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.

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.
   

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. 

Designer Studio

Many refinements to the Designer Studio were made around performance and user experience. Based on feedback, we have made a number of bug fixes and strategic improvements that improve the overall user experience.

• The Developer Portal connects to the PDN's RSS feed without needing a DigiCert certificate for validation. The RSS feed is just headlines; to open and read any of the articles, users will still have to log into the PDN.
• Expression Builder has been enhanced to work with IE8.
• New applications built in Version 7.1 will automatically redirect users to the PRPC login page upon logout. A new template has been added, to allow developers to customize their applications to redirect users to a logout page, if they wish.
• Performance improvements were made when saving and validating rules.
• Performance of the Guardrails Dashboard has been improved.
• The display of circumstanced rules in Application Explorer has been enhanced.

Support for rule rebasing

You can now rebase the rules on your development server with the most recently committed rules from a centralized system of record (SOR). For example, after rules are merged on the SOR, you can rebase your development application to refresh your application with the merged rules. Development teams working in two separate development environments can share their changes, keep their local rulebases synchronized, and reduce the probability of conflicts with other development teams.

For more information, see Rule rebasing.

Add new commands in the Facebook channel preview console

Now you can not only edit existing commands in the preview console for a Facebook channel but also add new command responses and associate them with intents. For example, you can add a new response command in the preview console in a case in which you entered a command and no response was found for the generated intent. This functionality gives you more control over the Facebook channel configuration and makes the preview console easier to use.

For more information, see Simulating a chatbot conversation.

Enhancements to PegaUnit test cases and test suites

Several enhancements have been made to PegaUnit test cases and test suites.

• You can now use advanced filters on the Automated Testing landing page and when you add test cases to a test suite to search for information.
• After you run a test case on the Edit Test Case form or a test suite on the Edit Test Suite form, the header now displays the expected and actual run-time values.
• You must now specify at least one assertion before you can save a test case.
• You can now compare a property to multiple values so that the assertion passes if any property meets the defined criteria.
• You can now use the is greater than and is less than comparators for date and date-time properties.

For more information about PegaUnit testing, see PegaUnit testing.

Execute Tests service now supports application name as a parameter

You can now use the application name and version as a parameter when running the Execute Tests service (REST API). When you build an application on Pega® Platform in a continuous delivery pipeline, you can use the Execute Tests service to validate the quality of the build by running PegaUnit test cases that are configured for the application.

For more information about the service, see Running PegaUnit test cases and test suites with the Execute Tests service in Pega 7.3.1.

Monitor application health on the Application Quality landing page

On the Application Quality landing page, you can view various quality-related data in one place so that you can monitor the quality of your application and correct any issues. The Application Quality landing page contains a summary of guardrails compliance, PegaUnit test coverage, and results of PegaUnit tests.

For more information, see Application Quality landing page.