Published Release Notes

Privilege required for Recent Explorer

Users with custom roles defined must add the pxUpdateRecents privilege to see work in the Recent Items Explorer. 

Use standard Developer portal

Customized versions of the Developer portal rely on legacy components and are not supported.

To avoid backwards compatibility issues, update your access group to point to the standard Developer portal prior to upgrade.

Top-level (named) pages may no longer be classless

Newly created top-level (named) pages may no longer be classless or have a blank pxObjClass property. This change can affect applications upgrading from versions prior to Pega 7 to the latest version, especially when:

• Application logic relies on a blank value in the pxObjClass property.
• An activity assumes a new top-level page is classless and explicitly sets pxObjClass in a Property-Set step.
• A data transform assumes a new top-level page is classless and explicitly sets pxObjClass using a Set action.

To avoid application failures, remove or update any logic that expects a blank pxObjClass. Where possible, use the new engine API that finds a page by both name and class:

findPageWithException(PageName, ClassName);

Activities and data transforms continue to create a top-level page when one does not exist. The class name is now derived from the Pages and Classes tab.

All tabs are accessible on delegated rule forms

Delegates can now access all tabs in a delegated rule form.

You can continue to customize the development experience for delegated users, such as line managers, who may not require the full set of rule form options. For example, you can prevent users from adding new nodes on the Decision Tree form or using the expression builder on the Map Value form. All users, including delegated users, can remove these restrictions if they hold a rule-editing privilege.

For more details on this process and a list of commonly delegated rules, see How to delegate a rule.

Text predictions simplify the configuration of text analytics for conversational channels

Enable text analytics for your conversational channels, such as email and chatbot, by configuring text predictions that manage the text models for your channels. This new type of prediction in Prediction Studio consolidates the AI for analyzing the messages in your conversational channels in one place and replaces the text analyzer rule in Dev Studio.

Through text predictions, you can efficiently configure the outcomes that you want to predict by analyzing the text in your channels:

• Topics (ticket booking, subscription cancellation, support request)
• Sentiments (positive, neutral, negative)
• Entities (people, organizations, airport codes)
• Languages

You can train and build the models that predict these outcomes through an intuitive process, and then monitor the outcomes through user-friendly charts.

For more information, see Predict customer needs and behaviors by using text predictions in your conversational channels.

Upgrade impact

Channels that you configured with text analyzers in the previous version of your system continue to work in the same manner after the upgrade to the current version. When you edit and save the configuration of an existing channel, the text analyzer rule is automatically upgraded to a text prediction. The associated text prediction is now an object where you can manage and monitor the text analytics for your channel. When you create a new channel in the upgraded system, the system automatically creates a text prediction for that channel.

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

1. Enable the asynchronous model building and reporting in text predictions through job schedulers that use the System Runtime Context (SRC) by adding your application to the SRC.
   For more information, see Automating the runtime context management of background processes.
2. Enable model building in text predictions by configuring background processing nodes.
   For more information, see Assigning decision management node types to Pega Platform nodes.

External data flow rules are removed

In previous versions of Pega Platform™, you could configure data flows to run in an external Hadoop environment. The external data flows functionality was deprecated and hidden from view in Pega Platform 8.5. The functionality has been now removed and is no longer available in Pega Platform 8.6.

For more information, see External data flow rules are deprecated.