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Implementing case types and attributes

Updated on January 29, 2021

Your application includes a set of predefined case types. A case is defined as a service case or a service request, which is a process that your staff performs to service your customers. Each case type contains one or more processes that you can extend to meet your business requirements. If you do not see an existing case type, you can create one during your planning process.

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For a list of the case types, see the Product Overview for your application.

Case types, in the context of a customer service application, are used to define the work your customer is asking you to perform. Examples of case types include Address Change and Close Account.

For the insurance industry, the insurance service cases come from the Pega Services Cases for Insurance application so that they can be reused across other Pega insurance applications. If this need does not pertain to your business, you may create new service cases in the Customer Service for Insurance application.

Modifying case types

If an application-provided case type is close to meeting your business requirements, modify it and use it. Modifying a case type can include editing or rearranging fields, modifying or adding a stage or step, and changing a service case layout by rearranging fields or changing the design template for view in App Studio.

  1. In the navigation pane of App Studio, click Case types.
  2. Click the service case that you want to modify.
  3. In the editor window, click the Data model tab to add a new data field or to modify an existing field for the case type.
  4. To modify or add a stage or step to the case type, click the Workflow tab.
    For more information, see Defining the case life cycle.
  5. To modify sections that use design templates, click Views and click the specified view.
    For more information, see Building a form for a case type.
  6. To fine tune the behavior of the case type click the Settings tab.
    For example: You might want to adjust the SLA goal and deadline settings or define participants that are involved in the case.
    For more information about each tab, click the View contextual help icon at the right of the tab.

Customizing the user interface of service requests

You can customize the user interface of many out-of-the-box service requests based on your business requirements. In App Studio, the library of design templates make the customization of service requests easy and helps in modifying the user interface experience. The customization of user interface includes the ability to rearrange, add, or delete the fields that helps to expedite the implementation process and makes it easy to manage.

For a list of service requests that are editable in App Studio, see the application release notes for the current and previous releases.

For more information about changing case type interfaces, see Organizing your form and Accessing views in your application.

  1. In App Studio, launch an interaction.
  2. Click Add Task and then click the service case that you want to edit.

    Note: You cannot edit the user interface view in App Studio if the service request is created manually in Dev Studio. As a best practice, create new service requests using App Studio to ensure on-going maintenance can be supported through App Studio.
  3. Click the Toggle design mode icon.
  4. Click the Workarea icon in the header or composite section of the service case depending on your requirement.
  5. To change the template, click Change and then select a template of your choice.
  6. To add sections in the template, click the Add icon and drag and drop the section of your choice to the template.
  7. To delete a section, click the section and then click the Remove this section icon.
  8. To edit the fields of the section, click the section, highlight the field that you want to edit, and then click the Edit this field icon.
  9. Update the required fields in the right corner of the page and click Apply.
  10. To add fields in the section, click the Add icon on the right panel and then click Add to review.
  11. To delete the fields from an existing section, right-click the field name on the right panel and then click Delete.

    Note: You cannot edit repeating dynamic grids in the composite sections.

Defining client-based access controls to support the EU GDPR

Define client-based access controls (CBAC) to comply with the data privacy requirements of the European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and similar regulations. This configuration allows you to protect customer data by tracking and processing requests to view, change, remove, and restrict the use of personal data.

Pega Customer Service provides an Exercise Customer Data Rights service case to support the General Data Protection Regulation and similar regulations. You can access this service case after defining the client-based access controls in your application. These controls are part of the supporting infrastructure that helps customer service representatives to manage Customer data rights requests and allows customers to directly manage their data through the self-service web application. For more information about how Pega applications are supporting GDPR, see Supporting EU GDPR data privacy rights in Pega Infinity with client-based access control.

Note: In the Exercise Customer Data Rights service case, the Right to access subcase allows customers to review their data by using a PDF document that is sent by email. For more information, see "Configuring security settings for a customer data PDF document," next.
  1. Create an operator specific to the access group that is responsible for defining CBAC rules.
    ApplicationAccess group
    Pega Customer Service
    • For the CustomerService 8.5 application stack: CustomerService:GDPRCSAdmin
    • For the CustomerService 8 application stack: GDPRCSAdmin
    Pega Customer Service for Communications
    • For the CustomerServiceForComms 8.5 application stack: CustomerServiceComms:GDPRADMIN
    • For the CustomerServiceForComms 8 application stack: GDPRCSCAdmin
    Pega Customer Service for Financial Services
    • For the CustomerServiceForFS 8.5 application stack: CustomerServiceForFS:GDPRCSFSAdmin
    • For the CustomerServiceForFS 8 application stack: GDPRCSFSAdmin
    Pega Customer Service for Healthcare
    • For the CSHC 8.5 application stack: CustomerServiceHC:GDPRAdmin
    • For the CSHC 8 application stack: GDPRCSHCAdmin
    Pega Customer Service for Insurance
    • For the CustomerServiceForInsurance 8.5 application stack: CustomerServiceForIns:GDPRAdmin
    • For the CustomerServiceForInsurance 8 application stack: CSIGDPRAdmin

    This operator is used for GDPR processing and is not related to a CSR operator.

    Note: The access group is created automatically when you create your application.
  2. To authenticate the operator, configure the GDPR-specific operator with the GDPRBasicAuth rule.
    For more information on authentication scheme planning, see Authentication in Pega Platform.
  3. Define client-based access controls (CBAC) for the Pega database. For example, Contact, Account, Address data, and Address change.
    Default CBAC rules are included with the application.
    1. Contact your legal counsel to determine the client-based access controls for making revisions, based on the interpretation of the regulation, assessment of the valid business purposes for storing and using client data, and assessment of competing legal requirements in your industry and country or jurisdiction.
    2. Identify the personal data that your application stores in the Pega database that is not known to the default Pega CRM applications.
    3. Create client-based access controls for each property.
      For more information on defining CBAC rules, see Defining client-based access control rules.
Result: The customer service representative who is part of the GDPR access group is now able to help your customers to control their personal data.

Configuring security settings for a customer data PDF document

The customer data protection capabilities in Pega Customer Service provide support for General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)-related requests that come from customers.

In the Customer Data Rights service case, the Right to access subcase allows customers to review their data by using a PDF document that is sent by email. To ensure security, the PDF is password protected. By default, ContactID is configured as a password for the PDF document.
You can configure or change the format of the password for the Right to access subcase PDF based on your security criteria by using the CSSetGDPRIdentifiers data transform.
  1. In the header of Dev Studio, search for and open the CSSetGDPRIdentifiers data transform.
  2. To configure or modify the password based on your security criteria, click the Definition tab and update the Source value of the following Target fields:
    1. pyWorkPage.PasswordFormat – Provide the password format, for example, CustomerID.
    2. pyWorkPage.PasswordValue – Provide the password value, for example, pyWorkPage.ContactId.
  3. Click Save.

Defining class group to database table mapping

To define how your cases are stored in the database, create a relationship between the class and the physical database table where the class instances will be stored. Work with the database administrator at your site on this task.

See the Classes and Properties landing page.

  1. Log in by using an administrator account. Dev Studio opens.
  2. In the Explorer panel, click App.
  3. Right-click the first class name and select Definition.
  4. In the Settings section, in the This class field, click is a class group or belongs to a class group.
  5. If This class field belongs to a class group, then select the class from the Class group list.
  6. Click Test Connection to see the name of the table currently mapped to this class.
  7. Determine the name of the table that the database administrator resource at your site wants you to use for storing instances of this case type.
  8. Optional: Repeat steps 2 through 6 for each class in your application.

Configuring case type locking

For each case type, select whether only one user at a time can edit a case, or whether multiple users can concurrently edit the same case.

Identifying the most appropriate lock setting for your application and case types is important because it can affect the throughput of work in your application. For example, if a case type allows only one user at a time to edit a case, then other users cannot update the case until the first user unlocks the case or the lock settings expire.

Alternatively, if multiple users can work on a case simultaneously, then each user receives a notification when another user updates the case, and those changes are added to the case.

  1. In the navigation pane of App Studio, click Case types.
  2. Click the case type that you want to modify.
  3. Click the Settings tab.
  4. Under Access strategy to open and work on a case, select the locking strategy:
    • Allow one user - Lock the case when a single user is working in it, and leave it unlocked until that user releases the lock, or the lock times out.
    • Allow multiple users - Do not lock the case when users are working in the case.
  5. In the Time out value field, enter the number of minutes after which to automatically unlock a locked case.
    For child cases, this value should be less than the timeout value for the parent case.
  6. Click Save.

Defining knowledge content integration

The Pega Knowledge application supports the creation of contextual, multi-media content. Knowledge articles can be linked directly to service cases so that they are suggested to the customer service representatives, providing quick, contextual answers to expedite resolution to customer issues.

For more information on configuring Pega Knowledge content, see Planning Pega Knowledge content.

Adding error handling to a case type

Add error handling to a case type to ensure that operators process the work correctly and completely, for example, to ensure that users complete required fields. To add error handling to a case type, you call the czErrorHandler activity or the czErrorHandler data transform from the case type flow.

For example, the out-of-the box Update a contact name case type calls the error handler during post-processing. The following figure shows how the Check Primary Address activity calls the czErrorHandler activity:

Error handling by calling the czErrorHandler activity
Calling an error handler activity for the check primary address activity.

The error handler feature includes extension points in an ErrorHandlerExt activity so that you can customize error processing to meet your specific business needs.

When an error occurs, you can configure the error handler to display a message to the operators and to log the error to the PEGA log file. For more information, see Log files tool.

If the error type is Alert, you can configure an alert message and code to send to Pega Diagnostic Cloud (PDC) for further action.

  1. In the navigation pane of Dev Studio, click App.
  2. In the App pane, select the class and then scroll to find the case type that you want to modify.
  3. Click the Expand icon next to the case type name to show components of the case type, and then click ProcessFlow to view the case type flow.
  4. Modify the case type flow to call the error handler activity or data transform from the appropriate flow action or step.
    For detailed information about how to modify case types from Dev Studio, see Automating work by creating case types.
  5. Configure the parameters for the error handler.

    For example, if you call the error handler activity from another activity, configure the Method Parameters for that call as shown in the following figure:

    Configure error handling parameters example
    Configure error handling parameters example
    1. In the Message parameter, select the message to display and log.
    2. In the MessagePage parameter, select the page on which to display the message.
      The default is pyWorkPage.
    3. If you do not want to display an error message on the page, for example, if you only want to log the error, clear the SetPageMessages check box.
    4. If you do not want to log the error message in the application error logs, for example, if you only want to display the error on the page, clear the SetLogMessages check box.
    5. In the LoggingLevel parameter, select the error type. The page error message and logged error message both include the error type.
      • Alert
      • Debug
      • Error
      • Info
      • InfoForced
      • Warn
    6. If you set the LoggingLevel to Alert, configure the alert code and message for the application log:
      1. In the AlertCode parameter, select the alert code.
      2. In the AlertMessage parameter, select the alert message.
    7. If you set the LoggingLevel to Alert, configure the alert parameters to send to PDC:
      1. Open the error handler activity or data transform.
      2. For the Generate and report the PDC alerts method, click the Expand to see method parameters icon to display the Method Parameters.
        Alert parameters sent to PDC
        Alert parameters sent to PDC
      3. Enter a value for each alert parameter that the case type sends to PDC.
  6. Click Save.

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