Tracked changes persist between client sessions
Valid from Pega Version 7.1.7
The Microsoft Word native change tracking feature persists between client sessions for specifications. Enable this feature to facilitate collaborative reviews of your specifications with project stakeholders.
Inserting your specification updates as tracked changes allows you to:
- Provide visible markup to the next reviewer.
- Correlate edits to a specific user and time.
- Generate documents that include markup and comments.
Local settings, such as the colors you specify for markup, do not persist between clients.
For instructions on how to prevent markup and comments from appearing in generated documents, see Advanced options for editing specifications.
Add multiple attachments at once
Valid from Pega Version 7.1.7
You can now add more than one attachment to a requirement or specification at a time, without closing the Add/Edit Attachment modal dialog box. Use the traditional browse method to upload an attachment or drag and drop a local file, based on your needs. View and access your attachments from the Application Profile landing page, Requirement form, or Specification form.
Plan projects using release data
Valid from Pega Version 7.1.7
Requirements and specifications can now be mapped to a target release and iteration within a specific release. Populating these fields allows you to set and publish a release schedule through worksheets generated by the Sizing wizard. Access these fields from the Application Profile landing page or by opening any requirement or specification.
The Release and Iteration fields as they appear in a specification and a corresponding worksheet
The Sizing wizard incorporates values from the Release and Iteration fields for specifications only.
Specification type extended for decisioning users
Valid from Pega Version 7.1.7
Specifications now support a Decision Strategy Manager (DSM) type. This allows you to map your specifications to a decisioning component, such as a strategy or model. After you select an appropriate subtype and provide relevant metadata, you can run the Sizing wizard to incorporate these details into project sizing worksheets.
DSM specification details as they appear in the Specification form and Sizing wizard output
You must have access to Decision Management rulesets to create DSM specifications. For more information on specification types, refer to the Details tab of the Specification form. To view all specifications in your application, filtered by type, refer to the Application Profile landing page.
Add collections as linked implementations
Valid from Pega Version 7.1.7
You can now identify a collection or individual steps within a collection as an implementation of a specification. Linking specifications to rules allows you to more accurately convey your application design to project stakeholders. Use the Specifications tab on the Collection form to create these links.
To see all implementations for a given specification, refer to the Application Profile landing page or the Implementations tab of the Specification form.
Add project branding to generated documents
Valid from Pega Version 7.1.7
The standard Word Template for specification descriptions is now extensible. Using a customized template allows you to brand your generated documents with project-specific elements.
Specialize the Rule-Application-UseCase.pySpecificationDescription rule to:
- Include relevant images such as company logos.
- Define static text.
- Insert dynamic elements by merging clipboard values into field codes.
Generated document with custom company logo
Refer to Advanced options for editing specifications for instructions on how to override this template.
Adaptive Decision Manager installation changes to support delayed learning
Valid from Pega Version 7.1.7
To support delayed adaptive learning, Adaptive Decision Manager (ADM) has been enhanced with database schema changes and no longer relies on Hibernate. This change has an impact in the way ADM is set up in the Decision Management service layer: the jdbc/admDataSource resource is now superseded by jdbc/adm7DataSource.
Additionally, Pega 7.1.7 further simplifies the ADM deployment by providing a single enterprise application or web archive:
- Single EAR deployment archive that can used when deploying ADM on IBM WebSphere and Oracle WebLogic
- Single WAR deployment archive that can be used when deploying ADM on Tomcat and JBoss
Improved full text search
Valid from Pega Version 7.1.7
In Pega 7.1.7, Elasticsearch is used to provide full-text search functionality for rules, work, and data content, replacing the existing Lucene search functionality. In addition to providing search results two to five times more quickly than with Lucene Search, Elasticsearch is more scalable: with multi-threaded bulk and incremental indexing, it provides enhanced information about the search queue, the ability to host index files on multiple nodes, a more robust and expressive search parser, the ability to configure thresholds for alerts and search query time-outs, and automatic handling of replication and failover.
The search management user interface, where you can see length of queue and age of entries, which node hosts the search index, and where it is located.
After upgrading to Pega 7.1.7, the system administrator must manually migrate search functionality from Lucene Search to Elasticsearch. Note that during the switch-over and until the indexes are rebuilt, Lucene search continues to function and there is no interruption in search functions. For more information, see the Pega 7.1.7 Upgrade Guide.
View agent activity and status more efficiently
Valid from Pega Version 7.1.7
The menu has been updated with several additional tabs detailing system information pertinent to an active server node running on a system, along with its requestors, log utilities, and purge/archive utilities. The link to the System Management Application tool has also been moved to the menu in this release.
Previously, to understand your system, you had to access every node on your system individually. With this update, the information available on these tabs allows you to view all agents across a cluster to determine if an agent is active and in-depth details about the agent in a more efficient manner.
The System: Operations page displays agent information and status on a system
Access this menu by selecting . For more information, see the System Operations landing page.
Changes to default Agent settings
Valid from Pega Version 7.1.7
Default agent settings across several rulesets have been updated in this release. Changes to settings include agents that are now:
- Disabled by default
- Scheduled to run at a recurring designated time interval (in seconds)
- Scheduled to run daily at a specified time
An example of some updated default agent settings. Compared to earlier versions, you can see in Pega 7.1.7 that ProcessCaseTypeCalculations and ProcessFlowDependencies are now set to run every 60 seconds, and that ProcessEmailRequest is disabled.
This update allows operations staff to understand the general purpose of an agent by product, and enhances usability of this information by improving navigation of agents in large systems through filtering and sorting.
For more information, see Changes to default agent settings in Pega 7.1.7.