Admin settings are not searchable eg

[brendanheywood]

eg if you go to a page like this:

/admin/settings.php?section=local_o365&s_local_o365_tabs=1

you will see an admin settings like: support_user_identifier_change

But if you search the admin tree this is not visible in the search:

/admin/search.php?query=support_user_identifier_change

The reason for this is the way the page has settings under sub-tabs. It is possible to get this working and keep the tabs plenty of other plugins do this, each tab needs to be registered as its own page in the admin tree with its own section name rather than the custom query params &s_local_o365_tabs=5

[brendanheywood]

Rough patch from chatgpt:

diff --git a/local/o365/settings.php b/local/o365/settings.php
index 3a2c9ab..d91e7e4 100644
--- a/local/o365/settings.php
+++ b/local/o365/settings.php
@@ -20,10 +20,60 @@
 defined('MOODLE_INTERNAL') || die();

-if ($hassiteconfig) {
-    $settings = new admin_settingpage('local_o365', get_string('pluginname', 'local_o365'));
-    $ADMIN->add('localplugins', $settings);
+if (!$hassiteconfig) {
+    return;
+}
+
+$pages = [
+    'general' => 'local_o365_general',
+    'users'   => 'local_o365_users',
+    'support' => 'local_o365_support',
+];
+
+$pagegeneral = new admin_settingpage(
+    $pages['general'],
+    get_string('settings_general', 'local_o365')
+);
+
+$pageusers = new admin_settingpage(
+    $pages['users'],
+    get_string('settings_users', 'local_o365')
+);
+
+$pagesupport = new admin_settingpage(
+    $pages['support'],
+    get_string('settings_support', 'local_o365')
+);
+
+$ADMIN->add('localplugins', $pagegeneral);
+$ADMIN->add('localplugins', $pageusers);
+$ADMIN->add('localplugins', $pagesupport);
+
+/**
+ * Shared tab rendering helper
+ */
+function local_o365_render_tabs(array $pages) {
+    global $PAGE, $OUTPUT;
+
+    $current = $PAGE->url->get_param('section');
+    $tabs = [];
+
+    foreach ($pages as $key => $section) {
+        $url = new moodle_url('/admin/settings.php', ['section' => $section]);
+        $tabs[] = new tabobject(
+            $key,
+            $url,
+            get_string('settings_' . $key, 'local_o365')
+        );
+    }
+
+    echo $OUTPUT->tabtree($tabs, array_search($current, $pages, true));
+}

 if ($ADMIN->fulltree) {
-    // Existing tabbed settings logic lives here
+    // ---- GENERAL TAB ----
+    $PAGE->set_url('/admin/settings.php', ['section' => $pages['general']]);
+    local_o365_render_tabs($pages);
+
+    // (move existing "general" settings here)
+
+    // ---- USERS TAB ----
+    $PAGE->set_url('/admin/settings.php', ['section' => $pages['users']]);
+    local_o365_render_tabs($pages);
+
+    // (move existing "users" settings here)
+
+    // ---- SUPPORT TAB ----
+    $PAGE->set_url('/admin/settings.php', ['section' => $pages['support']]);
+    local_o365_render_tabs($pages);
+
+    $pagesupport->add(new admin_setting_configcheckbox(
+        'local_o365/support_user_identifier_change',
+        get_string('support_user_identifier_change', 'local_o365'),
+        get_string('support_user_identifier_change_desc', 'local_o365'),
+        0
+    ));
 }

[weilai-irl]

Hi @brendanheywood

Thank you for reporting the issue.

First of all, I acknowledge the issue. This is known to our team for years, and we had plans to improve it - we just didn't find the time to do it, until now. The issue actually applies to both auth_oidc and local_o365 plugins, which use external page admin configuration pages. The proper solution involves migrating settings in external pages to standard section admin pages, and reapply custom logic (conditional display, validation etc) on the migrated pages. Thank you for providing the suggested code changes. We have some work in progress at the moment, and as you can imagine, it's actually much more complicated than it looks.

Our plan is to include these changes in the 2026-02 milestone, i.e. the second release of this year, after the next one planned for March/April. The main reason is there will be some changes in the auth_oidc configuration pages in the next release, and our current work in progress will need to be finalised and rebased on the next release version. I'll put more updates when I have them in this issue.

Regards,
Lai

[brendanheywood]

thanks for the status Lai, that all sounds great :)