Published Release Notes

Post files and links with pxPostMessage API

The pxPostMessageAPI now supports text messages, file attachments, and hyperlinks. You can programmatically update Pulse streams using this API from activities or SLA rules.

Create, Save As, and Specialization forms

The familiar “New” and “Save As” forms have been streamlined to make record creation faster and more intuitive. You can easily target a specific layer in your application stack, interactively define the record’s configuration and select only those circumstance definitions that make sense for your use case.

While the underlying behavior for creating a record is not new for this release, the redesigned UI of these forms and new defaulting strategy for fields is worth noting:

To launch these forms, use one of the new options found in the action area of the form header:

Note that not all record types support the ability to specialize by circumstance.

For more guidance on how to use the Create, Save As and Specialization forms, please refer to: Intuitive record creation and specialization

Quickly create ad-hoc cases

The My Cases work area on the Case Manager portal introduces a Quick Create feature that lets users create cases and assign tasks that are not included in the processing of business cases (instances of case types defined in the Cases Explorer).  For example, a manager can create a case and a task to set up a phone conference with her staff, or a reminder to enroll in an online seminar. Users can also set up a series of tasks to represent all they work they need to do to accomplish a specific goal.

Extended currency control

The currency control can now display a different currency than the locale currency. This means a user in one country can view amounts that are designated in a foreign currency, using that currency's international conventions.  For example, a credit card transaction in Germany might need to be posted in US dollars. 

Responsive layout groups and grids

The Responsive UI was introduced in Version 7.1, and has now been enhanced in two areas, to create an entirely responsive UI.

PRPC 7.1.4 introduces the Layout Group control, which can render its contents as “tabs,” “accordions,” or as a “menu.”  The rendering choice is driven through the presentation layout (the skin), which presents the information responsively:  a “tab” at a certain breakpoint can turn into an “accordion” or a dropdown-style menu, depending upon what format would be most appropriate for the device/screen size being used.

The grid functionality has also been enhanced, so that grids may be displayed on a tablet or a phone without the need for horizontal scrolling, offering the optimum experience on a mobile device.  A PRPC Grid Layout now supports responsive breakpoints in the skin definition in which columns can drop off or be consolidated according to screen size.

Designers will be able to mark columns in the grid by importance, and at the first breakpoint, the columns marked as “less important” will be dropped off first.  At the second breakpoint, the grid turns into a “fat list,” with the most important column displaying as a heading for each item in the “fat list.”  Styling options can be associated with these breakpoints.

Improved accessibility support

PRPC support for accessibility has been enhanced to allow applications to better meet the standards of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), 2.0 AA. 

Input Method Editor (IME) support

PRPC has added support for the Microsoft Windows Input Method Editor (IME), to allow developers to enter complex characters in four different East Asian languages using the standard keyboard.  The IME is a way to create input using a keyboard, by using additional windows for character editing or selection, in order to facilitate entry of alternate writing systems.

Redirect users to logout screen

New applications built in Version 7.1 will automatically redirect users to the PRPC login page upon logout.

A new template, Web-Session-Return-Template, has been added, to allow developers to customize their applications to redirect users to a logout page, if they wish.  This template can be copied to a ruleset visible to unauthenticated requestors (via node configuration) and used to override Web-Session-Return.

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.