Legacy mobile channels that reuse web portals enabled you to build apps that used only single webviews. When you use a Pega Mobile Client-based mobile channel, you provide mobile users with apps that operate on multiple webviews. Such apps use a modern mobile architecture that offers better navigation and increased UI responsiveness.Remember: Since Pega Platform version 8.5, you can no longer create new mobile channels that reuse web portals in your Pega application. When you update your instance to version 8.5, you can continue using any existing legacy channel, but with limited authoring capabilities. To provide users with a fully native mobile experience, update your channel and take advantage of the following enhancements:

• Prescriptive mobile app authoring and customization
• Improved loading time when switching between tabs at run time
• Native bottom bar navigation that enables other native device capabilities
• Native mobile list pages
• Native search
• Native UI controls

1. Open your mobile channel:
   1. In the navigation pane of App Studio, click Channels.
   2. In the Current channel interfaces section, click the tile that represents a legacy mobile channel that you created by reusing a web portal.
   Result: When the channel opens, the update tool automatically launches.
2. In the update tool window, click Start now.

   

   

3. In the Upgrade mobile channel window, select the navigation rule that you want to use in your mobile channel.
   When you select a rule, the tool indicates whether navigation items from the rule are supported or not. The tool can still convert rules with unsupported items, but these unsupported items are not included in the final navigation in your mobile channel.

   

   

4. Click Upgrade.Result: The update tool rebuilds the navigation for your mobile channel and enables you to configure native mobile features, such as mobile list pages or search. For more information about configuring mobile channel navigation, see Adding items to the menu bar.
5. Click Save.Result: After you save your updated mobile channel, Pega Platform recreates all rules that are necessary for the channel to operate, and also recreates a portal associated with the channel. Pega Platform also automatically adds the recreated portal to the access group that is defined in the configuration of the mobile channel.

What to do next: You might need to adjust some features from your existing web portal to work with the new prescriptive mobile channel design. If you are unclear how to implement specific use cases in the new mobile channel, post your question on Pega Community. Otherwise, verify the changes to your mobile app by generating, installing, and launching the app. For more information, see Generating native mobile apps.