Change Management for Pega Cloud

This article is part of the Pega Cloud Subscription Documentation.

Pega provides change management for Pega Cloud environments. Changes are  planned, reviewed, tested, implemented, and validated. 

Responsibilities

Pega is responsible for managing all changes to the Pega Cloud Environments, which includes the underlying cloud infrastructure, as well as patches and upgrades to Pega-licensed products. Client changes to applications that are layered on top are the client's responsibility.  Client-built applications must conform to established Pega Platform best practices and Guardrail Compliance instructions that are posted on Pega Community and provided in the Pega Platform Dev Studio.

Requesting changes

To request a Pega Cloud Environment change, a client should submit a request by selecting New Request through My Support Portal (available 24 hours a day, seven days a week) and provide all relevant change plan information, materials, and supporting documentation.  If the client has change requests for multiple Environments, please submit a separate request for each Environment.  Each request must include a complete description of the change, a change plan with at least one task, and proposed start and end dates, times, and time zone. No changes can be made that are not explicitly listed in the request.

When submitting a Cloud Change request via My Support Portal, clients must give a minimum of two hours' notice before the change is needed.  If a Cloud Change is needed sooner – due to downtime in the Environment related to a Severity 1 ticket – please call the Pega Support hot line for assistance from a Pega representative.

If clients elect to move private or confidential data to non-production Environments (sandbox or non-production mirror sandbox), they should be mindful of security best practices, as described in the Security Checklist (please see Client Data Responsibilities for additional information on this Checklist).  

To protect the security of Pega Cloud client information in production Environments, Pega requires written authorization from a Client Security Contact for significant changes such as access level changes, data changes, and platform changes. This written authorization must give appropriate advance notice, and must provide all detail necessary to implement the change; it is specific to one request only, and must be provided by email, document, or letter.  The authorization will be attached to the Change Request as an audited record of the request.  Additionally, Pega may require a signed liability release form for requests to directly access a production database.  Emergency changes (such as a service outage or critical change) which require immediate response (without the advance notice) may be made with authorization from a Pega Cloud Change Manager. 

Change requests should only be submitted for activities the client cannot perform through the Pega Platform Dev Studio. Changes required for the proper operation of cloud Environments or applications (configuration file changes, Pega software upgrades, and so on) do require a request submission. Similarly, change requests for non-production Environments (ex: development, test, staging, etc.) need not be reviewed by the Change Advisory Board (as they have no compliance or security impact) but should also be submitted in the change request.

Note:  For each new release of the Legacy Web Chat (formerly Pega Chat), Co-Browse, Workforce Intelligence, Digital Messaging, and Voice AI services, all client Environments are automatically updated during their maintenance windows (if applicable). 

Subscription changes

To change the terms of a Pega Cloud subscription (for example, to add a new Strategic Application to the configuration), please contact a Pega Account Executive.

For additional details on Pega Cloud change management, which are not part of the Pega Cloud Subscription Documentation, see The Change Management Process in Pega Cloud.