1. Verify that you have already run the required Pega Customer Service Upgrade Checker and the optional the Sales Automation Upgrade Checker. The upgrade checkers identify rule conflicts between the current version and the new version of the application.
   For information, see Pega Customer Service Upgrade Checker and Optional: Pega Sales Automation Upgrade Checker.
2. When updating from a version that is not the previous version, review the update guides and release notes for each of the interim versions. For example, if updating from release 8.4 to release 8.6, review the 8.5 update guide, 8.5 release notes, and this guide.
   Some product changes, such as deprecated and withdrawn features, require user action before the update. See Pega Community for legacy update guides and release notes. To review a list of the product changes that have update impacts, see Crucial update information for Pega Customer Relationship Management.
3. If updating from Pega Customer Service for Financial Services 8.5, apply Hotfix HFIX-80355 before starting the update.
4. Before starting an update, and before backing up your system, review the database policies and application permissions that are used by your Pega Platform update. Determine whether the application is permitted to update the database automatically or if you must generate the database scripts that your organization will use to manually make schema changes.
5. Determine which language packs are applicable to your product and check for availability.
   For information, see Pega Marketplace.
6. Update the listed applications in the following order:
   Note: The Pega Foundation for Financial Services installation guide refers to Product Designer for Financial Services (PDFS) as optional, however, Pega Customer Service for Financial Services requires PDFS to be updated.
   1. Pega Foundation for Financial Services 8.6 as described in the Pega Foundation for Financial ServicesUpdateGuide on the Pega Foundation for Financial Services product page.
   2. Pega Product Designer for Financial Services 8.6 as described in the Product Designer for Financial ServicesUpdateGuide on the Pega Foundation for Financial Services product page.
7. Apply hotfixes that are required to support Pega Foundation for Financial Services and Pega Product Designer for Financial Services before continuing with the update.
   For more information, see Pega Customer Service for Financial Services Hotfixes.
8. Update to Pega Customer Service 8.6 and Pega Sales Automation 8.6. There is a single procedure to update both of those applications.
   Follow all of the instructions, including prerequisites, in the update guide on the Pega Customer Service product page or the Pega Sales Automation product page.
9. Optional: Because SQL database triggers are no longer supported, before you update the application, have your database administrator check for and drop triggers.
10. If you are upgrading from a 7.4 version or earlier, take a backup of the CPMFS_NOTES database table using the query create table temp as select * from desired_table. For some database systems, such as DB2, you must also reorganize the columns in the table to match the current version.
11. Run SQL DROP TABLE CPMFS_NOTES to make the DDL changes.
12. Optional: Update Pega Call to the latest version. For more information, see the Pega Call Update Guide on the Pega Call product page.

1. Verify that all rules are checked in.
2. Shut down the Pega Platform application server.
3. Use your database utilities to complete an offline backup of the Pega database.
4. Back up the configuration and environment files.
   If you edited any of the following Pega Platform configuration files in the APP-INF\classes directory of an EAR deployment or the WEB-INF\classes directory of a WAR deployment, include these files in the backup:

   • prbootstrap.properties
   • prconfig.xml
   • logging file: prlogging.xml or prlog4j2.xml
   • web.xml
   • pegarules.keyring or any other .keyring files
5. Back up any third-party or custom JAR files that you installed.
   Redeploying the Pega Platform applications might delete these files from your application server.

The following table shows which portals are supported for each application version.