Published Release Notes

Enhancements in list view authoring and run-time editing of Cosmos React tables

Cosmos React tables now offer an enriched and more convenient way of authoring and editing. You can now achieve the following results:

• Enable editing in the list view template that holds your table so that users can instantly change values inline or preview and edit a referenced object from the table in a pop-up window.
• Change the label, format, or helper text for a column at design time.
• Create multiple preset views with different filters, and switch between these views at run time.
• Perform a variety of optional actions on a table row, such as update, change stage, preview, and open a row in a new tab.

These enhancements result in a better user experience by making tables more customizable, intuitive, and interactive.

For more information, see Enhance the user experience with new Cosmos React tables (8.6), Configuring a React table in a section (for Theme Cosmos applications), and Configuring lists (for Cosmos React applications).

Extended support for Cosmos React tables in Pega Infinity applications

Cosmos React tables are now available to Pega Infinity™ pages. Previously, when you enabled Cosmos React UI for landing pages in your application, you could add the React-based tables only to landing pages. With this enhancement, you can also embed tables in a section that is part of your case view or dashboard page.

For more information, see Adding a React table to a section.

Outbound email templates for email bots

Pega Email Bot™ now provides built-in templates for outbound email and an option to create your own, custom templates. You can use this feature to standardize branding for your applications and the company through your communication channels. For example, customer service representatives (CSRs), who use the Email Manager or Case Manager portals, can apply these templates to strengthen your brand's presence in every email that they send or that the email bot automatically sends as an acknowledgment for a user email.

You select an outbound email template when you configure the Email channel. The system provides you with three built-in outbound email templates that you can select or modify to fit the requirements of your organization.

For more information, see Creating an Email channel and Creating outbound email templates.

Enhanced run-time behavior of the currency and number controls

The currency and number controls now display separators at run time, even as the user types the values. When the user enters more than three digits, a locale-dependent separator immediately groups the digits into thousands in real time. For example, when a user who is based in the U.S. types 100000, the input field displays the number as 100,000. The currency control additionally displays currency symbols at all times, whether the input field is in focus or not.

This enhancement improves clarity and the user experience because the user no longer needs to move away from the field to see the formatting of the input, and typing long strings of numbers is now more convenient.

For more information, see Controls.

Theme management in Cosmos React

App Studio now features an updated interface for managing the look of the theme in Cosmos React environments. The theming page enables you to quickly rebrand the theme's component library by selecting fonts, colors, and logos, while also displaying a live preview of the UI. This enhancement provides a more intuitive way to adjust the presentation options in your React-based application, which saves development time and encourages prototyping and experimentation.

For more information, see Defining themes in Cosmos React. 

Addition of Servlet Management

Pega Platform™ now has Servlet Management in Pega Cloud® Services, which provides a simple and secure way to make changes to Pega Platform servlet definitions.

Servlet Management provides Pega Cloud Service clients with solutions to manage servlet configurations with self-service options. This reduces the cycle time for delivering configuration changes in Pega Cloud Service installations while also improving upgrade reliability. 

For more information, see Servlet management.

Upgrade impact

Clients with no application servlet customizations will not experience an impact. If you upgrade from Pega Platform version 8.5 or earlier and, prior to the upgrade, the Pega Cloud team provided your application servlet customizations, then following the upgrade, you must manually add, remove, or modify your servlet customizations in your upgraded application using this servlet management landing page in Pega Platform.

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

To manually move your pre-upgrade servlet customizations as appropriate or add new ones to your upgraded application using the new servlet management landing page, follow the steps in Adding a servlet.

Support for configuring and saving external data in App Studio

You can now configure a savable data plan to easily replace or update related data directly from App Studio, and persist those changes during the case lifecycle. This enhancement allows you to work directly in App Studio, without being limited to read-only access of data from case types.

Automation performance enhancements

To improve the performance of automation-based REST services and DX APIs, you can now configure JSON inputs and outputs in automation rules. The automation passes the JSON object directly to an automation-based REST service or DX API, eliminating the need to transform data on a page to JSON first. You can also take advantage of this enhancement if you are calling an automation from an activity. Additionally, you can simulate a JSON response in the automation rule and update the JSON sample if needed.

For more information, see <link TBD> and <link TBD>.

Cosmos React-UI supports custom authentication

Pega Platform™ now supports custom authentication in applications that use Cosmos React-UI. Depending on the needs of your users and the functionality of your application, you might need to write custom authentication schemes to meet specific requirements. 

Clients that use custom authentication in their applications can now take advantage of the Cosmos React-UI.

For more information, see Securing Cosmos React-UI applications.

Upgraded selected third-party JAR files to support Pega Platform functionalities

Pega Platform™ 8.6 now provides upgraded versions of the JAR files that support various functionalities within the Platform, such as generating documents or PPTX files.

Upgrade impact

If you have custom implementations and use any classes from the upgraded JAR files directly in your code or through JAR APIs, after your upgrade to Pega Platform 8.6, your application might experience unexpected run-time behavior if the upgraded JAR version lacks any elements from the previous version. For example, custom implementations can typically include activities, functions, or non-autogenerated sections. Unexpected run-time behavior might also occur when you use a third-party library that has dependencies on the upgraded JAR files. If you use only default Pega Platform functionalities without any customizations, the JAR files continue to work correctly without any additional actions.

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

If you have any JAR customizations, ensure that you test the upgraded JAR files for compatibility and upgrade impact. The following table lists the upgraded JAR files that might impact your application:

For more information, refer to the documentation of  your JAR provider.