Hiding graded activities and the gradebook

My customer called me today and said, "James, how come when the teacher hides something in the course, it still shows in the gradebook"?  I thought to myself "well, it does not".  But naturally, I tethered my tongue and investigated before making the assertion.

I logged into the site in the admin. role, opened one of our practice courses that has practice accounts enrolled in the student role.

I first checked both of the grade reports that my customer uses, the Grader and User reports, to ensure that the assignments were visible to begin with. I browsed to the course home page and turned off a quiz and assignment by clicking the eye.

I browsed to both of the Grade reports and saw that the items were not visible to the student role and dimmed out to the teacher and admin. role.

User report:

I made the assertion to my customer that the gradebook reacts as expected to gradeable items being hidden in the course page (the gradebook hides them too - or dimes them, depending on the role).

My customer called me back and showed me a course where this was not happening.  We went to the course page, verified that a gradeable item was hidden, browsed to the gradebook and saw the item as blue as can be.  Not hidden, not dimmed.... hmmmmmmm i said.

I returned to the course page, clicked on the eye to enable and then clicked again to disable, returned to the grade view, refreshed the view and ....... wait for it...... it was dimmed out.

Moral of the story?
1 - the gradebook does react properly to items hidden in the course page
2 - sometimes moodle caches the course page and confuses things.