Published Release Notes

Service Portlet rules are deprecated

Service Portlet rules are deprecated. Existing rules will continue to work, but you cannot create new ones. Use Pega Web Mashup instead. In addition, some changes might impact functionality. If you are using Portlet rules and plan to upgrade, contact your customer service representative.

For more information about Pega Web Mashup, see About Pega Web Mashup.

Deprecated metadata types in the Connector and Metadata wizard

The WSDL, SAP WSDL, and DTD metadata types have been deprecated in the Connector and Metadata wizard. For WSDL, use SOAP integration, and for DTD, use XSD.

For more information about SOAP connectors, see About Connect SOAP rules. For more information about XSD, see About the Connector and Metadata wizard.

Support for the POST method in Integration Designer

From Integration Designer, you can now source data from any REST endpoint that requires a POST method to retrieve information. With the POST method, you can encrypt sensitive information in the body of the request.

For more information about using the POST method, see the POST method section on Service REST form - Completing the Methods tab.

Deprecated support for passing symbolic index as strings to value lists and page lists

Starting with the next release after Pega Platform™ 8.2, passing symbolic indexes as strings in parameters, properties, and string literals to both value lists and page lists will no longer be supported. The following examples show the syntax that still works in Pega 8.2, that will not work in the next release:

myPageList("<LAST>")

and

param.str = "<LAST>"
myPageList(param.str)

The following example shows syntax that currently is not supported and gives a validation error. This syntax will also not work in future releases.

param.str = <LAST>
myPageList(param.str)

To avoid issues after upgrading to Pega 8.3, refactor all occurrences of this syntax in your code. For instructions on how to find occurrences of this syntax in your code, see Refactoring unsupported symbolic index syntax for value lists and page lists.

For more information about the correct use of symbolic indexes, see Symbolic indexes – APPEND, CURRENT, INSERT, LAST, and PREPEND.

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.

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.

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.

Email Wizard support discontinued

Pega Platform™ no longer includes the Email Wizard. This wizard helped set up an email service for sending and receiving email in Pega Platform. The wizard generated an email account, an email listener, and an email service rule.

After an upgrade to Pega Platform 8.4 and later, existing clients must create new email accounts and email channels in App Studio. When you configure a new email channel, you add your email accounts so that customers can send and receive email by using the Pega Email Bot. Configuration of an email channel automatically generates an email listener and service email rules.

For more information, see Creating an email account and Building an Email channel.