Published Release Notes

Decision Management

This release contains a number of fixes that improve the configuration and execution of Batch decisions – specifically, a number of usability improvements and addresses some issues when creating strategies on IE8.  

• Batch Decision functionality has been enhanced in the NBAM environment.
• In NBAM, users can run the strategy execution batch based on the Seed list class instead of the customer class. 
• Interaction data will now work even if Action or Organization  dimensions do not have values set.
• Running a strategy which includes a Data Import of a structured page reference will work in batch mode.
• Security was enhanced on the VBD Planner.
• The Access of Role to Object rules have been enhanced to allow users to create new Dimension Operator records.
• The NBAM Segment On Canvas will now fetch the SegMap data, even when the generated extended segment class has not been added to the Pages and Classes of the strategy.  The SegMap property will (if it exists) be added to a list of properties to fetch, even if the strategy indicates that it is not used.
• When a strategy is defined on a customer class, users may now specify the list of required properties to fetch for the input definition.
• When creating a new strategy, there is now a section to add a Strategy Results class like Business Issue or Group.

Stage-based revision and change request management enhancements

The revision and change request processes are based on the case management capabilities provided by the Pega 7 Platform. The customizable flows that controlled the behavior of the revision and change request management (pyManageRevision, pyManageChangeSet, pyApproveChangeSet, and pyDirectDeployment) are now part of the Revision and Change Request case types that govern the behavior of revision management. The change from flow-based to stage-based revision management makes the process more transparent and easier to modify.

For more information, see Stage-based revision and change request management.

Help now available for the Predictive Analytics Director (PAD) portal

Help topics for Predictive Analytics Director (PAD) are now available. The comprehensive PAD documentation helps you to understand how to develop and create predictive models that you can combine with other components in Decision Strategy Manager (DSM).

For more information, see Predictive Analytics Director (PAD) and Improvements to the Predictive Analytics Director (PAD) portal.

Improvements to Visual Business Director (VBD)

Business monitoring and reporting no longer depends on the external Visual Business Director service because VBD is now embedded in the Pega 7 Platform. You add a VBD node to the cluster to access VBD for simulations and monitoring. In addition, when you use the Google Chrome browser, VBD launches as a new HTML client that provides the visualization.

For more information, see The Visual Business Director (VBD) HTML client and Accessing Visual Business Director (VBD).

New Proposition Filter rule

Instances of the Proposition Filter rule allow you to define the validity, eligibility, and relevancy criteria for a set of strategy results. Proposition Filter rules improve performance of filtering propositions that are based on proposition data and customer properties. Proposition filters give more testing and debugging capabilities by offering explanation properties. They are referenced in strategies through the Filter component.

For more information, see About Proposition Filter rules and Strategy components - Arbitration.

New Text Analytics landing page

The Text Analytics landing page allows you to create the sentiment and classification text analysis models using a wizard. The wizard allows you to upload training data, train a model using different algorithms, analyze the accuracy of the model, and export the model. You can also create a binary rule file that contains the model and upload it as part of taxonomy or sentiment decision data.

For more information, see Text analytics functionality enhancements.

Free Text Model rule form enhancements

Enhancements to the Free Text Model rule in DSM expand the text analysis functionality. On the Select Analysis tab, you can include text analysis models in the sentiment or classification analysis. This option enables the combination of rule-based and machine-based learning approaches in text analysis and provides more accurate and reliable results. On the new Advanced tab, you can configure language detection settings, enable spell checking, set the score range for the neutral sentiment, and control the text categorization settings based on various criteria.

For more information, see Text analytics enhancements.

NLP outcome mapping enhancements

Enhancements to NLP outcome mapping in DSM allow you to better navigate to an exact entity or category occurrence and highlight overlapping sentiments. For sentiment analysis, the text is now highlighted in the color corresponding to the sentiment detected in a particular sentence or the overall sentiment of the document. For classification analysis, you can examine various elements identified in the analyzed corpus, like categories, entities, and so on.

For more information, see Text analytics functionality enhancements.

Strategy rule form Test Run panel enhancements

The enhanced Test run panel on the Strategy rule form enables an in-depth analysis of your strategy both in terms of the distribution of propositions among customers and strategy performance. For enhanced analysis of decisioning outcomes, you can now test your strategy on real data by selecting data flows and external input as the sources for the test run. For detailed performance analysis, you can use enhanced metrics with various statistics that provide insight into how the strategy execution impacts the performance of the system.

For more information, see Strategy rule enhancements.

New Simulation Conversion wizard

The data flow runs replace simulations that are driven by the Interaction rule instances. Simulations now leverage data processing and strategy instructions that are defined in data flows. Use the Simulation Conversion wizard to convert legacy simulation objects into data flows and data sets. The converted legacy simulations can be re-executed using the batch processing option on the Data Flows landing page.

For more information, see Converting simulations.