Moodle Workplace has this interesting problem when we do not want to notify admins about the new Moodle versions available but we do want to notify about new versions of Moodle Workplace available.

For example, we usually have a several weeks delay between major Moodle LMS release and major Moodle Workplace release. The partners complain that during this period they get notifications that "New Moodle version is available" which is confusing.

We recommended to disable the scheduled task that checks for update notifications but it can be useful when checking for plugins updates.

Also we do want to notify about the new versions of Moodle Workplace.

As discussed below we will implement a separate endpoint such as https://download.moodle.org/api/1.3/workplace.php to return the list of all workplace releases. We already push all releases to github - https://github.com/moodleworkplace/releases - so it will basically be a mirror

Original description (ignore it, this is not how we decided to implement it):

I had a quick look at how the update checker works and this is what I think we can do:

• create an empty plugin, for example, tool_wpforversioncheck and register it in the plugins directory. Automatically 'push' the new version every time Workplace minor or major version is released
• patch the 'check_for_updates_task' in Workplace and always send request for the updates of this plugin but display them as available updates for the Workplace product instead.

This way we do not need to change anything about how the backend for the update checker works, and it will be easy for us to automate "pushing" new versions.

The only (minor) problem is that the tool_wpforversioncheck will be visible in the plugins directory as if it is available for download, but since it's empty anyway, there will be no harm or disclosure. Maybe at some point later we can hide it from plugins directory.

I created this issue to discuss this approach with the Sites team and document the solution.