Published Release Notes

Ability to handle responses to automatic email notifications in email bots

Pega Email Bot™ can now handle email responses to automatic email notifications that a Pega Platform™ application sends for a related case. As a result, customer service representatives (CSRs) can save time because all relevant emails from customers and other stakeholders are available from a single triage case in the system. To use this feature, ensure that you add the same email account to the email bot that you use to send case notifications in your application.

For more information, see Handle customer responses to automatic email notifications.

New PegaRULES:PegaAPISysAdmin​ role

The role PegaRULES:PegaAPISysAdmin​ has been added to the Pega 7 Platform. This required role gives system administrators access to the Pega API REST User Services and is not required for other services.

For more information, see Securing the Pega API.

Authenticate users in processes with a JSON Web Token

You can generate and process a JSON Web Token (JWT) in Pega^® Platform to secure communications in Pega Platform applications. JWTs are intended to securely transmit small amounts of information between two parties. Because the JWT is signed, the integrity of the information is assured. The contents of the JWT can be used to authenticate a user or to exchange information.

For more information, see Token Profile data instance.

Support for OAuth 2.0 authorization code grant type

Pega Platform™ now supports the OAuth 2.0 authorization code grant type, which allows Pega Platform to act as an OAuth 2.0 access token provider for native applications on mobile and other devices. By using the authorization code grant type for mobile clients, you no longer need to implement a variety of standards for various authentication providers. The authorization code grant type also supports the Proof Key for Code Exchange standard (PKCE) for securing public clients.

For more information, see Creating and configuring an OAuth 2.0 client registration.

Ability to import and export Intelligent Virtual Assistant or Email Bot training data

You can now copy Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) or Pega Email Bot™ training data between Pega Platform™ application environments by performing an export and import action. Importing and exporting training data between Pega Platform application environments results in greater accuracy of entity detection. Entities are detected by the system in a chat conversation, including attachments, to help respond to the user correctly, and consist of proper nouns that fall into a commonly understood category such as a person, organization, or a ZIP code. The ability to copy training data also makes it easier to maintain IVA or Email Bot, and build its artificial intelligence.

For more information, see Copying training data to another environment and Copy training data and model to another IVA or Email Bot environment.

Addition of Servlet Management

Pega Platform™ now has Servlet Management in Pega Cloud® Services, which provides a simple and secure way to make changes to Pega Platform servlet definitions.

Servlet Management provides Pega Cloud Service clients with solutions to manage servlet configurations with self-service options. This reduces the cycle time for delivering configuration changes in Pega Cloud Service installations while also improving upgrade reliability. 

For more information, see Servlet management.

Upgrade impact

Clients with no application servlet customizations will not experience an impact. If you upgrade from Pega Platform version 8.5 or earlier and, prior to the upgrade, the Pega Cloud team provided your application servlet customizations, then following the upgrade, you must manually add, remove, or modify your servlet customizations in your upgraded application using this servlet management landing page in Pega Platform.

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

To manually move your pre-upgrade servlet customizations as appropriate or add new ones to your upgraded application using the new servlet management landing page, follow the steps in Adding a servlet.

Update to Intelligent Virtual Assistant official names

To use better and more consistent names for conversational channels in Pega Platform™ and to help distinguish conversational channels from Pega Unified Messaging Edition™, Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) for Unified Messaging is now called IVA for Digital Messaging. Furthermore, the IVA for Web Chatbot is now officially called IVA for Legacy Webchat.

For more information, see Creating a Digital Messaging channel and Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant features.

Monitor standard and custom security events

From the new Security Event Configuration landing page, you can select the standard and custom security events that you want the Pega 7 Platform to log automatically for every user session. The security events are grouped into the following types:

• Authentication
• Data access
• Security administration
• Custom

The API logCustomEvent() is provided so that you can create custom security events that are specific to your applications and that can be monitored by the Pega 7 Platform. For more information, see Security Event Configuration.

Support for multiple work queues in the Email Manager portal

Pega Email Bot™ now provides multiple work queues in the Email Manager portal. With this functionality, operators, such as customer service representatives, can now triage cases more efficiently by selecting different work queues. Operators have access to work queues only for the current Pega Platform™ application.

For more information, see Email Manager portal.

Secure email threading mechanism in email bots

Pega Email Bot™ now uses a secure built-in threading mechanism to ensure that all email communication between customer service representatives (CSRs), customers, and other stakeholders is secure and organized in separate threads for a triage case. For this purpose, the system embeds a unique encrypted security code in the body of outbound emails that identifies related triage cases, service requests, and forwarded emails.

For more information, see Understanding email triage process and Use a secure threading mechanism for emails.