Published Release Notes

Text analytics on the Pega 7 Platform

The Pega 7 Platform offers users the capability to analyze units of text, extract quality information, and translate it into business intelligence. The text analytics functionality aims to determine the positive, negative, and neutral polarities (tone) of subjective sentences. It also provides mechanisms for categorizing units of text and classifying text elements into predefined categories. You can use it to analyze text-based content including news feeds, emails, and postings on social media streams, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

For more information, see Introduction to text analytics on the Pega 7 Platform.

Data Flow service in the Pega 7 Platform

The Data Flow service configuration on the Services landing page now provides a single point of entry for enabling running data flows in batch and real-time modes. To configure the Data Flow service, you must add Decision data nodes on which to run data flows and specify the number of Pega 7 Platform threads that are assigned to process the data flow runs. Additionally, as part of the Data Flow service, you can view the number of active data flows on each node.

For more information, see Services landing page.

Cassandra 3.11.3 support for Pega Platform

Increase your system's reliability and reduce its memory footprint by upgrading the internal Cassandra database to version 3.11.3.

For on-premises Pega Platform™ users, after you upgrade to Pega 8.3, it is recommended that you manually upgrade to Cassandra 3.11.3. You can upgrade to Cassandra 3.11.3 on all operating systems except IBM AIX. If you do not want to upgrade to Cassandra 3.11.3, you can continue to use Cassandra 2.1.20, which is still supported.

For Pega Cloud Services 2.13 and later versions, Cassandra automatically upgrades to version 3.11.3 after your environment is upgraded to Pega Platform 8.3.

For information on how to manually upgrade to Cassandra 3.11.3, see the Pega Platform 8.3 Upgrade Guide for your server and database at Deploy Pega Platform.

Upgrade impact

After an on-premises Pega Platform upgrade, you still have the older version of Cassandra and must manually upgrade.

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

To upgrade Cassandra, you must create a prconfig setting or a dynamic system setting with the new Cassandra version and then do a rolling restart of all the Decision Data Store nodes to upgrade them to the latest version of Cassandra.

Adaptive Decision Manager service in the Pega 7 Platform

The Adaptive Decision Management (ADM) service is now native to the Pega 7 Platform and is supported by the Decision data node infrastructure. Because of this enhancement, you no longer need to manage the ADM service as an external service. In addition, the ADM service does not require dedicated hardware or operating system environments.

For more information, see Services landing page.

Support for multiple custom mobile apps for a Pega Platform application

To enhance the user experience and provide support for native mobile components, you can create multiple custom mobile apps for a Pega Platform™ application. For each custom mobile app, you must create a different mobile channel interface. In addition, you can configure each custom mobile app to run only in a specific portal for an application. The custom mobile app uses this portal regardless of which default portal is defined for the access group.

For more information, see Selecting a portal for a custom mobile app.

Support for large binary data item storage in Pega Mobile Client and offline case attachments in Pega Platform

Pega^® Mobile Client can now store and synchronize large binary data items and their corresponding actions from the action queue on Android and iOS devices. As a result, custom mobile app users can view, attach, and delete data files, whether the device is online or offline. For this function to work, you must enable offline case attachment support, which allows your custom mobile apps to synchronize case attachments between the Pega Platform and the mobile device.

For more information, see Enabling offline case attachments support and Client Store API.

Open cases in a mobile app with push notifications sent from Pega 7 Platform applications

Push notification smart shapes in a workflow of a Pega 7 Platform application can now send push notifications that open a case in a custom mobile app. Users working in the field can use this feature to instantly access priority assignments instead of having to search for changes manually.

For more information, see Configuring the Push Notification shape.

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.

Cannot send mobile push notifications when the Pega 7 Platform is hosted on WebSphere Application Server

Push notifications are not sent to Android or iOS mobile apps when the Pega 7 Platform is hosted on WebSphere Application Server.

Direct deployment of decision parameters

Direct deployment overlays now enable business users to own decision parameters. Revisions based on this new type of overlay can be directly activated by Decision Manager portal users. For more information on this feature, see the Revision Management landing page.