Published Release Notes

New Pega0086 alert and enhanced Pega0019 alert

The PEGA0086 alert is generated when the maximum number of attempts to acquire a lock on a requestor has been exceeded and a thread fails to obtain a lock on the requestor, and as a result, displays the RequestorLockException message. The Pega0019 alert has been enhanced and now contains additional information such as a user name, an application name, and a thread stack trace, which are associated with the long-running requestor.

For more information, see PEGA0086: Requestor locked by a busy thread and PEGA0019 alert: Long-running requestor detected.

Use of PegaRULES_Extract_Marker.txt to delete cache is deprecated

The PegaRULES_Extract_Marker.txt file is deprecated. The system uses the presence or absence of the PegaRULES_Extract_Market.txt file to determine at startup whether to delete the static content, service export, and lookup list file system-based caches. In the rare situation that you need to delete these caches manually, use the System Management Application (SMA) ETier Static Content Management page. Using SMA does not require restarting the node.

Usability improvements in Pega Express

The following enhancements have been made in Pega Express to improve your development experience:

• Case Designer now has an option to create a case so that you can quickly test changes to the configuration of your case types.
• There are fewer steps in the process for configuring a dynamic view.
• Some controls on the screen have been repositioned for easier access and support for users who are not using a mouse.
• Some elements on the Life cycle tab of Case Designer support keyboard navigation when you use the Tab, Enter, Right Arrow, or Left Arrow keys.
• The status of a case can be set at the assignment level.

For more information about these changes, see:

• Creating a case
• Configuring a dynamic view
• Configuring a case at run time
• Adding an assignment to a process

Enhanced PEGA0104 alert

The PEGA0104 alert now includes the thread pool size, a list of activities that are waiting in the queue for a thread to become available, and details on how long it took to capture the thread dump.  By default, the alert also includes the thread dump.  You can disable the inclusion of the thread dump by changing the related configuration option. 

For more information, see PEGA0104 alert: Background tasks have exceeded a threshold time when attempting to acquire a thread from pool or executor.

Pega Cloud Services File Storage service

Pega Cloud Services introduces Pega Cloud Services File Storage, a service that is fully integrated with the Pega Platform to support your Pega applications. New subscriptions and upgrades to the latest Pega Platform version make this the default storage repository.

For more information see Pega Cloud Services File Storage.

Pega Cloud Services introduced this new service as of QI 2018.

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.

Pega Cloud Services support for the AWS Canada (Central) region

Pega Cloud Services now supports deployment to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Canada (Central) region. Deployment across multiple availability zones within a geographical region protects against zone faults and localized service disruptions, and ensures high availability.

For more information about regions and availability zones, see Pega Cloud Services capabilities.

This additional region is available as of QIII 2017.

Changes to archive.info in Pega 7.1.7

In Pega 7.1.7, the contents of the archive.info file have changed.

• In versions Pega 7.1.6 and earlier, the archive.info file displays the build number of the Pega installation.
• As of Pega 7.1.7, the build number no longer appears in the archive.info file.

In Pega 7.1.7, the archive.info file only displays a status message indicating whether or not the system is running, and the build number no longer appears. Instead, if the system is operational, the message “status=Running” displays in the archive.info file.

If there are any automated tests, scripts, or applications that rely on the archive.info file displaying the build number, those may fail and produce an error. It is recommended that any automation that relies on the build number displaying in the archive.info file be changed to look for the “status=Running” message.

Pega 7 Express is available on-premises

You can now experience Pega 7 Express by switching your enterprise application from Designer Studio to express mode. By default, users with access to the Developer portal can switch between these two development environments. You can also create an express application to work in express mode exclusively.

Trial versions of Pega 7 Express continue to be available on the cloud. To view the documentation for both the cloud and on-premises environments, see Getting started with Pega 7 Express.

Access to Pega 7 Express from within Designer Studio is not supported on mobile devices.

New mobile capabilities in Pega Express

In Pega Express, you can now configure offline case types and quickly build a custom mobile app from the Mobile app tab in the settings. You can apply branding, use certificates, and take advantage of device capabilities such as geolocation tracking. If you set up signing certificates (Android, iOS) and provisioning profiles (iOS) for the custom mobile app in the Designer Studio, you can also access them in Pega Express.

For more information, see Building mobile apps.