[Feature:Submission] Create empty submission for all students by roye2 · Pull Request #12576 · Submitty/Submitty

roye2 · 2026-03-13T03:48:22Z

Why is this Change Important & Necessary?

Closes #11144 .
Currently, there is no way to autogenerate submissions for all users in a course to enable the Submitty grading capabilities. An example of when this would be useful is for an assignment (like a presentation) where students do not have anything to submit to Submitty, but the instructor still wishes to grade them through Submitty. Previously, in such a scenario instructors would have to manually submit for each student.

What is the New Behavior?

An instructor can now make a "blank" submission for all students on a gradeable. The button is depicted here.

And the confirmation message:

A small banner message will be displayed and updated as the submissions process:

The submission will be in the form of a placeholder PDF. Once the button has been pressed and the submissions have been uploaded, the rubric grading can be used.

What steps should a reviewer take to reproduce or test the bug or new feature?

Create a 'Bulk Upload' style gradeable and test the submission and gradeability. Note that the new submissions will replace any currently active versions. Note: Since a part of this change includes adding a PDF to the code, testers will need to run 'submitty_install' in their VM for the changes to work correctly.

Automated Testing & Documentation

There is currently no automated testing associated with this change.
Pressing this button on a team gradeable makes a submission for each student, regardless of team association.
I was not able to break the team functionality, but it isn't implemented correctly either.
Eventually, a link to the Submitty.org documentation should be added to describe the purpose of this button to the user.

Other information

This is not a breaking change.

codecov · 2026-03-13T03:49:25Z

Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 0% with 115 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.
✅ Project coverage is 21.61%. Comparing base (b2db10a) to head (9dc7ef5).
⚠️ Report is 21 commits behind head on main.

Additional details and impacted files

@@             Coverage Diff              @@
##               main   #12576      +/-   ##
============================================
- Coverage     21.64%   21.61%   -0.03%     
- Complexity     9654     9788     +134     
============================================
  Files           268      268              
  Lines         36244    36618     +374     
  Branches        487      490       +3     
============================================
+ Hits           7845     7915      +70     
- Misses        27916    28217     +301     
- Partials        483      486       +3

Flag	Coverage Δ
autograder	`21.32% <ø> (ø)`
js	`2.02% <0.00%> (-0.03%)`	⬇️
migrator	`100.00% <ø> (ø)`
php	`20.65% <0.00%> (-0.01%)`	⬇️
python_submitty_utils	`80.08% <ø> (ø)`
submitty_daemon_jobs	`91.13% <ø> (ø)`

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…sions

…ithub.com/Submitty/Submitty into create-empty-submissions-for-all-students

roye2 · 2026-03-18T15:21:43Z

I marked the PR as ready for review. I know the CI gradeable test is flaky. If anyone can help me understand why my code is failing the CI System test, that would be great.

John-Roy123

Testing this PR on a smaller screen size (14 in screen) the bulk upload header looks like

The button is being put onto its own line despite there being room for it in line with the other buttons, making the page look more disorganized.

I also noticed while using on Firefox, the type of popup used for confirmation has the "do not let localhost:1511 send popups anymore". If a user for whatever reason has selected that, the button no longer works, and they will no longer be able to make bulk blank submissions.

…ithub.com/Submitty/Submitty into create-empty-submissions-for-all-students

roye2 · 2026-03-27T02:16:33Z

I've added a PR for the documentation and fixed all known bugs:
Submitty/submitty.github.io#743
Once the documentation is approved, should I add a link to it next to the radio button?

…ithub.com/Submitty/Submitty into create-empty-submissions-for-all-students

roye2 · 2026-03-27T21:05:27Z

The question mark button currently links to another page while the documentation is still unmerged.

…ithub.com/Submitty/Submitty into create-empty-submissions-for-all-students

roye2 · 2026-03-28T02:08:13Z

@bmcutler I was able to hide the option on team gradeables and I also verified that the function was only looping over the users in the course. As it turns out, (luckily) the function I used to get the users only returned the table of users from the course (null sections included.)
I am still not sure if this PR is ready to be merged, because the question mark button linking to the documentation is currently linked to a placeholder link (just to show that it works.) Would it be possible to wait to merge this pr until the documentation for this page is merged and live in main on Submitty.org? If not I can also just remove the question mark for now and add it back in a seperate PR. Thank you!

JManion32

Looks great! I have a few small comments, but overall, the code is intuitive and the functionality is very well done. I'm re-running the failing CI tests right now, and will approve later today.

JManion32

Great work! Code and functionality work well. This is a significant quality of life feature for course management. We encountered some small behaviors that differ between Chrome and Firefox, but none were created by this PR. I will create an issue for it, but its low priority.

roye2 · 2026-03-31T21:15:00Z

I updated the question mark button to link to the documentation page for the new feature. As far as I am concerned this PR is now ready to go.

Added documentation page for the Submit All with Placeholder feature instructors have access to on Bulk Upload type gradeables. This feature is being added in PR #12576 in the Submitty site. Submitty/Submitty#12576 Screenshot: <img width="1918" height="916" alt="image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/e53739fd-41b5-4913-9617-ec7f8045a387" /> --------- Co-authored-by: Barb Cutler <[email protected]>

roye2 · 2026-04-14T21:11:10Z

More info on how I fixed the CI System failure:
#12761 (comment)

### Why is this Change Important & Necessary? #Closes #11144 ### What is the New Behavior? Added team functionality to my earlier changes in PR #12576 Now, after making teams on a Team Bulk Upload Gradeable, an instructor can use this feature to have no-file submissions generated for each team. A placeholder pdf will be submitted to enable the use of rubric for grading. <img width="1640" height="307" alt="image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/44be8097-6db9-4b23-b0a6-5b7febacd730" /> The submissions can be graded using a rubric like any other team submission. <img width="1643" height="788" alt="image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/c5fcde6d-dabd-4e4c-83d3-a4f901e52af4" /> ### What steps should a reviewer take to reproduce or test the bug or new feature? Note, please use submitty_install rather than submitty_install_site as a pdf has been added to the non-site codebase. On a Team Bulk Upload Gradeable: 1. As instructor, create teams for students. (navigate to the submissions / grading view and click on the edit teams pencil icon) 2. Navigate to the Bulk Upload tab and select the button for No File Rubric Grading 3. After submitting, observe that you can grade the new team submissions. ### Automated Testing & Documentation I have not added any automated testing for this PR. ### Other information More information can be found in PR #12576

roye2 added 5 commits March 10, 2026 08:37

WIP changes to fix Issue#11144

062f4b2

Updated font, progress on SubmissionController function

f80fca9

Updates to Submission Controller Function

a8efafb

Changed PDF to exist in code base

8c91770

refactor to generateBlankSubmissions based on ajaxUploadSubmission

78be099

roye2 linked an issue Mar 13, 2026 that may be closed by this pull request

Create empty submissions for all students for gradeable #11144

Closed

github-project-automation Bot added this to Submitty Development Mar 13, 2026

github-project-automation Bot moved this to Seeking Reviewer in Submitty Development Mar 13, 2026

automateprojectmangement Bot moved this from Seeking Reviewer to Work in Progress in Submitty Development Mar 13, 2026

roye2 changed the title ~~[Feature:Instructor] Create empty submissions for all students~~ [Feature:Submission] Create empty submissions for all students Mar 13, 2026

roye2 changed the title ~~[Feature:Submission] Create empty submissions for all students~~ [Feature:Submission] Create empty submission for all students Mar 13, 2026

roye2 added 12 commits March 13, 2026 08:14

Merge branch 'main' into create-empty-submissions-for-all-students

ddc684f

Updates comments in SubmissionController function generateBlankSubmis…

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Merge branch 'create-empty-submissions-for-all-students' of https://g…

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…ithub.com/Submitty/Submitty into create-empty-submissions-for-all-students

Merge branch 'main' into create-empty-submissions-for-all-students

213b412

added button

2e7f98e

finalize button ui and message display

e69b746

fix linting and update button text

4599fb4

fix linting

838c694

fix linting, ignoring param and return type issues

86dfd7c

fix param and return types

5580ae1

fix single whitespace character to appease linter :')

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updated return val to JsonResponse

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roye2 marked this pull request as ready for review March 18, 2026 15:20

automateprojectmangement Bot moved this from Work in Progress to Seeking Reviewer in Submitty Development Mar 18, 2026

John-Roy123 requested changes Mar 20, 2026

View reviewed changes

github-project-automation Bot moved this from Seeking Reviewer to Work in Progress in Submitty Development Mar 20, 2026

fix ui (removed 420 pixel gap)

1346c8a

roye2 added 2 commits March 26, 2026 21:42

fix JS lint

0dc8565

Merge branch 'create-empty-submissions-for-all-students' of https://g…

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…ithub.com/Submitty/Submitty into create-empty-submissions-for-all-students

roye2 mentioned this pull request Mar 27, 2026

[Documentation:Submission] No-file rubric grading Submitty/submitty.github.io#743

Merged

roye2 requested a review from JManion32 March 27, 2026 02:19

roye2 added 3 commits March 27, 2026 16:00

Merge branch 'main' into create-empty-submissions-for-all-students

32849f0

Updated Wording

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Merge branch 'create-empty-submissions-for-all-students' of https://g…

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…ithub.com/Submitty/Submitty into create-empty-submissions-for-all-students

roye2 added 3 commits March 27, 2026 17:40

Merge branch 'main' into create-empty-submissions-for-all-students

e402632

updated to hide option on team gradeables.

96a0d3f

Merge branch 'create-empty-submissions-for-all-students' of https://g…

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roye2 added 3 commits March 28, 2026 14:23

changed button to read 'no file rubric grading'

85f4fdb

Merge branch 'main' into create-empty-submissions-for-all-students

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Merge branch 'main' into create-empty-submissions-for-all-students

c699d9f

JManion32 reviewed Mar 31, 2026

View reviewed changes

Comment thread site/ts/grader-submission.ts

Comment thread site/ts/grader-submission.ts

JManion32 approved these changes Mar 31, 2026

View reviewed changes

? button now links to new documentation page

abd257d

roye2 added 3 commits April 2, 2026 21:31

Merge branch 'main' into create-empty-submissions-for-all-students

f7303b2

Merge branch 'main' into create-empty-submissions-for-all-students

eeed750

Merge branch 'main' into create-empty-submissions-for-all-students

a9b7891

roye2 mentioned this pull request Apr 7, 2026

[Feature:Submission] Create empty submissions for Teams #12761

Merged

fix CI System check and update error checking

9dc7ef5

roye2 closed this Apr 18, 2026

github-project-automation Bot moved this from In Review to Done in Submitty Development Apr 18, 2026

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Why is this Change Important & Necessary?

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