Published Release Notes

Deploy revisions directly in target environments

As a revision manager, you can now directly deploy or migrate completed revisions to multiple Pega 7 Platform environments that were configured as targets by the system architect. The revision management process is faster because you do not need to package a revision as a JAR file, and then manually import that file to the Pega 7 Platform. Additionally, this solution gives business users more control over application rulesets and enables them to act more independently.

For more information, see Direct deployment of revisions.

Logging service now uses Apache Log4j 2

The Pega^® Platform now uses the Apache Log4j 2 logging service. Apache Log4j 2 improves performance and provides support for all log file appender types. As a result of this upgrade, the prlogging.xml file has been renamed to prlog4j2.xml and the format of the file has changed considerably.

For details about the new file format see Pega Platform logging with the Log4j 2 logging service.

For new installations or for upgrades to systems that were using the default logging configuration, no changes are needed. For information about updating custom log files after upgrading, see Customizations to the prlogging.xml file must be manually ported after upgrade. For information about updating your socket server if you use remote logging, see Socket server has changed for remote logging. For information about updated the web.xml file after upgrading, see Log file description in web.xml incorrect after upgrade to Apache Log4j2.

Customizations to the prlogging.xml file must be manually ported after upgrade

As a result of the upgrade from the Apache Log4j 1 logging service to the Apache Log4j 2 logging service, the name of the logging configuration file has changed from prlogging.xml to prlog4j2.xml and the format of the file has changed considerably. If you customized your prlogging.xml file, port the customizations to the new prlog4j2.xml file. If you do not port the changes, the Pega^® Platform uses the default prlog4j2.xml file and disregards your customized prlogging.xml file.

For more information about customizing your log files, see the Apache Log4j 2 documentation.

Socket server has changed for remote logging

As a result of the upgrade from the Apache Log4j 1 logging service to the Apache Log4j 2 logging service, the socket server that is used for remote logging has changed from the Log4j remote logging package with the LogFactor5 log analysis tool to TcpSocketServer. If you use remote logging, update your socket server to TcpSocketServer. For more information, see Installing and using remote logging.

Delegation experience in revision management

Revision managers can now control rule authoring by assigning a delegation experience to any rule that is part of a revision management change request. Delegation experience types offer different rule authoring capabilities, so the revision manager can select the appropriate delegation experience for the task and the strategy designer’s experience.

File data set

You can now create a File data set that reads data from a file that is in CSV or JSON format. You can use this type of data set to test data flows and strategies.

For more information, see Creating a File data set record.

Automatically process cases with SharePoint

You can now use Microsoft SharePoint Online to store and source case and Pulse attachments and to store and source attachments during automated case processing. Users only have to provide authentication and authorization details the first time they access SharePoint Online or when the trust has expired. The authentication profile must be OAuth 2.0 with a grant type of authorization code. The SharePoint Online component can be downloaded from Pega Exchange. For more information, see Downloading and configuring pluggable content management components.

Ability to set default values when importing data

You can now set default values for data that you import for a data type from a .csv file. By setting defaults, you can ensure that even when the .csv file data is incomplete, all of the data is imported. In addition, you can set default values for custom fields that do not have a matching source column in the .csv file. This feature is available for the Add and update and Add only import options. For mapped fields, the default value is used for new records if the source field is blank, and for existing records if both the source and target fields are blank. For custom fields, the default value is used for new records if a default value is provided, and for existing records only if the target field is blank.

For more information, see Importing data for a data type.

Analyze intentions in text analytics

You can now analyze text content to determine whether it contains any underlying intention. Through intent analysis, you can determine whether your customers are likely to continue subscribing to your services, want to know more about your products, or whether you are facing customer churn. Based on the detected intentions, you can take appropriate actions to ensure the growth of your business and minimize customer churn. Intent analysis is supported only for the English language.

For more information, see Intent analysis and filtering.

Decision Analytics portal replaces Predictive Analytics Director portal

The Decision Analytics portal replaces the Predictive Analytics Director (PAD) portal, the Text Analytics landing page, and the Adaptive Models Reporting landing page. In this new work area for predictive analytics and text analytics, the business scientist can control the full model life cycle by building predictive models, importing PMML models, building sentiment analysis and text classification models, creating and monitoring adaptive models, and updating any existing models.

For more information, see Overview of the Decision Analytics work area.