Published Release Notes

Application settings categorization and reuse

Application settings are enhanced so that you can categorize and reuse application settings in all rules. You can reference an application setting in a rule and specify separate values for each production level. At run time, the setting holds the correct value for the application's current production level. This functionality helps you manage your application settings more effectively.

For more information, see Creating an application setting and Categorizing application settings.

Improved contracts for implementations

For more complete contracts, automations now support embedded pages, default values, and picklists. These enhancements provide a more robust model for inputs and outputs that is easier to update and maintain.

For more information, see Viewing automations.

Enhanced OpenAPI Specification generation

To better understand the purpose of your REST API, you can now generate a more complete OpenAPI Specification (OAS) from REST service rules in Pega Platform™. The system uses relevant records to build an accurate schema definition for page and page list outputs, and generate stronger schema type definitions for all inputs, outputs, and fields, such as array or boolean. You can also generate OAS by mapping values to JSON or Clipboard in the request, or mapping values from JSON or Clipboard in the response. 

For more information, see Service REST rules.

Support for seamless transitions between IVAs and customer service representatives

To ensure the best user experience in chat sessions with a Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA), customer service representatives (CSRs) can now step in and take control of a chat session multiple times, when the chatbot is not capable of correctly answering the user. After the user problem is resolved, the CSR can seamlessly switch control of the chat session back to the chatbot.

Enhancements to automations for defining Pega API contracts

With enhanced automations, you can now pass embedded pages, specify default values for optional input parameters, and define a set of values for inputs by using the picklist or enumerated field types. The new enhancements make your applications easier to define and maintain, and you can now provide callers of Pega APIs with a clear description of the API.

For more information, see Viewing automations.

Autopopulated properties support savable data pages

To more easily source data, you can now save an autopopulated property that references a savable data page. For properties that you autopopulate by copy, save plans now execute on the copy, instead of on the data page. These enhancements reduce implementation time and make the applications that you build more manageable.

Unified Messaging Desktop integration with Pega Platform

You can now use the Pega Unified Messaging Desktop™ customer service solution with a Pega Platform™ application so that customer service representatives (CSRs) and other users, such as managers, can respond to user requests more quickly and in a more consistent manner. With integrated Pega Unified Messaging Desktop, CSRs can escalate user requests from Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistants™ (IVAs) by using case processing and artificial intelligence alongside Pega Customer Service™

For more information, see Develop a single IVA channel to chat across different messaging platforms.

Updated default dynamic system setting for requestor pools

Clients can now enable or disable requestor pools for processing service requests using a new dynamic system setting called EnableRequestorPools with Pega-IntegrationEngine as the owning rulest. Previously, all deployments utilized requestor pools to improve service processing response efficiency; requestor pools eliminated overhead by automatically returning a requestor to the pool after it fulfills a service request. Starting in Pega Platform 8.4, requestor pools are disabled in Client-managed cloud deployments, since these deployments use autoscaling to handle service request traffic. Enabling requestor pools in Kubernetes environments is not recommended, because they can inhibit the default autoscaling settings in the environment.

Requestor pools remain enabled by default in Pega Cloud and on-premises environments.

To help clients navigate this change, Pega has updated its best practice guidance for configuring requestor pools. For an overview, see Requestor pooling for services. For guidance on the use of requestor pools in your application, see the EnableRequestorPools entry in Dynamic system settings data instances.

Upgrade impact

Requestor pools are disabled by default in Pega Platform 8.4 in client-managed cloud deployments. Clients who deployed previous versions of Pega Platform on a Kubernetes environment and who upgrade to Pega Platform 8.4 could see that their services behave differently.

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

If clients that are deployed in a Client-managed cloud environment need to configure their services to use requestor pools and they understand how to configure requestor pools for their optimized use, these clients can re-enable requestor pools. Clients should review the best practice for configuring requestor pools before they re-enable requestor pools. To re-enable requestor pools, you modify the EnableRequestorPools setting in the Pega-IntegrationEngine Owning ruleset from “disabled” to Enabled [no value]. For details, see Editing a dynamic system setting.

Automate business process tracking by importing Excel files

To track business processes status and data, you can now import Excel files when you create a case or data object in App Studio. This functionality provides the following enhancements:

• You can now upload a CSV file when you create a case or data object in App Studio. By importing a CSV file, you can use the data in your spreadsheet to define your data model.
• You can generate a data import template that you can use to import a file in its original format during production.
• You can upload .xlsx files to avoid resaving your Excel file as a CSV file.

For more information, see Creating a data model from a spreadsheet.

Data APIs support data exploration in React UI tables

Data APIs have been enhanced to support filtering, sorting, paging, and aggregation in React UI tables. You can use that functionality to access your data quickly and intuitively. For example, by using paging, you can query a data page to retrieve the second page of an employee contact list and specify the number of results that are displayed on the page.

For more information, see Data API performance and limitations.