Published Release Notes

Access work items directly after login

You can now directly access work items that you receive as email notifications or URLs. The Pega 7 Platform opens the work item after successful user authentication instead of redirecting you to the portal. For a valid user, the type of authentication or number of failed login attempts does not affect this direct access.

For systems that use basic or secure basic authentication, administrators can disable the redirect URL by setting the authentication/basicschemes/redirectToLoginScreen switch to false.

Ability to restrict access to the Import wizard

You can now restrict access to the Import wizard so that users implement an automated pipeline to deploy changes between environments such as staging and production. Deployment Manager is one method by which to create pipelines. By using pipelines to propagate changes, users can apply a standardized and automated deployment process for migrating their applications.

For more information, see:

• Ensuring that users migrate applications with a pipeline by restricting the Import wizard
• Understanding model-driven DevOps with Deployment Manager

Open access to quiesced servers when using immediate drain

When using the immediate drain method to perform quiesce on a node, any operator can now access a quiesced server for root cause analysis or remediation, regardless of their user role or privileges. For quiesced server access when using the slow drain method, you must still include either the PegaRULES:HighAvailabilityAdministrator or PegaRULES:HighAvailabilityQuiesceInvestigator user role in a user's access group. Administrators using the slow drain method without either of these user roles are exiled from the quiesced node and are redirected to an active node.

For more information, see Immediate drain available for quiesce when using high availability.

Deploy in secured mode

Deploying the Pega 7 Platform in secured mode helps prevent unauthorized access to your system. By default, the Pega 7 Platform deploys in secured mode. For more information, see the Deployment Guide for your environment.

Search and Reporting does not index large items

When using the Search and Reporting (SRS) microservice in Pega Platform™ 8.5, you might encounter problems with indexing large out-of-the-box rules. The issue is not visible in Queue Processors, but you can access logs to verify which items the system does not index.

Run advanced agents on only one node in a cluster

You can now configure an advanced agent to run on only one node in a cluster at a specified time. In addition, you can specify the time interval within which an advanced agent runs on only one node in the cluster, which avoids having two advanced agents starting to run on the same node at the same time.

For more information, see Improved control for running advanced agents and Agents rules – Completing the Schedule tab.

Existing operator IDs during upgrades and updates

Upgrades and updates are always performed in secured mode to help prevent unauthorized access to your system. In secured mode, the [email protected] operator ID is always overwritten, but other existing standard operator IDs are not modified. New operator IDs are inserted in secured mode. For more information, see the Deployment Guide for your environment.

Ability to test SELECT statements

When developing and debugging applications, you can test SELECT statements from the Query Runner landing page. You can run queries against non-BLOB columns in your database and view the results on the landing page or export the results to an Excel spreadsheet or PDF file. This functionality is available for Pega Cloud customers who use a Postgres database or for customers using an Oracle database on-premises or on the cloud.

To use this landing page, you must have the PegaRULES:DatabaseAdministrator role or the pxDBSelectQuery privilege in Data- and Rule- in your access group. You access the landing page by clicking Designer Studio > System > Database > Query runner.

For more information, see Query Runner landing page for testing SELECT statements.

Extract marker file not created at startup

The extract marker file (PegaRULES_Extract_Marker.txt) is not created at startup, because the rule utility libraries no longer need it. If you used to use the extract marker file to clear the static content file-based cache, to look up lists, or to control starting activities with web nodes, you can delete the contents of the PegaRULES temporary directory instead.

Simplified support for external log management systems

Simplified support for external log management systems such as ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) makes it easier to implement an external log management system. An external log management system can improve access to system log files that help diagnose and debug issues by eliminating the need to download log files from each node in the cluster.

For information about configuring ELK, see Configuring ELK for log management.

For information about using Kibana to view log files, see Pega logs in Kibana.