Collecting information from users

One method of gathering data is collecting information from users. In Pega Platform, you can create forms that users complete to provide you with necessary details. To ensure that case workers have all relevant information, define what fields you need to include in a form and what data format you need. For example, in a loan request case, a form might include fields to provide a name, surname, date of birth, address, a phone number, and a loan amount. Additionally, you can specify that certain fields consist of only certain characters. For example, a phone number field that consists of digits only. Each field represents a data entity that your application pairs with a value that a user provides. Pega Platform refers to data entities as data objects.

Reusing data across your application

To save time and maintain consistency, you can reuse data objects and values that you need to reference across your application. For example, when a user provides a name and a surname, you can include those entities in any further context that you need, such as an autogenerated email or case documents. For improved data management, you can organize data objects into groups, and then reuse the groups across your application. For example, you can create a Loan Request Applicant data object that includes the applicant's personal details, such as a name, a surname, and contact information, as well as their income details. Every time that you use the Loan Request Applicant data object, you then ensure that you provide an entire set of values.

The following figure shows sample scenarios in which you can reuse personal details of a customer across your application. For example, you can reuse the details on certain forms or for cases related to filing a complaint or returning purchased objects:

For greater efficiency and flexibility, you can reuse data across multiple applications and systems. Consider a scenario in which a company uses different applications for handling timesheets, expense reports, and facility requests. Instead of creating duplicate data objects, the applications can fetch data from one database – a process that is possible because of data virtualization. By virtualizing data, you not only lower development time and costs, but also provide meaningful and consolidated data in multiple scenarios.

Integrating with external systems

To save time and reduce development costs, you can also create integrations between your application and external storage systems. Consider a scenario in which a financial services provider handles the payroll for employees of multiple companies. Instead of manually providing data about each employee, you can create a data object that uses an integration, such as a REST API, to source the required information from an external system of records. For example, from a database that stores information about employees of a particular company. Because of the integration, the financial services provider can process their work without having direct access to the external database. When an employee changes their details in the external storage system, you can ensure that your application reflects the changes. As a result, you increase data consistency and avoid errors.

What to do next: Ensure that your business processes align with regulations and policies within your company. See Understanding and complying with case management best practices.