Published Release Notes

New privilege required to access the Search landing page

After upgrading to Pega^® Platform 7.4, users who do not have the pxAccessSearchLP privilege cannot access the Search landing page. The pxAccessSearchLP privilege is automatically assigned to the SysAdm4 role. If you have other roles that require access to the Search landing page, you must add the pxAccessSearchLP privilege to those roles.

For more information about assigning privileges to roles, see User privilege authorization. (Link to: basics/v6portal/landingpages/accessmanager/customizeprivilegestab.htm)

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.

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.

New JWT access token format: Authorized Access Token

Pega Platform™ is changing from using opaque tokens to using JSON Web (JWT) tokens and the JWT access token format: Authorized Access Token (AAT). An AAT enables a client application to validate the server for user permissions and authorizes a specific application to access specific parts of a user’s data.

The major benefits to using the JWT format are:

• The JWT is a self-contained token that has authentication information, expire time information, and other user-defined claims digitally signed.
• A single token can be used with multiple applications.
• The tokens are short-lived and can minimize damage if transport security is compromised, as the token signature is verified.
• As the token is verified with the signature, there is no need to verify against a database, thus reducing latency (usually important for Web APIs).

For more information, see Understanding authorized access tokens.

Improving basic access control

Pega Platform™ has implemented a new basic access control (BAC) to protect your application from unauthorized server calls from otherwise authenticated users.

For more information, see Access Control Checks.

Upgrade impact

After you upgrade to Pega 8.5, all the functionality in the model configurations that use auto-generated controls and actions continues to work as before. However, you must secure any customized JavaScript in your application layer that makes AJAX (server) calls  by using registration or encryption mechanisms.

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

After upgrade, to migrate custom JavaScript functionality, see Access Control Checks.

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.