Published Release Notes

Design templates in Pega Express

You can now use design templates to control the layout of form fields in Pega Express. Use the form builder Layouts tab to select a layout for the form and organize the fields in the layout regions.

For more information, see Adding a design template to a form in Pega Express.

Archival support added to cases in Pega Cloud

You can now create an archival policy to move inactive cases from Pega Cloud to secondary storage. By periodically purging entries from your database, you can improve application performance.

For more information, see Case archiving.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) support for Pega 7 applications

You can now use Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to automate repetitive and unattended back-office activities directly from your Pega 7 application. By using RPA with your application, you can batch process large volumes of cases faster and with fewer errors compared with manual case processing. You configure the automations in Pega Robotics Automation Studio.

For example, when an automobile insurance claim is submitted, an automation can analyze the submitted information, look up and verify policy holder information, and update web and desktop applications with case information.

For more information, see:

• Integration of desktop automations with your Pega 7 application
• Robotic Process Automation

Ability to search case attachments in Pega Cloud Services

File repositories in Pega Cloud Services are now indexed. Indexing allows your application users to search case attachments from end user portals based on content and metadata.

Support for following users in the Pega Express and Case Manager portals

You can now follow users in both the Pega Express and Case Manager portals. Posts that are made by users whom you are following are displayed in your Pulse activity feed in your dashboard. In addition, an icon indicates whether followed users are online.

For more information, see the following help topics:

• Following a user (Pega 7.3)
• Following a user (Pega 7.3 express)

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

Data propagation for questionnaires in case types

Pega Platform™ now provides a tool to prepopulate answers in a questionnaire that runs in a case by propagating data from a parent case. At run time, specified questions in a questionnaire that users complete as part of case processing, can display answers by using information that users already provided in the parent case. As a result, you speed up the development of your application and help users process cases and complete questionnaires faster.

For more information, see:

• Deliver user-friendly questionnaires by prepopulating answers (8.6)
• Running a questionnaire in a case

Questionnaire shape replaces Survey shape in legacy flows

In flows that reference deprecated surveys, the Questionnaire shape has replaced the Survey shape. Although legacy surveys continue to function in this release, update your flows to use the Survey shape because it provides the latest survey capabilities, and deprecated features are not supported.

For more information about the new survey authoring experience, see Improved survey authoring.

Support for enterprise and express applications

When you run the New Application wizard, you can create two types of applications:

• Enterprise – A full-scale application that has access to all the capabilities in the Pega 7 Platform.
  
  By default, enterprise applications are developed in Designer Studio, but users have access to express mode.
• Express – A small-scale application that has access to a subset of the capabilities in the Pega 7 Platform.
  
  Express applications are developed in express mode, and are ideal for new users or for quickly testing functionality.

For more information, see Express applications.

Business logic routing of approval steps

Pega Platform™ now supports routing of approval steps by applying business logic, in both App Studio and Dev Studio. Business logic uses a set of conditions to determine the most appropriate worker to approve a case by routing the approval based on defined conditions. For example, in a loan request case, the application can route the approval step to a manager if the importance of the case is set to high. For greater accuracy, business logic can also use skill set, availability, and workload to determine the appropriate worker. With business logic routing, you increase work efficiency and speed up case resolution.

For more information, see Determine a relevant case approver by using business logic (8.5), Requesting approval from users.