Improved experience when building an IVA and Email Bot in App Studio
Valid from Pega Version 8.5
Build your Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) and Pega Email Bot™ while working only in App Studio. This approach makes the design process easier and more intuitive, and saves you time. You can now modify the advanced text analyzer configuration while working in App Studio. In addition, if you have access to Dev Studio, you can edit the text analyzer rule from App Studio for your chatbot or email bot by clicking a link to open the settings in Dev Studio.
For more information, see Adding a text analyzer for an email bot and Adding a text analyzer for an IVA.
Offline support for Cosmos-based mobile apps
Valid from Pega Version 8.5
Mobile apps that are based on the Cosmos design system now support offline mode. Previously, offline-enabled apps had to rely on the classic look. Now, you can use the low-code Cosmos solutions to design apps that operate reliably regardless of the connection status.
For more information, see Designing apps for offline mode.
Automated project estimation in App Studio
Valid from Pega Version 8.5
App Studio now supports estimating projects in an intuitive and automated way, so that you can plan your work with greater efficiency and accuracy. Estimations include the number of hours that you will need to deliver an application, based on multiple factors such as the delivery methodology, the number and complexity of features to implement, and the number of teams involved. After you provide the required data, the project estimator calculates the expected duration of application development. To share your project estimates outside Pega Platform™, for example with your stakeholders, you can also export estimates to an .xlsx file.
For more information, see Estimate projects automatically in App Studio (8.5), Estimating application development.
Enhanced application inventory to support features
Valid from Pega Version 8.5
Now the application inventory in App Studio also includes features that represent elements of your application to implement, such as language packs, along with personas and data objects. The inventory provides the option to add new features or reuse existing features from built-on applications. With the enhanced inventory, application development planning and tracking is faster and more intuitive because you can now easily check the features that your development team needs to implement. For greater clarity, the inventory supports different methods of grouping features, for example, by release or complexity.
For more information, see Managing application inventory.
Automatic separation of date input
Valid from Pega Version 8.5
Date fields in Date Time controls now automatically divide strings of input into days, months, and years. In single fields, the system adds slashes (/) as the user types the value. For example, an input string of 10102020 becomes 10/10/2020. In separate day/month/year fields, the system automatically switches from one field to the next as the user types the value. This enhancement improves the user experience by helping to users provide input in a more convenient and time-efficient manner.
For more information, see Configuring a Date Time control.
Spell-check support for multiple locales
Valid from Pega Version 8.5
The spell checker in rich text editors now supports selection of the language of input. In previous releases, the locale of the user determined the language that the spell checker supported. In this release, you can change the default language support by adding locales to the appropriate decision table. This enhancement increases versatility and convenience for users by ensuring grammatical correctness for the language of their choice without the need for external tools.
For more information, see Extending the spell checker to other languages.
Enhanced Case Designer in App Studio
Valid from Pega Version 8.5
For greater clarity when visualizing your business processes, App Studio now has an improved Case Designer. In Pega Platform™ 8.5, every persona displays a list of associated channels, and every data object lists associated systems, instead of showing multiple entities for different channels or systems. Additionally, for better distinction every channel and system displays a unique icon. To fully convey your business process using just one screen, Case Designer now also supports visualizing attachments required for your microjourney, as well as creating draft associations between personas and channels.
For more information, see Plan your Microjourneys more conveniently in an improved Case Designer (8.5), Creating a Microjourney for customer success.
Condition builder enhancements
Valid from Pega Version 8.5
To enhance the precision of condition builder in both App Studio and Dev Studio, the new instances include comparator helps you specify the number of field group and field group list instances to which a when rule applies. In addition, a search option that returns results on keypress helps you easily look for existing values.
For more information, see Create conditions in an enhanced condition builder (8.5), Defining conditions in the condition builder.
Triage cases archiving in the email bot (Pega Cloud Services)
Valid from Pega Version 8.5
For Pega Platform™ that is installed in Pega Cloud® Services, you can configure Pega Email Bot™ to archive resolved triage cases that are older than a specified number of days. Archiving triage cases improves the overall performance of your system by reducing the primary storage consumption and cost because the system places such resolved triage cases in a secondary storage.
For more information, see Archiving resolved emails for an email bot (Pega Cloud Services).
Enhanced optimized tables
Valid from Pega Version 8.5
Optimized tables now come with a greater range of options, such as support for sorting and filtering cell content in embedded sections. The new options also include passing parameter values from a data page to a table instead of manually entering the values for each of the parameters. For example, you can mark an organization name as a parameter to pass into a table. The new enhancements facilitate the transition to the more efficient optimized tables, and save time and effort.
For more information, see Optimizing table code.