OnQ Archivation and Deletion

Table of Contents

• ITS' Policy and Plans
• What Does This Mean?
• What is Archived?
• Can I Back Up My Courses?
  • Problems Creating a Single Backup Space

ITS' Policy and Plans

In April, 2026, ITS made an announcement regarding OnQ spaces linked to PeopleSoft enrollments. In brief,

• All completed courses that are more than five years old will be deleted.
  • Deleted courses can not be recovered.
• All completed courses that are two to five years old will be archived.
  • You must request a hold to extend the archive period before August 20, 2026.
  • An archived course stores less data than the original.
• You can request the restoration of an archived course in OnQ.
  • It will be read-only.
  • It will not be accessible to students.

In June, 2026, ITS confirmed that 'No Semester' courses are presently exempt but that will likely change in the future.

What Does This Mean?

If you always copy the contents from last year's course into the current offering, then the archiving and deletion system may not affect you.

This system will absolutely affect you if you:

• use your prior OnQ spaces to store material that you pick-and-choose from for each course offering; or
• need to refer to a course offered more than two years ago due to a dispute with a student.

If you need to view an archived course, you can request that ITS:

• provide access to the read-only archived subset, or
• "restore" a read-only subset of the course space to OnQ.

What is Archived?

The following OnQ content is not included in the archive, according to ITS' documentation:

• active course functionality (submissions, grading, interactions);
• external tools or third-party integrations (for example, publisher tools, LTIs, live Zoom sessions);
• content hosted outside onQ/SmithLearning and controlled by external providers; and
• course changes or student activity occurring after the archive date.

It's important to note that while grade items are archived, no student submissions, including those for assignments and quizzes, are kept.

ITS did clarify something in an exchange with a team member: question libraries are archived.

Can I Back Up My Courses?

Yes. There are three ways to do this.

1. For now, you can create a 'No Semester' course in CCT+ and copy nearly all of the components of one OnQ space into it.
2. OnQ has an export and import mechanism. You can store nearly all of the components of a course, or a subset thereof, as a file.
3. Combine the previous two strategies to create a single 'No Semester' course with a curated subset of your content. This approach is the trickiest.

There are some things that the copy, import and export functions can't handle. According to D2L's Brightspace documentation on the subject (as of June, 2026), the following components are restricted in at least one of these functions.

Table 1: List of OnQ components that are restricted wrt at least one function.

Component	Copy	Import	Export
Attendance Registers	Yes	No	No
Awards	Yes	No	No
Content Display Settings	Yes	No	No
Content Metadata	No	Yes	No
Forms	Yes	No	No
Grade Settings	Yes	No	No
Links	Yes	No	No
LTI TPs	Yes	No	No
Sections	No	No	No
Tool Names	Yes	No	No
Widgets	Yes	No	No

There are also several OnQ components for which copy, import and export are complicated.

Table 2: List of OnQ components that are complicated wrt at least one function.

Component	Copy	Import	Export
Course Files	Source files overwrite destination files with the same name.	Option to overwrite all destination files with the same name or not import those files.	Yes
Groups	Yes	Partial. Groups with automatic enrollment cannot be imported/exported.
Homepages	Yes	Partial. The Homepage's name is imported and set to associate to an existing Homepage if the names match.	Partial. The Homepage's name is exported to associate to an existing Homepage where possible.
Learning Outcomes	Yes	Partial. Import/export available for ASN outcomes but not locally authored or program authored outcomes.
Navbars	Yes	Partial. The Navbar's name is imported and set to associate to an existing Homepage if the names match.	Partial. The Navbar's name is exported to associate to an existing Homepage where possible.

Problems Creating a Single Backup Space

You can create a single OnQ space that contains multiple courses' content by:

• creating a 'No Semester' course and copying a previous offering; then
• exporting the other OnQ spaces to files, then importing them in the 'No Semester' space.

But there are significant issues to consider.

• All files, whether imported or copied, are put into the same directory by default. When importing, you need to select 'Advanced Options', then in the 'Customize Your Course Package' screen, provide a subdirectory name. Otherwise, files with the same name will all be overwritten or ignored, depending on which option you choose.
• Everything in the question library is duplicated. If your libraries are large and have identical questions, this will take effort to sort through and delete. When exporting courses, make sure to check 'Select individual items to export' for Question Libraries and curate there.
• All modules are copied into the Content area and aren't distinguished by offering. Modules with identical names and similar content will require extra organization. Again, when exporting courses, make sure to check 'Select individual items to export' for Content.
• The maximum size for import files is 2GB.

Unless you feel strongly about creating a single repository for your materials, it's significantly simpler to create one 'No Semester' OnQ space per offering you want to save and copy that offering into it.