Published Release Notes

New method of aggregating real-time events

Event Strategy now uses the approximate median for calculating aggregations. Approximate median calculation replaces the existing method because it requires fewer system resources for saving or loading the event strategy state. In addition, you can now calculate aggregated values by using a new Landmark window type. The window type captures all values of specific event properties from the start of the data flow that references the event strategy.

For more information, see Adding aggregations in event strategies.

Extended language support in text analytics

Pega Platform™ text analytics now supports 9 more languages. You can build entity and topic detection models to analyze text in the Japanese, Russian, Turkish, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Polish, Croatian, and Czech languages. In addition, Pega Platform now includes a default small talk detection model for each of these languages.

For more information, see Language support for NLP and Out-of-the-box text analytics models.

Historical data extraction for adaptive models

Adaptive models now support the extraction of historical customer responses for offline analysis. Additionally, you can use the historical data to build a model in a machine learning service of your choice.

For more information, see Extract historical responses from adaptive models for offline analysis (8.4).

Improved reliability of Visual Business Director

Improvements to the reliability of Visual Business Director (VBD) eliminate the impact of temporary access loss to the VBD cluster. The improvements include the ability to continue writing data to a VBD dataset while the corresponding server node is unavailable, enhancements to single-case data flows that write data to VBD, and a reduction in the VBD cache size.

For more information, see Eliminate the impact of temporary access loss to the VBD cluster (8.4).

Strategies are now available as a condition type in proposition filters

When designing proposition filters, you can now include strategy outcomes as a condition to be evaluated. Select a strategy and specify the component that you want to use as output to include more advanced decisioning in your proposition filters.

For more information, see Enrich your Proposition Filter rules with conditions based on strategy results.

Custom application URL alias in the application definition

Create application URL aliases that support your ability to launch multiple Pega applications simultaneously in a single browser. This feature makes it easier for clients and your customers to log into multiple applications using the same browser and access them simultaneously. You configure your application URL alias in the application definition. For details, see Adding an application URL alias.

For more information, see Simplify access with an Application URL alias (8.4). 

Upgrade impact

After an upgrade to Pega Platform™ 8.4 and later, review to determine if and how you must update your application rules to reflect the current URL aliasing format. As part of these application rule updates, Pega also updated the URL format and value components of the clipboard property, pxRequestor.pxReqServletNameReal, which you can use to discover a servlet name. If your application uses this property to discover a servlet name, update the pxRequestor.pxReqServlet property in the application rule to use the new, required URL and value formats.

For details steps, see the section, Upgrading from Pega 8.3 or earlier: Guidelines for any required changes in your application URL aliasing, in the appropriate Pega Platform Upgrade Guide available at Deploy Pega Platform. 

What steps should the customer take to update their application?

After upgrading, you must update your JMeter test scripts. For detailed steps, see Updating JMeter test scripts after migrating to Pega 8.4.

Add the security checklist to applications created before 7.3.1

The security checklist is now automatically added to applications. You can manually add the security checklist to applications that were created in earlier versions.

You can improve the security of your application by completing the tasks on the checklist.

The following task reflects the procedure on how to manually add the security checklists to Designer Studio prior to 7.3.1:

1. In the header of Designer Studio, click the name of the application, and then click Definition.
2. Click the Documentation tab.
3. In the Application guides section, click Add guide.
4. In the Application guide& field, enter pxApplicationSecurityChecklist.
5. Click the Configure icon in the Available in column and select the portals (App Studio and Dev Studio) that you want to add the security checklist to.
6. Click Save.

Default text analytics model for detecting small talk

Enhance your web chat experience by configuring chatbots to detect small talk. Pega Platform™ provides the default model that is a topic detection model, available for English, German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, and French.

For more information, see Configure your chatbot for small talk.

Expanded checks for Java injection vulnerabilities (8.4)

The Java injection vulnerability check feature has been enhanced in Pega Platform™ to further prevent Java injection, including Edit validate, Edit input, and JSP rules. Pega Platform reports errors at design time and run time, and does not run any rule that includes any of the following Java code:

• JavaCompiler
• new ProcessBuilder()
• org.dita.dost.invoker
• Runtime.getRuntime()

For more information, see Configuring the Java injection check.

Integrate your application with external Kafka clusters

Configure your application to use an external Kafka cluster for managing real-time data. By having an external Stream service provider, you can perform such maintenance tasks as an upgrade or hotfix deployment faster because external nodes do not require restarting.

For more information, see Externally managed Stream service.