Published Release Notes

Facebook and Web Chatbot configuration in the preview console

When you develop a Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) for Facebook or Web Chatbot, you can now teach interactive bot conversations by chatting with the bot in the preview console and guiding the artificial intelligence algorithm to the right responses. This ability greatly accelerates conversation development and simplifies configuration, while providing the developer with more transparency in the mechanisms that produce specific responses.

For more information, see Simulating a conversation and building a chatbot runtime and Testing and building a chatbot from the preview console.

Support for rich user interface controls in IVA for Web Chatbot

You can now use rich user interface controls in Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) for Web Chatbot because Pega Platform™ includes a framework for advanced user interface controls. You can use a date picker control and add file attachments while chatting with the chatbot. These features provide a richer and more robust user experience and they help the user accomplish tasks more quickly without the need for complex validation messages.

For more information, see Use rich user interface controls in Web Chatbot.

Updates to creating and cleaning the test data for automated tests

Creating test data for automated tests is now easier and more customizable. During test case or suite creation, you can now create objects, load work and data objects, and add user pages from the clipboard. These objects and pages can be further configured and will be available in the clipboard when you run the test.

For test cases, you can now define a separate set of actions to perform after the tested rule is run, such as applying a data transform, loading a data page or object, or running an activity,

You can also prevent test data from being removed from the clipboard after a test is run so that subsequent tests can use the same test data.

For more information, see Setting up your test environment and Cleaning up your test environment.

Support for rich HTML text in IVA for Email

Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) for Email now supports rich HTML text in email conversations, which enhances the overall user experience. You can enable this option in the Email channel configuration in IVA for Email to display rich text in email conversations for case triaging. Natural language processing (NLP) analysis works flawlessly in scenarios for all email content that contains rich HTML text.

For more information, see Enabling rich HTML text in emails.

Multiple actions triggering during intelligent email routing

Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) for Email now supports triggering of multiple actions during the intelligent routing of incoming emails, which improves the artificial intelligence capability of IVA for Email so that it is more responsive to user input. For example, you can set up intelligent routing for an Email channel to trigger multiple actions, such as creating a case and automatically replying to an email for the content that you receive.

For more information, see Intelligent email routing, Configuring routing conditions for automatic email handling, and Setting up intelligent routing in Intelligent Virtual Assistant for Email.

Ability to import and export Intelligent Virtual Assistant or Email Bot training data

You can now copy Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) or Pega Email Bot™ training data between Pega Platform™ application environments by performing an export and import action. Importing and exporting training data between Pega Platform application environments results in greater accuracy of entity detection. Entities are detected by the system in a chat conversation, including attachments, to help respond to the user correctly, and consist of proper nouns that fall into a commonly understood category such as a person, organization, or a ZIP code. The ability to copy training data also makes it easier to maintain IVA or Email Bot, and build its artificial intelligence.

For more information, see Copying training data to another environment and Copy training data and model to another IVA or Email Bot environment.

Support for seamless transitions between IVAs and customer service representatives

To ensure the best user experience in chat sessions with a Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA), customer service representatives (CSRs) can now step in and take control of a chat session multiple times, when the chatbot is not capable of correctly answering the user. After the user problem is resolved, the CSR can seamlessly switch control of the chat session back to the chatbot.

Simulation of data pages and third-party connections

When configuring your unit test case environment, you can now set up simulated data for connector and data page rules, instead of connecting to external sources.

By simulating such data calls, you are not dependent on any third-party server when running your tests.

This feature supports the following rules:

• Data page
• Connect-Cassandra
• Connect-CMIS
• Connect-dotNet
• Connect-EJB
• Connect-HBase
• Connect-HTTP
• Connect-Java
• Connect-JMS
• Connect-MQ
• Connect-REST
• Connect-SAP
• Connect-SAPJCo
• Connect-SOAP

For more information about simulating third-party connections, see Simulating data pages and third-party connections.

New branch quality dashboard

Pega Platform™ 8.4 introduces a new branch quality dashboard that shows the following metrics:

• The branch’s guardrail compliance score and the number of guardrail violations
• The percentage and number of unit tests that passed for the branch
• The percentage and number of rules that the tests cover
• Potential merge conflicts that can be addressed directly from the branch quality dashboard

For more information about the new branch quality dashboard, see Viewing branch quality and branch contents.

Unified Messaging Desktop integration with Pega Platform

You can now use the Pega Unified Messaging Desktop™ customer service solution with a Pega Platform™ application so that customer service representatives (CSRs) and other users, such as managers, can respond to user requests more quickly and in a more consistent manner. With integrated Pega Unified Messaging Desktop, CSRs can escalate user requests from Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistants™ (IVAs) by using case processing and artificial intelligence alongside Pega Customer Service™

For more information, see Develop a single IVA channel to chat across different messaging platforms.