Published Release Notes

Enabling historical compliance score data

Project stakeholders can now track the compliance score for an application over time to better understand and manage ongoing development adherence to Pega 7 Platform guardrails. The compliance score history can be displayed on a line graph on the Compliance Score tab of the Application Guardrails landing page. The data is collected daily and displayed in weekly increments, up to four weeks prior to the current date.

For more information, see Guardrails compliance score, Enabling compliance score history, and Compliance score trend reporting.

Application Sizing Wizard worksheet template now includes business impact

A column for business impact has been added to the project sizing template used by the Application Sizing Wizard. Project owners can now incorporate this assessment into their project sizing.

New Business impact optimization dashboard

On the Analysis tab of the Application Profile landing page, you can now enable historical specification count and implementation progress by complexity and business impact. On the Business impact optimization dashboard, you can view counts of specifications by complexity and business impact. You can also view counts, by business objective, of specifications that have been implemented and for those not yet implemented. You can filter specifications by release and iteration.

For more information, see Viewing specifications by complexity, impact, and business objective, and Associating project specifications with business impact and complexity.

Support for the JSON Web Token Bearer grant type for accessing external APIs

You can now access external APIs by using the new OAuth 2.0 JSON Web Token (JWT) Bearer grant type, in an OAuth 2.0 authentication profile. To use the JWT Bearer grant type as a client assertion, source the JWT from an active SSO session, a token profile, or a property reference. You can use JWTs that you obtain during an OpenID Connect SSO in connectors, to achieve user impersonation flows, such as the On-Behalf-Of (OBO) flow. The OAuth 2.0 type authentication profile now also supports authentication of client applications by using Private Key JWTs.

Instances of the OAuth 2.0 provider are now deprecated. As a best practice, use the new, unified authentication profile configuration instead.

For more information, see Configuring an OAuth 2.0 authentication profile.

Upgrade impact

After an upgrade to Pega Platform 8.4 and later, Authentication Profiles can take advantage of the new JWT based OAuth 2.0 grant type and client authentication features. To take advantage of this and other new security features, you must update any existing Authentication Profiles formats must to use those in Pega Platform 8.4 and later.

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

Since these features are available only for profiles created in Pega Platform 8.4 and later, clients must open and then save existing 'Authentication Profile' instances to ensure that the configuration is compatible with the latest authentication formats.

Sign and encrypt signatures and content with additional algorithms

You can now authenticate using JSON Web Token (JWT) token profiles to symmetrically and asymmetrically encrypt both signatures and content. All algorithms in the Nimbus JWT library are supported, including nested tokens. Custom key identifier headers (kid) are also supported. Use token profiles to securely propagate identities and transfer data between systems.

For more information, see Creating a processing JSON Web token profile.

For more information, see Creating a generation JSON Web token profile.

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.

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.