Published Release Notes

Create, Save As, and Specialization forms

The familiar “New” and “Save As” forms have been streamlined to make record creation faster and more intuitive. You can easily target a specific layer in your application stack, interactively define the record’s configuration and select only those circumstance definitions that make sense for your use case.

While the underlying behavior for creating a record is not new for this release, the redesigned UI of these forms and new defaulting strategy for fields is worth noting:

To launch these forms, use one of the new options found in the action area of the form header:

Note that not all record types support the ability to specialize by circumstance.

For more guidance on how to use the Create, Save As and Specialization forms, please refer to: Intuitive record creation and specialization

Redirect users to logout screen

New applications built in Version 7.1 will automatically redirect users to the PRPC login page upon logout.

A new template, Web-Session-Return-Template, has been added, to allow developers to customize their applications to redirect users to a logout page, if they wish.  This template can be copied to a ruleset visible to unauthenticated requestors (via node configuration) and used to override Web-Session-Return.

Organization Setup superseded by New Application Wizard

The Organization Setup Wizard has been retired in PRPC 7.1.3.  This feature was previously launched from the Designer Studio > Org & Security > Organization > Organization Setup menu. Users are encouraged to run the New Application Wizard (also known as Application Express) instead:

This tool quickly generates an application along with all of the artifacts previously offered by the Organization Setup Wizard. This includes, but is not limited to, the class hierarchy, application rule, organization/division/unit rules, and all relevant data instances.

See the following PDN article for more details on the New Application Wizard:

Create new applications quickly and easily with Application Express

Source field not displaying in data transform

On the Data Transform rule form when using the Update Page action, if the Relation value is updated to “with values from”, the Source field will not be displayed.

(Note that for existing data transforms where the Source field has already been completed, this situation should not occur.)

Workaround

1. Below is a data transform that has been configured to use Update Page.
   
2. If a user were to choose an alternate source by updating the ‘with values from’ Relation value, they would not be prompted to provide a page name in the Source field.
   
3. At this point, to be able to enter the Source page value, the user has to save the rule, which results in an error because the source page value is blank. This causes the field to appear.
   
4. Once the field has appeared, the Source page value can be provided, and the form can be saved successfully.
   

Automated Unit Testing is unavailable

Automated Unit Testing (AUT) is unavailable in 7.1.1 - 7.1.5.

Starting in 7.1.6, users can access AUT features from supported browser versions of IE.

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.

Core Engine

This release contains fixes related to clipboard and declarative features, including data pages and autopopulate.

• A rule may be changed using Private Checkout, and then checked into a higher RuleSet Version for that RuleSet.
• Agents may now use a 24-hour time period for scheduling, as well as a 12-hour time period (which required the selection of AM or PM).
• Caching and performance have been enhanced.
• Declare expressions will work with embedded page lists when creating forms.
• Mandatory parameters on a data page can handle blank values.
• Properties may be auto-populated using a reference property which is created with a Property-Ref method in an activity.
• System will use "private edit" rules in developer's personal RuleSet when that rule overrides the "standard" rule available to all.
• The Page-Remove method will now remove Data Pages at the Thread level and the Requestor Level.
• When copying a page using the "Set" action on a data transform, the Declare Indexes defined on that data will be updated.
• When creating a data page, the Reload Once per Interaction checkbox can be checked to set the refresh strategy. 

DCO

This release focused on improving the user experience of creating new rules and tightening up the use of specifications in the Case Designer.  The layout of the New and Save As forms were made more intuitive and intelligent.  Specification actions were made to be more consistent across various aspects of the Case Designer.

• After removing specification references, users can create and save a new specification.
• Developers may now choose either an existing specification or create a new one for subflows and Split-For-Each shapes.
• If a specification is not associated with flow shapes such as sub flows, Utilities, or Split-For-Each, it is possible to import speciications with the same names, and the flow shapes will default to using those imported specs.
• In the outline view, specification changes will be preserved when switching from tab to tab.
• The View Full Details functionality from either Configure Step or the Outline View will display all details, including the specification requirement links.

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.