Published Release Notes

Text analytics on the Pega 7 Platform

The Pega 7 Platform offers users the capability to analyze units of text, extract quality information, and translate it into business intelligence. The text analytics functionality aims to determine the positive, negative, and neutral polarities (tone) of subjective sentences. It also provides mechanisms for categorizing units of text and classifying text elements into predefined categories. You can use it to analyze text-based content including news feeds, emails, and postings on social media streams, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

For more information, see Introduction to text analytics on the Pega 7 Platform.

Semantic URLs in Pega Platform

URL addresses for Pega Platform™ applications and application resources now appear as clear, meaningful paths. This enhancement helps users understand the structure of the application that they are using, which makes navigation quicker and more intuitive.

Loading cues in Pega Platform

Pega Platform™ applications that rely on the Cosmos React framework now feature a visual placeholder for the page that is being loaded. The system displays an indicator when loading portals, cases, simple pages, and list pages. This update provides users with a visual cue that their request is being processed, which improves the user experience.

Data Flow service in the Pega 7 Platform

The Data Flow service configuration on the Services landing page now provides a single point of entry for enabling running data flows in batch and real-time modes. To configure the Data Flow service, you must add Decision data nodes on which to run data flows and specify the number of Pega 7 Platform threads that are assigned to process the data flow runs. Additionally, as part of the Data Flow service, you can view the number of active data flows on each node.

For more information, see Services landing page.

Cassandra 3.11.3 support for Pega Platform

Increase your system's reliability and reduce its memory footprint by upgrading the internal Cassandra database to version 3.11.3.

For on-premises Pega Platform™ users, after you upgrade to Pega 8.3, it is recommended that you manually upgrade to Cassandra 3.11.3. You can upgrade to Cassandra 3.11.3 on all operating systems except IBM AIX. If you do not want to upgrade to Cassandra 3.11.3, you can continue to use Cassandra 2.1.20, which is still supported.

For Pega Cloud Services 2.13 and later versions, Cassandra automatically upgrades to version 3.11.3 after your environment is upgraded to Pega Platform 8.3.

For information on how to manually upgrade to Cassandra 3.11.3, see the Pega Platform 8.3 Upgrade Guide for your server and database at Deploy Pega Platform.

Upgrade impact

After an on-premises Pega Platform upgrade, you still have the older version of Cassandra and must manually upgrade.

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

To upgrade Cassandra, you must create a prconfig setting or a dynamic system setting with the new Cassandra version and then do a rolling restart of all the Decision Data Store nodes to upgrade them to the latest version of Cassandra.

Adaptive Decision Manager service in the Pega 7 Platform

The Adaptive Decision Management (ADM) service is now native to the Pega 7 Platform and is supported by the Decision data node infrastructure. Because of this enhancement, you no longer need to manage the ADM service as an external service. In addition, the ADM service does not require dedicated hardware or operating system environments.

For more information, see Services landing page.

Cosmos React UI is now available in Pega Platform

Pega Platform™ now provides you with tools to develop React-based applications in App Studio. This enhancement, which was developed as part of Project Fnx, uses components that rely on the ReactJS library to power the Cosmos design system. The updated UI technology improves application performance, creates a better user experience, and provides greater flexibility for front-end developers by drawing from a well-established open-source technology.

In Pega Platform 8.5, Cosmos React UI is an opt-in beta. For more information about using Cosmos React UI in your application, see Previewing Cosmos React UI.

To learn about Project Fnx, see Project Fnx.

Legacy rules removed to reduce Pega Platform installation size

The installation of Pega^® Platform 7.4 removes deprecated and unused rules. The smaller installation size decreases rule sync time and reduces the amount of storage required for Pega Platform. In addition, the smaller installation reduces the rule database size and shortens installation and upgrade times. You can access the legacy rules, if needed, in the PegaLegacyRules:01-01-01 in the Resource Kit on the Pega Platform media.

For more information see Finding legacy rules in sections.

End of active support for Cosmos React version 8.6

As of the release of Pega Platform™ version 8.8 in October 2022, the early adopter Cosmos React (now Constellation) UI is no longer supported. Consequently, Pega support teams no longer accept assignments and incident reports for the 8.6 version of Cosmos React and DX SDK. Upgrade to a later version of Cosmos React or Constellation to maintain support.

Support for large binary data item storage in Pega Mobile Client and offline case attachments in Pega Platform

Pega^® Mobile Client can now store and synchronize large binary data items and their corresponding actions from the action queue on Android and iOS devices. As a result, custom mobile app users can view, attach, and delete data files, whether the device is online or offline. For this function to work, you must enable offline case attachment support, which allows your custom mobile apps to synchronize case attachments between the Pega Platform and the mobile device.

For more information, see Enabling offline case attachments support and Client Store API.