Published Release Notes

External data flow rules are deprecated

External data flows are now deprecated and no longer supported. To improve your user experience with Pega Platform™, the user interface elements associated with these rules are hidden from view by default. Identifying unused features allows Pega to focus on developing and supporting the features that you need.

For more information, see Deprecated: External data flows.

Tamper-proof Pega Web Mashup loading

To protect your application from hackers, Pega Web Mashup is now loaded in a more secure way. The system generates a channel ID in the mashup code for validation on the server, before passing the mashup request. 

For more information, see Creating a mashup.

Upgrade impact

After an upgrade to Pega Platform 8.5, existing mashups, which do not have the channel ID parameter in their code, cannot load and users see the access control warning.

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

If you need to maintain full availability of the mashup during the upgrade of the production environment, perform the steps in Migrating existing mashups.

Support for React-based components in Pega Infinity applications

React-based components can now conveniently be enabled in any existing Pega Infinity™ application without the need to migrate the application to the full React UI. By selecting a single option, you can enable and experience some of the most modern functionalities, such as intuitive and comfortable landing page authoring, or the more efficient React-based tables.

For more information, see Enabling Cosmos React UI for landing pages.

Enhancements for fields in views and data models

Pega Platform™ now provides a unified experience of adding fields to views, the case type data model, and the application data model, by using an intuitive dialog box. For greater clarity, a new field type, data relationship, replaces data references, field groups, and field group lists. As a result, you can conveniently reuse data objects in your application. 

When you upgrade to Pega 8.5, your system automatically converts your field groups, field group lists, and data references to data relationships. The case type data model now displays all the fields by default, including any referenced fields, and provides an application layer that contains each field. Use this functionality to view how the data is organized across your system.

For more information, see Define fields in data objects intuitively (8.5), Adding data relationships to fields and data models.

Enhancements to token lifetime limits

Pega Platform™ uses OAuth 2.0 authorization codes, access tokens, and refresh tokens to provide flexible token-based security for applications. Expiration settings for these codes and tokens now adhere to certain strict value range based on industry leading practices. For example, the lifetime specified for the authorization code must be in the range 1-600 seconds.

These can be configured in the OAuth2 Client registration rule form.

For more information, see OAuth 2.0 Management Services.

Better support for custom PDF fonts

Pega Platform™ now supports loading custom fonts for PDF files from a binary file by using the CSS @font-face rule. With this enhancement, your application can generate PDF files that use custom fonts without relying on a dedicated font folder or a cloud bundle. As Pega moves away from folder-based solutions, you can migrate font management to a binary rule for quicker development and improved maintenance.

For more information, see Generating PDFs from your UI.

Geolocation tracking for the latest mobile client

The latest version of Pega Mobile Client™ now supports geolocation tracking for offline-enabled mobile apps. You can enable constant tracking when users work on specific cases from their worklists. This enhancement helps audit the trail of the case and increase the efficiency of your mobile users. For example, dispatchers at headquarters can track the routes of field workers and more effectively assign them tasks based on their current location.

For more information, see Tracking mobile users based on geolocation data.

More flexibility when working with revisions and change requests

Pega Platform™ 8.5 provides several enhancements to the business change management process. Revision managers can now work on any revision, including revisions created by other revision managers, as well as create change requests that consist only of a new rule, with no updates to existing rules. Strategy designers and revisions managers can also run simulations on a revision package as part of the change management process.

For more information, see Increase the flexibility of your business change management process with improvements to revision management (8.5).

Support for nested Declare Trigger rules

Pega Platform™ now supports nested Declare Trigger rules so that you can conveniently create correlations between actions in your case types. Declare Triggers rules invoke an action when a specified event takes place in a case type. You can now design more complex scenarios faster by nesting more Declare Trigger rules that work in the context of running another Declare Trigger rule. For example, when a case participant changes a postal code in their personal details, a Declare Trigger rule runs and a respective customer service representative (CSR) receives an email. After the CSR receives the email, a nested Declare Trigger rule runs and your application creates a document with the updated personal details and attaches it to the case.

For more information, see Develop applications faster with nested Declare Trigger rules (8.5), Declare Trigger rules.

Visual Business Director data is automatically cleaned after a retention period expires

To avoid negative impact on system resources, such as memory and disk space, Pega Platform™ automatically cleans out collections data accumulated in Visual Business Director after the time period specified in the vbd/dataRetentionTimeout dynamic system setting.

Upgrade impact

In versions of Pega Platform earlier than 8.5, collections data was not automatically removed. From version 8.5, the data is removed after 465 days (15 months) by default.

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

If the default data retention period does not meet your requirements, you can change it by editing the vbd/dataRetentionTimeout setting.

For more information, see "Configuring the data retention period for Visual Business Director" in the Pega Customer Decision Hub 8.5 Upgrade Guide on the Pega Customer Decision Hub product page.