Published Release Notes

Organization Setup superseded by New Application Wizard

The Organization Setup Wizard has been retired in PRPC 7.1.3.  This feature was previously launched from the Designer Studio > Org & Security > Organization > Organization Setup menu. Users are encouraged to run the New Application Wizard (also known as Application Express) instead:

This tool quickly generates an application along with all of the artifacts previously offered by the Organization Setup Wizard. This includes, but is not limited to, the class hierarchy, application rule, organization/division/unit rules, and all relevant data instances.

See the following PDN article for more details on the New Application Wizard:

Create new applications quickly and easily with Application Express

Decision Strategy Manager

Fixes were made that improve the configuration and execution of Batch Decisions. In particular,  the capability to use Structured Data has been enhanced. Some notable improvements have also been made to the UI of Visual Business Director.

• The structured data input configuration will now work even though there is no data.
• VBD has been enhanced to work with Version 7.1.
• The structured data input configuration will now work with nested structures.
• Association rules from Version 6.3 will now work with 7.1 structured data.

DCO

In this release, specification support in Case Designer was improved.  Also, improvements and fixes were made to the New Application Wizard.

• Changes were made to support a split schema environment
• Shared and Component RuleSets can be copied.
• Can edit in Word from either Grids or Lists.
• More than 50 case types are now supported for an application.

Updated Word merge support with Microsoft Silverlight plug-in

Starting in this release, Pega 7 features that integrate with the Word merge capability are now cross-browser. ActiveX controls (which are only compatible with Internet Explorer) have been replaced with Microsoft Silverlight. This plug-in must be downloaded separately from Microsoft because it is not shipped with Pega 7.

Common features that are affected by this change include the Specification form and Case Type landing page.

Prior to using these features, see the release note Word merge support with Microsoft Silverlight plug-in for more information about setting up their client systems.

Predictive models monitoring

In Prediction Studio, you can now monitor the predictive performance of your models to validate that they make accurate predictions. Based on that information, you can re-create or adjust the models to provide better business results, such as higher accept rates or decreased customer churn.

For more information, see Monitoring predictive models.

Kafka custom serializer

In Kafka data sets, you can now create and receive messages in your custom formats, as well as in the default JSON format. To use custom logic and formats for serializing and deserializing ClipboardPage objects, create and implement a Java class. When you create a Kafka data set, you can choose to apply JSON or your custom format that uses a PegaSerde implementation.

For more information, see Creating a Kafka data set and Kafka custom serializer/deserialized implementation.

Additional configuration options for File data sets

You can now create File data sets for more advanced scenarios by adding custom Java classes for data encryption and decryption, and by defining a file set in a manifest file.

Additionally, you can improve data management by viewing detailed information in the dedicated meta file for every file that is saved, or by automatically extending the filenames with the creation date and time.

For more information, see Creating a File data set for files on repositories and Requirements for custom stream processing in File data sets.

Simplified testing of event strategies

Evaluate event strategies by creating test runs. During each run, you can enter a number of sample events with simulated property values, such as the event time, the event key, and so on. By testing a strategy against sample data, you can understand the strategy configuration better and troubleshoot potential issues.

For more information, see Evaluate event strategies through test runs.

Data flow life cycle monitoring

You can now generate a report from the Run details section of a Data Flow rule that provides information about run events. The report includes reasons for specific events which you can analyze to troubleshoot and debug issues more quickly. You can export the report and share it with others, such as Global Customer Support.

For more information about accessing event details, see Creating a real-time run for data flows and Creating a batch run for data flows.

Data flow runs retry connections that fail

Real-time and batch data flow runs now retry dataset connections that fail when the related service is temporarily unavailable, for example, when a connection to a Cassandra database times out. With the automatic retries, you no longer need to run data-heavy and CPU-intensive jobs multiple times and the maintenance of data flow runs diminishes significantly.

For more information about accessing event details, see Creating a real-time run for data flows and Creating a batch run for data flows.