Published Release Notes

Anypicker control is now available

The new Anypicker control displays a drop-down list of values that you can group into expandable categories for faster browsing. To save time and improve search accuracy, the Anypicker control filters the available values based on the characters that the user enters.

For more information, see Adding an Anypicker control.

Email bots now support multiple languages

You can now configure Pega Email Bot™ to perform text analysis, use training data and triage emails in multiple languages, for example, English, French, German, and Spanish. By detecting topics and entities from emails in different languages, the system can suggest the correct business case and provide an email response in the user's own language.

For more information, see Selecting languages for an Email channel and Enabling automatic language detection for text analysis.

Referencing Rule tool in Dev Studio

The Referencing Rule tool now runs in Dev Studio without the need for Adobe Flash Player. This enhancement integrates the Referencing Rule tool into your work environment, which improves productivity by reducing context switching.

For more information, see Finding rules by dependency.

PDF/UA support

PDF documents that you generate in Pega Platform™ are now in PDF/UA format. This enhancement improves accessibility for users who rely on assistive technology, such as screen readers.

For more information, see Setting PDF file versions.

Upgrade impact

With an upgrade to Pega Platform 8.4 and later, the underlying PD4ML library in Pega Platform changes from v3.10 to v4.x. Following an upgrade, most standard HTML-CSS conversions to PDF work seamlessly; however, if you use the following custom coding in their application to convert HTML to PDF, you may find that PDF generation works differently than expected or no longer works:

• Application layer Java in activities that directly link to the underlying PD4ML library
• A Rule Utility Function
• PD4ML tags in HTML fragments

For example, the following PD4ML proprietary CSS keywords are no longer supported in v4.x:

• pd4ml-page-break-border-top
• pd4ml-page-break-border-bottom

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

After you upgrade to Pega Platform 8.4 and later and find your PDF generation works differently than expected or no longer works, you should consult the latest documentation available at pd[4]ml support site. You may also consider using the Compact CSS instead of the application skin for PDF generation; for details, see Creating PDF files by using a compact style sheet.

Custom activities protection

Improvements to email case triaging

Improvements to Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) for Email make the system more robust and user friendly. When you reply to emails in a triage case, you can forward the email, reply to all, and use the carbon copy (cc) and blind carbon copy (bcc) fields. You can also send Pulse messages to discuss an email case without exposing the information to external users. You are notified in the Email Manager and Case Manager portal if you receive Pulse messages. Even when an email case has been resolved and appears as read-only, you can still send Pulse messages.

For more information, see Email Manager portal and Email triage.

Improvements to the Email channel configuration and content analysis

To make the Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) for Email more useful and easier to manage, you can track all the Email channel configuration changes that you or other operators make. The system now also detects defined entities and topics, not only in the contents of the email messages and its attached files, but also in the email subject field which improves the responsiveness of IVA to emails. You can map same text that appears in an email triage case to different entities. In previous versions of Pega Platform, only the email body was analyzed but with subject analysis, now the entire email is analyzed for topics and entities, including its salutation and signature.

For more information, see Tracking configuration changes in the Email channel and Enabling the analysis of subject field content during email triage.

Changes to the Attach Content control in Pega Client for Windows

Users who access offline-enabled Pega Platform™ applications from Pega Client for Windows can now use the Attach Content control within a case view to attach files with a native file picker control or take screenshots with a device camera. Images are immediately attached to the case, and image file names are based on a time stamp. If a device has no camera, the client skips the source selection step and the native file picker control opens.

For more information, see Harness and Sections forms – Adding an Attach Content control.

Facebook and Web Chatbot configuration in the preview console

When you develop a Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) for Facebook or Web Chatbot, you can now teach interactive bot conversations by chatting with the bot in the preview console and guiding the artificial intelligence algorithm to the right responses. This ability greatly accelerates conversation development and simplifies configuration, while providing the developer with more transparency in the mechanisms that produce specific responses.

For more information, see Simulating a conversation and building a chatbot runtime and Testing and building a chatbot from the preview console.

Manage test ID access with an access group role

Test IDs for user interface components are available only to users who have the PegaRULES:TestID role added to their access group. This requirement allows administrators to limit access to test IDs to users who create or run tests. At run time, applications do not include the test ID data for users without the PegaRULES:TestID role, which reduces the amount of code that is downloaded to the client.

For more information see Managing Test ID access with an access group role