Published Release Notes

Improved view authoring

Case authoring in Cosmos React UI now features updated view authoring tools. The redesigned view tab and overlay provide a more intuitive interface for creating views, applying design templates, and adding fields and controls. This enhanced work environment improves the user experience and reduces context switching, which contributes to a lower development effort.

For more information, see Editing views in a case type.

Default views for cases and data objects

Pega Platform™ now generates default views for new case types and data objects. Because of this feature, your application now automatically creates a case summary and case details view for every new case type, and a list view for each data object. The default views automate a common recurring task, and improve productivity by reducing development effort.

Enhancements for fields in views and data models

Pega Platform™ now provides a unified experience of adding fields to views, the case type data model, and the application data model, by using an intuitive dialog box. For greater clarity, a new field type, data relationship, replaces data references, field groups, and field group lists. As a result, you can conveniently reuse data objects in your application. 

When you upgrade to Pega 8.5, your system automatically converts your field groups, field group lists, and data references to data relationships. The case type data model now displays all the fields by default, including any referenced fields, and provides an application layer that contains each field. Use this functionality to view how the data is organized across your system.

For more information, see Define fields in data objects intuitively (8.5), Adding data relationships to fields and data models.

Pega Express application views simplify portal creation

Pega Express application views offer a simple, intuitive authoring experience for portals. Application view templates support responsive application development and offer mobile-specific templates. You can create portals by selecting from a predefined set of application view templates.

For more information, see Application views.

View and apply schema changes when upgrading or updating

When you upgrade or update, you can view the schema changes to the default work and history tables and apply the changes to your cloned tables. By applying the changes, you improve performance and can take advantage of the latest reports on those tables.

For information about viewing and applying schema changes as part of the upgrade or update, see the Pega 7 Platform Upgrade Guide or the Pega 7 Platform Update Guide.

For information about using the Designer Studio tool or the command-line tool, see Updating cloned tables after an upgrade or update.

Flexbox-based dynamic layouts not supported for Android 4.4 and earlier

Flexbox-based dynamic layouts are not supported in Android 4.4 and earlier. When developing applications to be used on devices running Android 4.4 and earlier, use the inline-block layout mode for dynamic layouts.

Easy access to proposition-related rules when creating change requests in revision management

When selecting propositions for change requests in Decision Strategy Manager, you can view the proposition filter, strategy, and when rules that are associated with the decision data the selected propositions belong to. In addition, you can include those rules in change requests. To view and add any associated rules to a change request, the rules must be part of the application overlay. With the ability to view and select all proposition-related data, you can consistently revise not only propositions themselves but also all associated rules.

For more information, see Proposition-centric revision management functionality.

Store and source content in Box

You can now attach content from Box while working on a case in your application. You can attach files directly to your case or include them in a Pulse message. You can also store all the case and Pulse attachments in your application in Box. To enable content sourcing and storage in Box, configure the Content sourcing and Content storage sections on the Integration & security tab of your application rule.

For more information, see Storing and sourcing content in Box.

Web portal reuse removed from the mobile channel

The reuse of web portals for creating mobile apps with a single web view is no longer supported. You can conveniently update your existing channels that reuse web portals to take advantage of the multiple-views experience and native mobile capabilities, such as native mobile list views or floating action buttons.

Upgrade impact

The Reuse web portal option is removed from Pega Platform 8.5 and later.

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

App developers need to use the migration tool available on the mobile channel to move their apps to the recommended new navigation designer. When users open existing mobile channel with the Reuse web portal option configured, they are prompted to run through the wizard to upgrade the mobile channel to the latest Pega Mobile Client based configuration. When this is done, app developers should rebuild the app.

Reports with visualizations of performance and automation levels for the email bot

In the Email Manager portal, you can now use built-in reports to visualize Pega Email Bot™ performance and the automation levels that are related to received emails, triaged cases, and created business cases. You can plug the reports to display the report data in other portals, for example the Case Manager portal. Based on the information displayed in the reports, you can adjust the machine learning models to achieve greater automation in the system.

For more information, see Viewing the reports for the Email channel and Built-in reports for the email bot.