Published Release Notes

Easier customer record management in Customer Profile Designer (early preview)

The new Customer Profile Designer module of Pega Customer Decision Hub™ makes it possible for marketing analysts and strategy designers to define the associated data for each customer context directly in the Pega Customer Decision Hub portal. It is also possible to define more complex associated data structures that use a custom data flow, or define associated data of different types, such as RDBMS and Cassandra, for the same customer context.

Customer Profile Designer is available in Pega Customer Decision Hub 8.6 version as an early preview version. The functionality will be further expanded in future releases.

For more information, see Manage customer records in Customer Profile Designer (8.6).

Low-code authoring of case pages

Mobile authoring for Cosmos React applications now supports the configuration of native mobile pages that include case details. Your mobile channel automatically generates these pages for each case type in your application. This enhancement improves the user experience in your app by providing users with native pages that you can adjust to best suit your business process. For example, you can highlight specific views on a page by modifying which tabs appear on the page, or add a floating action button to help your users edit the case.

For more information, see Authoring mobile case pages for Cosmos React applications.

In Pega Platform™ version 8.6, mobile features in Cosmos React applications are available only as a preview, with limited support for various interface elements and features, such as offline mode. The recommended production design system for Pega Mobile in Pega Platform 8.6 is Theme Cosmos.

For more information about the Cosmos React design system, see Cosmos React and UI architecture comparison.

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.

Automatic packaging of cases for offline use

Newly created mobile channels now support automatic packaging of cases for use in offline mode. The packaging process includes case data from all native list pages that you create from offline-enabled case types and add to the navigation of your mobile app. Previously, automatic packaging was limited to assignments in the work list (and their related work items), and cases that were listed in the data page that you manually designated for packaging.

This enhancement improves the user experience for mobile app developers by ensuring that the data that is referenced in list pages for offline-enabled case types is automatically available for the users of your offline app.

Kafka data set enhancements

The Kafka data set is a high-throughput and low-latency platform for handling real-time data feeds that you can use as input for Pega Platform event strategies.

For better integration of Pega Platform with externally hosted Kafka, the following enhancements are implemented:

• Support for Kafka message keys and headers - extended values data format (JSON Data Transform, Apache Avro)
• Custom value processing
• Configuring topic names by using Application Properties
• Data-Admin-Kafka enhancements - supporting a wide range of connection properties

For more information, see Improve your Kafka data set with new enhancements.

Improved user experience for Cosmos React mobile apps

Mobile apps that you build for Cosmos React applications now feature a highly performant and responsive user interface that improves the overall user experience.

Native case pages

Prescriptive mobile case pages are now faster and more reliable. Mobile case pages display views and widgets as cards and group the cards into user-friendly tabs. Users can navigate the tabs by swiping left or right. From the case page, users can also edit case page details by selecting the floating action button, or choose an optional action from the case header drop-down menu. 

To improve collaboration, prescriptive mobile case pages support the Pulse widget, as well as uploading, viewing, and downloading case attachments.

Improved case processing 

The case processing interface on mobile devices is now more reliable and ensures a smooth experience for case workers. After users complete an assignment, Cosmos React apps display the task that is next in the flow that you define for the case type. Optional actions open in an overlay drawer component that users can minimize when they need to multitask while processing cases.

Form validation in real time 

Validation of user input for mobile forms is now highly responsive thanks to real-time validation. To ensure that users enter data correctly, forms support validation expressions that you define in App Studio. Expressions are processed on the client side to further improve app performance.

Native Android and iOS controls

Cosmos React apps use a selection of native Android and iOS controls that make mobile apps faster and more intuitive to use. The native controls include map and location controls, date and time pickers, and controls for adding attachments.

In Pega Platform™ version 8.6, mobile features in Cosmos React applications are available only as a preview, with limited support for various interface elements and features, such as offline mode. The recommended production design system for Pega Mobile in Pega Platform 8.6 is Theme Cosmos.

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.

Support for building apps as Android App Bundles

As of August 2021, Google Play Store requires that you submit new apps in the Android App Bundle publishing format instead of the APK format. You can now build Pega mobile apps in the Android App Bundle format so that they comply with this new requirement.

For more information about generating installation packages for Pega mobile apps, see Generating installation packages. For more information about the Android App Bundle publishing format, see the Android for Developers documentation.

Support for building apps as Android App Bundles

As of August 2021, Google Play Store requires that you submit new apps in the Android App Bundle publishing format instead of the APK format. You can now build Pega mobile apps in the Android App Bundle format so that they comply with this new requirement.

For more information about generating installation packages for Pega mobile apps, see Generating installation packages. For more information about the Android App Bundle publishing format, see the Android for Developers documentation.

Naming pattern changed for file data sets

File data sets are used to import from and export data to a file repository. In case of data export, prior to version 8.6.3, the first file exported had the same file name that was provided by the user in the data set, and any subsequent file exported to the repository had a unique identifier appended to it. Starting in Pega Platform version 8.6.3, each file has a unique identifier, automatically generated based on the data flow node, thread ID, and timestamp.

Upgrade impact

If your process to consume output files expects files with a specific name, it may not be able to process the resulting files correctly.

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

If you have configured the process before updating to Pega Platform version 8.6.3, but the exported files are no longer recognized by downstream processing logic after the upgrade, ensure that the downstream tool is configured to recognize the files by a pattern rather than the full name. For example, when referring to files exported to the repository, use the * character to indicate a pattern instead of using the full file name. For example, use Export*.csv to refer to the files.