Published Release Notes

Flexible inputs in strategies

Decision parameters allow business users to influence the decision through flexible inputs that do not require changing strategies. System architects use extension points to configure the data model and user interface supporting decision parameters. Decision parameters are used in strategies, and changes to the values of decision parameters become immediately available without requiring any changes to the strategy.

The rule pxRunDecisionParameters supports the use of decision parameters through activities.

Enable business users to own parts of an enterprise application

Decision Manager functionality allows business users to own parts of an enterprise application within the boundaries defined by IT. PegaDM includes the Pega-DecisionManager ruleset that supports this functionality.

System architects define the boundaries for business users in the Decision Manager portal using revision management and proposition authorization facilities in Designer Studio. Access control is provided through custom roles, which system architects can create based on granular privileges. The Decision Manager portal provides business users with a controlled environment for the workflow, and the activities necessary to address the objectives of a revision.

Predefined inputs when designing and testing strategies

External input settings allow for propagating results to other strategies, providing strategy designers with a mechanism to reuse strategies and test strategies with predefined inputs.

Design segmentation trees in strategies

You can include the traditional segmentation tree pattern in your strategies using the following features:

• Exclusion components to conditionally stop the propagation of decision results.
• Split components to branch the decision results according to the percentage of cases covered by the result.
• The Otherwise label for component connections where one of the outgoing connections has a defined label.

Simplified Adaptive Decision Manager Deployment

The Adaptive Decision Manager (ADM) server relies on automatic detection of the database dialect. This simplifies the number of deployable archives used to set up the ADM service.

Cumulative calculation in strategies

Iteration components provide strategies with a mechanism to perform cumulative calculations.

User interface distortions in the Decision Manager portal

By default, the New Application wizard in Pega 7.1.6 configures new applications to include UI-Kit-7 in the list of application rulesets. This ruleset causes user interface distortions in the Decision Manager portal. Both applications created in previous maintenance level updates and applications created in Pega 7.1.6 that do not include the UI-Kit-7 dependency are not impacted by this known issue.

Workaround:

1. Open the application record.
2. In Application Rulesets, remove UI-Kit-7.
3. Save the application record.

User interface distortions in the Predictive Analytics Director portal

By default, the New Application wizard configures new applications to include UI-Kit-7 in the list of application rulesets. This ruleset causes user interface distortions in the Predictive Analytics Director portal. Applications created in maintenance level updates previous to Pega 7.1.6, and applications that do not include the UI-Kit-7 dependency, are not impacted by this known issue.

Workaround:

1. Open the application record.
2. In Application Rulesets, remove UI-Kit-7.
3. Save the application record.

Convert data instances into decision parameter rules

The Convert groups wizard is available in the Hierarchy landing page when the list of your propositions include decision data records.

Click Convert groups at the top of the landing page to use the wizard and to convert data instances into decision parameter rules. This conversion is necessary to make the existing proposition data instances available for revision management.

Update to the Data Flows rule

It is now possible to collect statistics for each active data flow. These include the number of processed records, records that caused errors and last processed records per shape, as well as historical throughput measured for the entire data flow.

There are two new patterns in the Data Flow rule:

• Event Strategy - define this pattern to use an event strategy in a data flow and to connect a data stream and static data sources to an event strategy.
• Filter - specify filter conditions and apply them to each element of the input flow 

Apart from this, the Merge pattern was updated to execute the flow when there is no data on the secondary branches and the Strategy pattern allows you to specify the class where you want to store your strategy results.