Published Release Notes

Condition builder enhancements

To enhance the precision of condition builder in both App Studio and Dev Studio, the new instances include comparator helps you specify the number of field group and field group list instances to which a when rule applies. In addition, a search option that returns results on keypress helps you easily look for existing values.

For more information, see Create conditions in an enhanced condition builder (8.5), Defining conditions in the condition builder.

Triage cases archiving in the email bot (Pega Cloud Services)

For Pega Platform™ that is installed in Pega Cloud^® Services, you can configure Pega Email Bot™ to archive resolved triage cases that are older than a specified number of days. Archiving triage cases improves the overall performance of your system by reducing the primary storage consumption and cost because the system places such resolved triage cases in a secondary storage.

For more information, see Archiving resolved emails for an email bot (Pega Cloud Services).

Limits on active data flow runs

You can now configure a maximum number of concurrent active data flow runs for a node type. Set limits to ensure that you do not run out of system resources and that you have a reasonable processing throughput. If a limit is reached, the system queues subsequent runs and waits for active runs to stop or finish before queued runs can be initiated, starting with the oldest.

For more information see, Limit the number of active runs in data flow services (8.5).

Upgrade impact

If you have many data flow runs active at the same time, you might notice that some of the runs are queued and waiting to be executed.

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

You do not have to take any action. After the active runs stop or finish, the queued runs start automatically. The default limits are intended to protect your system resources, and you should not see a negative impact on the processing of data flows. However, if you want to allow a greater number of active data flow runs to be active at the same time, you can change the limits. For more information, see Limiting active data flow runs.

Support for Apache HBase 2.1 and Hadoop 3.0

Support for these versions extends Pega Platform™ compatibility with HBase releases to ensure that your database implementations integrate seamlessly with Pega Platform.

Pega Platform now supports:

• Apache HBase 2.1 for the HBase data set
• Apache Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) 3.0 for the HDFS data set

For more information, see Enhance your data sets with Apache HBase 2.1 and Hadoop 3.0 (8.5).

Usability improvements in the Email Manager and Case Manager portals

Pega Email Bot™ customer service representatives (CSRs) working in the Email Manager, Case Manager, or Case Worker portals can now quickly reply to one recipient or to all recipients. CSRs can also view the sentiment analysis of an email (positive, negative, or neutral) for each received email, displaying the sentiment pattern for the entire email thread in a triage case. The email bot improvements add value for CSRs working in the portals and help them save time when responding to user requests.

For more information, see Understanding the email triage process and Replying to customers by email for an email bot.

Enhancing your revision management process with Deployment Manager pipelines

Pega Platform 8.5 offers improved synergy between revision management and the automated deployment process provided by Pega's Deployment Manager 4.8 pipelines. Use Deployment Manager 4.8 to increase the efficiency of business-as-usual application changes and automatize the deployment of revision packages.

For more information, see Managing the business-as-usual changes.

Support for Cloud AutoML topic detection models

In Prediction Studio, you can now connect to topic detection models that you create in Cloud AutoML, Google's cloud-based machine learning service. You can then use the models to categorize and route messages from your customers.

For more information, see Broaden your selection of topic detection models by connecting to third-party services (8.5).

Control group configuration for predictions

You can now configure a control group for your predictions in Prediction Studio. Based on the control group, Prediction Studio calculates a lift score for each prediction that you can later use to monitor the success rate of your predictions.

For more information, see Customizing predictions.

Response timeout configuration for predictions

You can now set a response timeout for your predictions in Prediction Studio. By setting a response timeout, you control how Prediction Studio registers customer responses that later serve as feedback data for your predictions.

For more information, see Customizing predictions.

External data flow rules are deprecated

External data flows are now deprecated and no longer supported. To improve your user experience with Pega Platform™, the user interface elements associated with these rules are hidden from view by default. Identifying unused features allows Pega to focus on developing and supporting the features that you need.

For more information, see Deprecated: External data flows.