Published Release Notes

Improved cross-browser support

All rule forms are now harness-based and open in the work area of Designer Studio. This means that you can develop in the browser of your choice, free from pop-up distractions and incompatibility messages. Many rule forms have been upgraded to use the latest layouts, styles, and design best practices, giving you a consistent development experience.

Viewing a Word Template in Pega 7.1.7 compared with Pega 7.1.6

Previous restrictions still apply to any deprecated or custom rule forms in your application that remain form-based. Refer to the Deprecated features list for guidance on how to upgrade these forms and recommended alternatives.

Quickly see what's new in Pega 7.1.7

A new home page panel gives you centralized access to Help and the PDN, eliminating the need to leave Designer Studio. Use the buttons in this panel to learn about new features quickly and stay connected to product announcements.

What’s new panel as it appears on the Designer Studio home page

After you are finished reviewing new features and enhancements, you can dismiss the What’s new panel. This hides the panel from your operator in future sessions without impacting the home page for other application users.

Clear and actionable guardrails help you mitigate risk sooner

The Application Guardrails landing page has been restructured to give you an executive-level view into your application health. Use the available metrics and tools on each tab to understand the scope of warnings in your application, the operators responsible for introducing this risk, and ways to improve your compliance score before your development goes into production.

Include this landing page in your governance process to:

• Understand your application compliance score and how it has changed over time:

  • A score of 90 or greater indicates your application is in good standing.

  • A score of 80-89 indicates your application needs review for improvement.

  • A score below 80 requires immediate action.

• Investigate the factors contributing to your score, such as warning age or severity, and the rules and operators associated with each warning.
• Review a comprehensive list of warnings and the recommended path to resolve them.
• Communicate all of these details to project stakeholders through email or exported documents.

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Available metrics on the Compliance Details tab of the Application Guardrails landing page

The Charts tab in this landing page has been superseded by the Compliance Details tab, which provides more options and an enhanced presentation.

For more information about the available features on all tabs in this landing page, see Application Guardrails landing page.

Password hashing using SHA-256/SHA-512

Password hashing using the SHA-256 and SHA-512 hash functions is available for use during the the Pega 7 authentication process with operator, ruleset, and update lock passwords. The SHA-256/SHA-512 hash functions join the previously available MD5 and SHA-1 hash functions.

Using SHA-256/SHA-512 hashing when creating or upgrading a password hash results in increased complexity of the hash, making it extremely difficult and time-consuming to determine hashed password values stored in a database.

Note that once you have updated your system to Pega 7.1.7 and have applied password hashing using the SHA-256/SHA-512 hash functions, reverting back to a previous version of Pega 7 is not advised as this causes hashed passwords using SHA-256/SHA-512 to fail.

See About password hashing for more information.

Descendant class instances now included in reports

The Report on descendant class instances option on the Data Access tab of the Report Definition rule has a new option to now include data from all descendant classes of the report's primary class. If descendant classes are mapped to multiple class tables, the generated SQL query performs UNIONs to include this data. Previously, only a single class was included in the report.

You can select a subset of descendant classes to include or exclude by adding a filter condition on pxObjClass.

Existing reports retain the older behavior for this option after an upgrade or update. To use the new option, you must set it for each existing report. New reports created in Designer Studio and out-of-the-box Pega 7 Platform template reports from which new reports are created in the Report Browser (pyDefaultReport and pyDefaultSummaryReport) default to the new option. If you have created custom template reports for some application classes, you must change them to enable the new option in reports that are created in the Report Browser for these classes.

See Reporting on data in multiple class tables.

Report Definition query filters can search embedded properties

Filter conditions on Report Definition rules that query the Elasticsearch indexes can now reference embedded properties. Previously, filter conditions could reference only the top-level properties of a class. To reference an embedded property within a filter condition, specify indexes for embedded page lists and page groups, for example, Customers(1).Addresses(1).City = Boston OR Customers(1).Addresses(1).State = MA.

These indexes are ignored in the generated query, and so can potentially match any value in a page list or group. However, filter conditions that reference multiple embedded properties in the same page list or page group, as displayed above, might not be satisfied on the same page.

Enhanced date circumstancing option

The date range and as-of date circumstancing features have been merged into a single feature called date circumstancing. Accordingly, the new Property and Date circumstancing option provides more flexibility when you circumstance a rule. For more information, see Specializing a rule.

Renaming a system creates the required data requestors

When you rename a system, either from the System Name landing page or by updating the prconfig.xml file, any missing data requestors are automatically created by the Pega 7 Platform. The Data Admin System Setting is also created, if it is missing.

Case Manager option for searching only attachments

Case Manager search now has an option to search only case attachments. When you search attachments, a new column in the search results displays a paperclip icon with the number of attachments that match the search string. You can click the number to display a list of matching attachments for the selected case.

Configure Elasticsearch index nodes to ensure availability of index files

You can now configure Elasticsearch index host nodes in a Pega cluster outside of the Search landing page. This change ensures that search index files are always available by eliminating the need for manual configuration on the Search landing page. Use the new index.directory=<index_directory> command-line setting during JVM startup to indicate that this node is an index host node and to specify the directory where the index files will be hosted.

In addition, offline Elasticsearch index nodes can now be removed by using a new prpcUtils command-line option. For more information, see Managing Elasticsearch index host nodes outside of the Search landing page.