to be, and how do you expect the data flow to work?
The source of truth for the programs data will reside in the Course Discovery service. This service exposes REST API endpoints that allow us to Create, Update, and Retrieve program data. We will leverage these endpoints to manage the complete lifecycle of programs and ensure data consistency across the platform.

– Which services do you think will be involved?
Apart from the LMS, the Course Discovery service will play a central role in handling program-related data.

– I'm particularly concerned about integrating the Course Discovery service, since it's currently quite specific to edx.org.
That's a valid concern. However, this feature is designed to benefit any Open edX instance that uses the Course Discovery service, not just edx.org. In the proposed solution, I’ve accounted for this by including configuration settings. You can find more details in Section 3.2 – Course Discovery Configuration of the solution document.

These settings are built to be non-intrusive, meaning that if the Course Discovery service is not being used, the feature remains inactive and does not interfere with existing functionality. This ensures full backward compatibility with the current course features in the Open edX commerce plugin.

If you have any further concerns, please let me know.

[amirnafees88]

@feanil
As announced in openedx/course-discovery#4449, the Course Discovery service is scheduled for deprecation. While the Open edX community has not yet confirmed an official replacement, discussions are ongoing regarding viable alternatives.

Ahmed Khalid, one of our team member, is currently working on a proposal outlining potential approaches, including leveraging existing Open edX APIs and/or migrating program-related services from Discovery to a new Django plugin. Once finalized, we will determine the best path forward and align on the services to be used for a smooth transition.

[feanil]

That sounds good, yes, I think a Django plugin for edx-platform that provides the relevant data and APIs seems like a promising approach to take here. Then we could use those APIs to enable the programs products here.

[MaferMazu]

@amirnafees88, so we are going to wait a little to see what happens with the proposal of the Django plugin with the APIs before continuing with this proposal of bringing program's support to the openedx-commerce WP plugin, right?
Also, if you have a link where we can see the Django plugin proposal and/or its progress, can you share it here? It should be helpful.

By the way, sorry for my late response.

[amirnafees88]

@MaferMazu, here is the link for the Django plugin proposal.

https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/OEPM/pages/5026938891/Proposed+Catalog+Plugin

[MaferMazu]

@amirnafees88, your use case is explicitly with programs, right? So, for your case, is it important to have this concept of a catalog, right?

Because if we want to sell groups of courses with minimal support, we can probably use a solution more similar to Omar's here https://openedx.slack.com/archives/C0WL6SPRA/p1763338694550429?thread_ts=1763338622.307209&cid=C0WL6SPRA or use something like https://wordpress.org/plugins/woo-product-bundle/ to sell multiple items at once.