Published Release Notes

Theme management in Cosmos React

App Studio now features an updated interface for managing the look of the theme in Cosmos React environments. The theming page enables you to quickly rebrand the theme's component library by selecting fonts, colors, and logos, while also displaying a live preview of the UI. This enhancement provides a more intuitive way to adjust the presentation options in your React-based application, which saves development time and encourages prototyping and experimentation.

For more information, see Defining themes in Cosmos React. 

Questionnaires available in App Studio

App Studio now supports authoring questionnaires, which in previous releases of Pega Platform™ were known as surveys. You can create questionnaires, add question pages, and populate the pages with questions of different types so that you can collect the exact data that your business processes require. For more efficient data management and reuse, data objects from a data model now store answers to questions, instead of autogenerated properties. For example, when a customer provides a date of birth in a questionnaire, and your application stores the date as a data object, you can conveniently reuse that data object in related cases. For greater flexibility, both standard Pega Platform and Cosmos React applications support questionnaires, however, some question types are unavailable in Cosmos React.

For more information, see:

• Create questionnaires in a low-code way in App Studio (8.6)
• Creating a questionnaire

Improved support of browser actions in Cosmos React UI

Pega Platform™ applications that use the Cosmos React now maintain user settings for the duration of the session. For example, if a user applies filters and sorting to a table, and then opens a new document, the application retains the table settings when the user navigates back to the page by clicking the browser back button.

This change improves user productivity by reducing the need to repeatedly apply the same settings.

Improved modal dialog boxes

In Theme Cosmos applications, modal dialog boxes for case creation now support width customization. In addition to a bigger default width, the FlexModalTemplate format now includes the following CSS helper classes, which enable developers to adjust the width of dialog boxes:

• modal-width-1_5x – sets the minimum width to 960p.
• modal-width-2x – sets the minimum width to 1280p.
• modal-width-max-content – sets the minimum width to the maximum width of the content.

In this way, users can now more comfortably create entries that require more descriptive information, for example, bugs. In addition, the background of all modal dialog boxes is now translucent, which highlights the focus of the dialog box as the only active part of the UI.

For more information, see Modal dialog box.

Remote case types in App Studio

App Studio now supports remote case types for applications that you build on Cosmos React. With remote case types, you can create a case type inside one application, and then work on cases based on this case type in another, remote application. As a result, users can perform work from multiple applications on one screen without the need to switch between applications, which results in increased efficiency and faster case resolution.

For more information, see:

• Increase efficiency by sharing remote case types between applications (8.6)
• Remote case types  

Improved case previews and case utility enhancements

The collapsible preview panel in Cosmos applications has been enhanced. The preview panel now helps users complete assignments in the previewed case directly from the panel, to save time. The preview also includes a clickable case stage link which displays an overlay with the case life cycle and all its steps for better context.

Additionally, to help save screen space when a case is fully opened, the collapsed or expanded state of the utility panel now persists for all cases that you open in the same browser tab.

For more information, see Enhance the case processing experience in Cosmos Rules applications (8.6).

Multiple sessions in separate browser tabs or windows

Theme Cosmos applications introduce an enhancement to the existing ability to work on multiple cases simultaneously in separate browser tabs or windows. You can now open an entire application in, for example, two separate browser tabs, without one session refreshing and overriding the other. As a result, users gain more flexibility and freedom in how they work. 

For more information, see Adding a dynamic container to a portal.

Improved tabbed layout group

Tabbed layout groups now generate semantic markup, which helps conform to accessibility standards. As a result, the tabs in the preview panel support numbers, for example, for items that might require attention, and a horizontal scroll bar if the number of tabs does not fit the display.

For more information, see Enhance the case processing experience in Theme Cosmos applications (8.6).

Improved search results and screen space economy

Theme Cosmos applications now display search results in a new tab with a variety of filters. Consequently, users do not lose their content when they raise a search query, and can adjust their results by selecting from out-of-the-box filters, such as status or type.

The summary panel now also gives users more freedom in managing screen space by being collapsible. The collapsed panel moves to the top of the page and aligns the summary tabs horizontally, so that users can conveniently interact with complex lists.

For more information, see Enhance the case processing experience in Cosmos Rules applications (8.6).

Low-code authoring of case pages

Mobile authoring for Cosmos React applications now supports the configuration of native mobile pages that include case details. Your mobile channel automatically generates these pages for each case type in your application. This enhancement improves the user experience in your app by providing users with native pages that you can adjust to best suit your business process. For example, you can highlight specific views on a page by modifying which tabs appear on the page, or add a floating action button to help your users edit the case.

For more information, see Authoring mobile case pages for Cosmos React applications.

In Pega Platform™ version 8.6, mobile features in Cosmos React applications are available only as a preview, with limited support for various interface elements and features, such as offline mode. The recommended production design system for Pega Mobile in Pega Platform 8.6 is Theme Cosmos.

For more information about the Cosmos React design system, see Cosmos React and UI architecture comparison.