Enhance Django Admin Experience with Autocomplete and Multiselect Support

[awais786]

Currently, in the Django admin for Open edX, users are required to manually search and scroll through dropdown menus to select values, which becomes inefficient when dealing with large tables.

To improve this experience, we can integrate django-autocomplete-light. This plugin provides an autocomplete feature for dropdowns and also supports multi-select fields, significantly enhancing usability and reducing time spent on manual searching.

This functionality has already been tested and implemented successfully in course-discovery , and I believe it can be very helpful in the edx-platform admin interface as well.

Few links from discovery.

• https://github.com/openedx/course-discovery/blob/master/course_discovery/apps/publisher/admin.py#L32

• https://github.com/openedx/course-discovery/blob/master/course_discovery/apps/course_metadata/forms.py#L12

[awais786]

We need to go through this https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/COMM/pages/3875962884/How+to+submit+an+open+source+contribution+for+Product+Review

[MahnoorArbisoft]

We aim to simplify the experience of making configurations in Django Admin. Our definition of "simple" is that users should not need to:

• Navigate between documentation and the admin interface to make changes,
• Worry about typos when adding Course IDs, organization names, waffle flags or site values.

It should be easier for users to fetch commonly used information directly from the interface. Based on this, we're proposing a few improvements:

User Creation Tab Improvements

• Language should be a searchable dropdown instead of an open text field.
• Year of Birth should accept input in date format instead of free text.

This will not only improve user experience but also help in streamlined clean data in backend.

Simplifying Site-wide Settings (Site Values)
Currently, to enable features like discussion notifications, users have to find the correct JSON value from documentation and manually paste it under the Site Values tab.
We want to reduce these steps by allowing users to simply select the desired setting from a dropdown, without worrying about JSON values.

Simplifying Waffle Flags Configuration
Similarly, to apply settings like enabling public course content, users currently need to locate the correct waffle flag in Open edX documentation and copy it into Django Admin.
This could be simplified by allowing users to select the relevant setting/waffle flag via a dropdown, eliminating the need to switch between documentation and Django Admin for basic configurations.

Easier Selection for Organization Names and Course IDs
Under multiple settings, users must manually find and type the exact organization name and course ID in open text fields.
We can simplify this by offering dropdowns populated with available organization names and course IDs, so users can simply select the correct option without worrying about typos or hunting for the exact names.

[jmakowski1123]

From a product/end user point of view, this looks like a great addition to me. Two points from the eng team:

1. Will this plugin have Django 5.2 support?
2. For now, it's preferable to only enable the plugin for the fields defined above in the product definition here. Other fields that may require larger search queries (like learner name) could carry the risk of introducing performance issues.

[musanaeem]

@jmakowski1123

1. This package is compatible with Django 5.2 — we've tested it locally and also submitted an upstream PR to ensure ongoing compatibility. The package is already testing against the main branch of django which contains the latest changes.
2. We aim to start simple and improve user experience so we will touch fields that do not hinder performance.

[jmakowski1123]

Awesome, looks good to go! cc @MahnoorArbisoft

[MahnoorArbisoft]

Thanks @jmakowski1123 ! 🏆

[awais786]

The first PR has been merged, so I believe we can close this issue now.