Published Release Notes

Integrate text analytics with decision strategies through the Interaction API

The Interaction API provides more context for making next-best-action decisions by integrating text analytics with decision management components such as strategies, propositions, and interaction history. By including natural language processing in your decisioning solution through the Interaction API, you ensure that the next-best-action decisions that you make are more informed and accurate.

For more information, see Customizable Interaction API for text analytics.

BIX ruleset is now included with Pega Platform

The Pega Business Intelligence Exchange™ (BIX) ruleset is now included with Pega Platform™, which eliminates the need for additional provisioning for Pega Cloud customers and for a separate BIX installation for on-premises customers. To add BIX to your application, add the Pega-BIX:<version> ruleset to your application rulesets.

For more information, see Data extraction.

Upgrade impact

After a successful upgrade, the BIX ruleset is available within Pega Platform. You should synchronize the BIX ruleset and Pega rules to avoid extraction errors.

What steps are required to update the application to be compatible with this change?

After the upgrade is complete, change the ruleset version for Pega Platform and BIX to use the same, latest version.

Set a time zone for the DateTime control

The DateTime control now supports the selection of a specific time zone. Apart from the default local time zone, you can choose a Java-supported time zone or enter a property. For example, you can make it easier for a manager working in New York to schedule a task for a worker in London by configuring a calendar picker on user forms to show a date and time for Europe/London.

Beginning with this release, the calendar picker defaults to the current time in the time zone that is defined in the operator record. Previously, it defaulted to the local time zone of the system.

For more information, see Specifying a time zone for a DateTime control.

Upgrade impact

After a successful upgrade, the DateTime gadget displays the time in the current operator's locale, which is defined on the operator rule form or in the browser.  

What steps are required to update the application to be compatible with this change?

If you need to display the system time from which the user has logged in, and if this is not the same as the time in the user's locale (based on the browser setting), set the Locale field in the operator ID to be blank so that the browser-based setting and the displayed time are the same as the system time.

Support for machine learning as a service models

In Pega Platform™, you can now run advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence models that you develop in third-party tools. By configuring a connection with an external machine learning as a service provider, such as Google AI Platform, you can use the predictive power of your custom models to improve the predictions in your customer strategies.

For more information, see Connecting to a Machine Learning as a Service model and Configuring a machine learning service connection.

Accelerated design of sections

The user interface design of your application now supports actions such as copy, paste, or delete on multiple user interface components at the same time. This enhancement accelerates the user interface design in Dev Studio when you work with templates and in App Studio when you design the sections of your run-time interface.

Dynamic configuration of the primary navigation of a web interface

The web channel interface of your application now supports adding, removing, and reordering user interface pages that are relevant to your application. By configuring the layout directly in a web channel interface, you get a dynamic overview of the current web interface and design the navigation experience.

For more information, see Configuring the navigation menu for a portal and Modifying the name and icon of a page.

New palette categories for user interface components

Harnesses and sections now include a new categorization palette for user interface components, where each category serves as a meaningful container for specific elements. The new palette helps you more effectively locate and use the user interface components that you want. This enhancement improves the interface design process in Dev Studio, as well as the authoring experience of the run-time user interface in App Studio.

Improved management of batch indexing

You can now cancel and check the status of a batch index process directly from the Search landing page in Dev Studio. The landing page now refreshes automatically every 10 seconds so that you can easily see the most recent status of the batch index process. Additionally, the reindex operation is now 20% faster than in previous versions. These features provide greater visibility into batch indexing and improve your ability to fix issues with a batch indexing process.

For more information about batch indexing, see Rebuilding search indexes from the user interface.

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Improved rich user interface controls in IVA for Web Chatbot

In Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) for Web Chatbot, you can use additional rich user interface controls, such as the time and date picker or a simple form, to help users accomplish tasks more quickly and to limit errors. IVA for Web Chat can now also display a welcome message in the chat window, for example, to inform the user about the person with whom they are chatting.

For more information, see Streamline conversations in IVA for Web Chatbot with rich user interface controls.

Upgrade impact

The new Ul controls for Web Chatbot are enabled by default upon upgrade. If you do not want the controls enabled, you must disable them.

Also, if you have changed the styles for the welcome message, you may need to make changes to the welcome message to incorporate the new areas in the bot conversation area (such as quick replies).

What steps are required to update the application to be compatible with this change?

Existing channels will behave as they did previously, so you should determine whether you want to use the new UI controls. If you want to use the new Ul controls, configure the new design-time options.

If you have changed the default styles for the welcome message, review the new settings to ensure that the welcome message is configured properly. 

Facilitated application development with saving changes in branches in App Studio

For improved development of your application, you can now define branches in which you save changes that you make to your application in App Studio. Create features in branches so that you can review and merge them without affecting other features in the application. You can quickly identify and review any changes to rules because you know in which application layer they were saved. 

For more information, see Setting branch preferences in Dev Studio, Setting branch preferences in App Studio.