Published Release Notes

App Studio enhancements further support Pega Express methodology

App Studio now includes improvements that you can use to plan your Microjourney™ in a more convenient way. The Overview workspace now includes a button to edit application details, such as name, description, and business objectives, without having to switch to Dev Studio. You can also access relevant information faster, because Case Designer displays additional details about channels, data objects, and attachments associated with a case type directly in a properties pane. For improved management of your features, feature categories are now available in the application inventory so that you can clearly communicate to your development team what type of features need implementation.

For more information, see:

• Editing application details in App Studio 
• Associating personas with channels 
• Adding features to application inventory 
• Creating a Microjourney for customer success

Predictive models can drive predictions

You can use predictive models as the basis of your predictions. As a data scientist, you can now use Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) to replace models in your system. You can replace a model in a prediction with a PMML, H2O MOJO, or Pega OXL predictive model, as well as a scorecard or field, and then approve the update for deployment to a production environment. You can respond to a Prediction Studio notification that an active model does not generate enough lift and decide to replace the low-performing model with a high-accuracy model. You can also update a prediction on a regular basis, for example, whenever you develop a new churn model in an external environment.

For more information, see Replace models in predictions and migrate changes to production with MLOps.

Enhanced mapping of personas and users in App Studio

App Studio now provides a consistent and transparent experience when mapping personas to users. When you invite users to your application, you can associate each user with a run-time persona or developer role by selecting an option from a clearly organized list. For example, you can associate run-time users with a customer service representative persona, and then invite a person to help develop your application and assig them a developer role. For greater clarity, personas now replace references to roles in App Studio.

For more information, see Inviting collaborators to your application.

Tracer support for Cosmos React

The Tracer tool is now available for stateless applications, so that you can trace and debug applications that you build on Cosmos React. Because in a stateless application multiple requests can run simultaneously, to provide clarity, Tracer shows the events by request ID instead of grouping the events by the time of occurrence. For greater convenience, debugging Cosmos React applications is also available in an offline Tracer tool. As a result, you speed up the development process and deliver top-quality applications that are free of bugs.

For more information, see:

• Debug your Cosmos React applications faster with Tracer (8.6)
• Application debugging by using the Tracer tool
• Pega Digital Experience (DX) API
• Cosmos React

Enhancing the performance of your Next-Best-Action strategy with globally optimized strategies

Starting in version 8.6, Pega Platform™ combines the versatility of Next-Best-Action Designer with strategy performance enhancements provided by using globally optimized strategies (GOS). Decrease the run time and memory usage of executing the Next-Best-Action strategy in batch or real-time scenarios by using the globally optimized strategies generated by Next Best Action Designer.

GOS is supported by Pega Platform's standard business change management process. GOS rules are automatically included in relevant revision packages.

For more information, see Enhance the performance of your Next-Best-Action strategy with globally optimized strategies (8.6).

Support for picklists with parameterized data pages in App Studio in Cosmos React UI

You can now use data pages with parameters to populate a property of the picklist type with filtered results in App Studio. For example, in a survey case type, you can use a parameterized data page to configure cascading drop-down controls in which the values in a secondary drop-down list are based on the value that the user selects in the primary drop-down list. With dynamically-sourced picklists, you get greater flexibility in configuring picklists, and users see more accurate values.

For more information, see link Dropdown control Properties — General tab.

Nested conditions visible in the condition builder

Condition builder now supports the option to view nested conditions in a read-only mode, so that you can conveniently analyze and understand logic in your application. For example, if you create a condition that uses another When condition rule as a value to compare at run time, you can preview the configuration of that When condition. You can use this feature with When conditions nested at multiple levels, so that you can analyze even complex logic in your application.

For more information, see Defining conditions in the condition builder.

More detailed configuration of persona access in App Studio

App Studio now supports more precise configuration of access for personas so that you can improve the security and usability of your application. You can now define what actions a given persona can perform on a case, a data object, or a configuration set. You also save time because you define settings for an entire group of users that a persona represents. For example, you can configure a customer service representative (CSR) persona to view only cases that process insurance claims from VIP customers, without the option to modify the cases. As a result, you ensure that users of your application can interact only with relevant data, in a way that best meets your business needs.

For more information, see:

• Manage access for personas more efficiently in App Studio (8.6)
• Configuring access options for a persona

Decision tables authoring in App Studio

App Studio now supports the option to create decision tables that return values for a calculated field. For example, you can automatically calculate a life insurance rate for a customer by using a decision table that evaluates multiple factors, such as age, medical history, and current occupation. At run time, your application evaluates the values that the customer provides against the values in the decision table, and then responds with the most suitable result. By building decision tables in App Studio, you increase the flexibility of your low-code application and save time and resources, because a single decision table can provide results in multiple scenarios. You can also save and then reuse decision tables to speed up your application development even more.

For more information, see:

• Calculate values automatically in App Studio with decision tables (8.6)
• Calculating values with decision tables
• Authoring decision tables in App Studio

Easier customer record management in Customer Profile Designer (early preview)

The new Customer Profile Designer module of Pega Customer Decision Hub™ makes it possible for marketing analysts and strategy designers to define the associated data for each customer context directly in the Pega Customer Decision Hub portal. It is also possible to define more complex associated data structures that use a custom data flow, or define associated data of different types, such as RDBMS and Cassandra, for the same customer context.

Customer Profile Designer is available in Pega Customer Decision Hub 8.6 version as an early preview version. The functionality will be further expanded in future releases.

For more information, see Manage customer records in Customer Profile Designer (8.6).