Published Release Notes

End of support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 in Pega 7.2.1

In accordance with Microsoft’s announcement to discontinue support for Internet Explorer 9, Pega 7.2.1 will not support Internet Explorer 9. You should not upgrade to Pega 7.2.1 if you are still using Internet Explorer 9. Otherwise, upgrade to Microsoft Internet Explorer 10 or later, or use Google Chrome, Apple Safari, or Mozilla Firefox, which support certain HTML5 and CSS3 standards not supported in Internet Explorer 9.

For more information about browser support, see the Platform Support Guide or contact Pegasystems Global Customer Support.

Ability to import data into a Pega Cloud database

You can export a custom Pega 7 Platform database table into a CSV file and import it into a Pega Cloud database or other Pega 7 Platform database by using the Data Upload utility. This utility is available only for Postgres databases and tables that do not contain BLOB columns. This utility is useful, for example, for updating a product catalog that is used in a Pega Cloud application.

For more information, see Importing data into a Pega Cloud database.

Ability to schedule schema updates for Pega Cloud

You can schedule BLOB size and table statistic updates to database schemas to run automatically by using agents. Scheduling schema updates is useful for performance monitoring and tuning in the Pega Cloud. This feature is available only for customers who use a Postgres database.

There is an agent for updating the average and maximum BLOB sizes, and an agent for updating table statistics. Each agent can be configured separately for each schema. You can configure whether to schedule the agent to run daily or weekly. You can deactivate a running schedule on the Schema Tools landing page by clicking Designer Studio > System > Database > Schema Tools. From the Schema Tools landing page, you can configure more complex scheduling on the Edit Agent Schedule landing page. In addition, you can configure these agents by using Dynamic Data System Settings.

For more information, see Scheduling schema updates.

Unicode-enabled database for international language support

The Pega 7 Platform database has been enhanced to natively support Unicode multibyte character set encoding when using Postgres on Pega Cloud. This enhancement allows you to store data in languages such as Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

Improvements to the Document Application tool

Application profile documents and application documents generated by the Document Application tool have been improved to present information in a more logical order based on how the application was built (for example, by case life-cycle management). Also, these types of documents now include all specifications linked with an implementation rule, presented in logical order under the implementation rule.

In addition, to help you more efficiently drive decisions by stakeholders, you can specify whether to include related built-on application layer assets in application profile documents and application documents. For specification documents, you can specify whether to include specifications from the built-on application layer.

For more information, see Document Application tool.

Immediate drain available for the quiesce process when using high availability

The quiesce process, which is used to take a server out of service for maintenance in a highly available system, can now be modified to use the immediate drain method. When using the default slow drain method for quiesce, users are placed in a passivation queue. When using the immediate drain method, users can continue to access the node being quiesced until it is removed from the load balancer.

Organizations should determine which quiesce method to use based on the overall needs of their users. However, for applications that have implemented long poll requests, it is recommended to use the slow drain method.

For more information, see the Pega 7.2.1 High Availability Administration Guide.

Change the type of an existing field

You can now change the type of an existing field on the Data model tab of a case type or data type, resulting in a more efficient development process at design time. If there are any validation issues when changing a type, an error message is displayed, and the type cannot be modified by using this method.

For more information, see:

• Modifying the type of a field
• Troubleshooting validation errors when changing the type of an existing field

Access work items directly after login

You can now directly access work items that you receive as email notifications or URLs. The Pega 7 Platform opens the work item after successful user authentication instead of redirecting you to the portal. For a valid user, the type of authentication or number of failed login attempts does not affect this direct access.

For systems that use basic or secure basic authentication, administrators can disable the redirect URL by setting the authentication/basicschemes/redirectToLoginScreen switch to false.

Support for Hotfix Manager in service-enabled system management

You can manage hotfixes by using a REST service from Hotfix Manager in the service-enabled system management utility. With service-enabled system management, you can manage hotfixes simultaneously on more than one Pega 7 Platform system. You can manage the following hotfix operations: install, scan, commit, rollback, and GenerateDDL.

For more information, see Managing hotfixes (service-enabled).

Improved Pega 7 Platform upgrade and update time

The Pega 7 Platform upgrade and update tools have been improved to streamline indexing. Upgrading and updating are faster than with previous releases.