Published Release Notes

DCO

In this release, specification support in Case Designer was improved.  Also, improvements and fixes were made to the New Application Wizard.

• Changes were made to support a split schema environment
• Shared and Component RuleSets can be copied.
• Can edit in Word from either Grids or Lists.
• More than 50 case types are now supported for an application.

Integration

Usability enhancements have been made to the integration wizards. The REST end-point integration has been improved, and XML parsing functionality has been enhanced.

• PRPC services can return Report or Listview data as XML.
• Work items may now be processed when accessing from a link in system-created emails.
• An SMTP outage will not cause an application to stop working.
• File listener will now read files using a leading asterisk (*).
• XML Parse rule will handle schema validation.
• PegaImageViewer will now work with Version 7.1.
• Security measures are enhanced for SOAP connections to web services.
• After generating rules using REST wizard, the Undo Generation button will delete all the generated rules.
• Email wizard has been improved.

Reporting

This release had a focus on extending key capabilities to improve the functionality and ease of use of reporting features based on early adopter feedback.  A series of cosmetic changes and fixes are also included.

• Multiple boxes may be checked on List view checkboxes
• Dashboard Charts slider has been improved.
• Summary View reports and charts have been enhanced.
• Column properties can be added to a report in the Report Editor.
• List view column widths can be set by Smart Info.
• Listviews will display correctly for updated systems.
• Improvements to the GuardRail Report.

System Management

The PRPC installer has been enhanced to handle additional error conditions related to partial installs and duplicate keys; additionally, the hotfix rollback feature has been improved, and the Rulebase compare tool now supports HTTP(S) environments.

• Rollback feature has been enhanced.
• RuleBase Compare will work for secure (HTTPS) environments as well as  non-secure (HTTP) environments.
• Install will gracefully handle the presence of a duplicate key during import.
• When install fails, system will set tables back to original state.
• Remote MBean methods will now work on multi-servant load-balancing systems.
• Enhancements were made to harnesses in Split Schema systems.

User Interface

Issues for cross-browser support for Designer Studio have been addressed. Improvements were made in run-time performance for data pages with grids, and a number of cosmetic changes and fixes were made.

• Improved loading of Javascript files during saving Harness rules.
• Login Performance improvements
• A cursor pointer issue was addressed in Case Manager.
• In reports, data in columns will now right-align.
• Improved section validation functionality
• Harnesses with screen layouts will now save when there is a refresh condition on a panel.
• Outline View tree has been improved.
• Improvements to Repeat Grids using Data Pages as a source.
• Formatted text cells can be put into a grid to display the value of a property retrieved from a Report Definition join.
• Designer Studio changes to support IE9 and IE10.
• Improved designer studio layout
• Designer Studio changes to support quirks mode in IE8 and IE9.
• Improvements to SmartLabels in Data Pages
• Tab groups will take parameters for pre-activities in a defer load setup.
• Sections support nested dynamic layouts.

Updated Word merge support with Microsoft Silverlight plug-in

Starting in this release, Pega 7 features that integrate with the Word merge capability are now cross-browser. ActiveX controls (which are only compatible with Internet Explorer) have been replaced with Microsoft Silverlight. This plug-in must be downloaded separately from Microsoft because it is not shipped with Pega 7.

Common features that are affected by this change include the Specification form and Case Type landing page.

Prior to using these features, see the release note Word merge support with Microsoft Silverlight plug-in for more information about setting up their client systems.

Support for rule rebasing

You can now rebase the rules on your development server with the most recently committed rules from a centralized system of record (SOR). For example, after rules are merged on the SOR, you can rebase your development application to refresh your application with the merged rules. Development teams working in two separate development environments can share their changes, keep their local rulebases synchronized, and reduce the probability of conflicts with other development teams.

For more information, see Rule rebasing.

Support for Apache Cassandra

The Pega^® Platform can now read data from and write data to an Apache Cassandra database. Apache Cassandra is a NoSQL database that you can use when a NoSQL database better meets your scalability and processing requirements.

For a list of supported and unsupported features, see Apache Cassandra support.

Apply logic to data import fields

When importing data from an external system, you can translate data fields into values that can be read by Pega^® Platform. From the Import wizard, you can do the following actions:

• Apply a decision tree or decision table to the data that is imported for a field.
• Use imported data for a field to look up a value in another record. For example, you can look up the key of a record that uses an external identifier to populate a foreign key field.
• Create templates that contain business logic, which eliminates the need to handle data transformations manually during preprocessing.

For more information, see Transforming data during import.

Expose properties in Decision Data Store

You can now expose properties in Cassandra-based Decision Data Store data sets. With this solution, you can update single properties in extended customer analytic records (XCAR) without having to update the full customer record.

For more information, see XCAR in Decision Data Store.