Published Release Notes

More quality metrics on the Application Quality dashboard

On the Application Quality dashboard, for each case type you can now view quality metrics such as guardrail score, test coverage percentage, unit test pass rate, list of guardrail of warnings, uncovered rules, and failed Pega unit tests. These metrics are also available for rules that are used in the application but that are not a part of any case type. To access these metrics, on the Application Quality dashboard list of case types, click Find issues.

For more information, see Application Quality landing page.

Quality metrics now include charts with trends

The Application Quality landing page now contains charts that show changes in metrics over time. Landing pages for Test coverage and Unit testing also contain interactive charts with user-defined date range filters. The default date range of the charts is 2 weeks, but you can change it by using the Application: Quality Settings landing page. The historical data provided by the charts shows changes in application quality metrics over time, so that you can recognize trends and identify potential problems with application quality.

For more information, see Application Quality landing page.

New landing page allows you to customize the presentation of quality metrics

From the new Application: Quality Settings landing page, you can specify which built-in apps to include for testing. You can also modify the date range for graphs on the Application Quality, Application: Test coverage, and Application: Unit testing landing pages. Additionally, you can specify how many days the tests are considered current to be included on the Application Quality dashboard and in reports. By configuring how quality metrics are displayed, you can customize data presentation according to your needs, which can help improve the quality of your application.

For more information, see Application: Quality Settings landing page.

Fetch quality metrics for Pega unit tests by using the REST API

You can use the REST API to fetch quality metrics for the Pega unit tests of your application, such as unit test compliance, unit test execution results, test coverage, and guardrail compliance.

You can use the metrics returned by the service for gating purposes in a release pipeline.

For more information about the Pega API, see Pega API for Pega Platform.

Identify Pega unit test cases associated with inactive or deleted rules

From the Application: Unit testing landing page, you can view a list of all Pega unit test cases that are associated with inactive or deleted rules in the currently included applications. You cannot use these test cases because they will always fail.

Either remove such test cases, or reactivate the rules that they are associated with.

For more information, see Application: Unit testing landing page.

Merged test-coverage report improves overview of application quality

You can now merge multiple application-level test coverage reports from built-on apps into a single report. This single test-coverage report provides an overview of your application's quality, and eliminates the need to manually collate data from multiple reports.

For more information, see Generating a merged coverage report.

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.

Test coverage support for more rule types

Test coverage has been expanded to include the following rule types. Test coverage support for these rule types enables developers to more accurately measure the effectiveness of their tests.

• Collection
• Declare trigger
• Map value
• Navigation 
• Report definition
• Scorecard

For more information about test coverage, see Test coverage.

Upgrade impact

The new rule types may impact the test coverage metrics for your applications. Due to the increased number of supported rules, the reported test coverage percentage will decrease.

What steps are required to update the application to be compatible with this change?

Run your coverage reports after upgrading to see the latest metrics.

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.