Published Release Notes

Gadget configuration by using IAC gateway console is no longer supported

The Internet Application Composer (IAC) gateway was deprecated in Pega Platform™ 7.2.1 and is no longer supported. The IAC was used to embed a Pega Platform application, such as a gadget, on the pages of a web application that was located on your intranet, extranet, or internet site.

Upgrade impact

After an upgrade to Pega Platform 8.5, the configuration of gadgets through the IAC gateway console is no longer supported.

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

To make subsequent changes to your current web mashup, use Pega Web Mashup. 

For more information, see Tutorial: Creating a mashup with Pega Web Mashup.

Geolocation tracking for the latest mobile client

The latest version of Pega Mobile Client™ now supports geolocation tracking for offline-enabled mobile apps. You can enable constant tracking when users work on specific cases from their worklists. This enhancement helps audit the trail of the case and increase the efficiency of your mobile users. For example, dispatchers at headquarters can track the routes of field workers and more effectively assign them tasks based on their current location.

For more information, see Tracking mobile users based on geolocation data.

WSDL generation error prevents invocation of SOAP services

Status

A Known Issue was introduced in the 8.4.2 Pega Platform patch release, which impacts both upgrades and new installations of that version.

Description

Due to changes introduced in the SOAP functionality for the case-mismatch error in SR-D98509/INC-119725, the WSDL is being generated for SOAP services with an incorrectly-capitalized element, which prevents the service from being invoked.  The element should be “name” instead of “Name”.

Workaround

Clients must perform the following workaround after they define a new SOAP connector in Pega Platform:

1. To download the WSDL from Pega Platform:
   1. After using the SOAP Wizard (Dev Studio > Configure > Integration > Services > Service Wizard) the WSDL URL is shown at the bottom right of the Dev Studio screen.
   2. Click the URL to display the XML.
   3. Save the WSDL file to your local system.
2. In the text editor of your choice, modify "Name" to "name" in every <element “name” = … > tag in the WDSL.
3. Save your changes to the local file.
4. To reload the WSDL into Pega Platform:
   1. In Dev Studio, open the Configure menu.
   2. Select Integration > Connectors > Create SOAP Integration.
   3. In the New SOAP integration wizard, select Upload WSDL from File.
   4. Complete the upload using the wizard prompts.

This is a design-time issue, not a run-time issue; therefore, clients only have to perform this workaround process once. Existing SOAP services should not be impacted; however, if clients modify an existing SOAP service definition by re-running the wizard, clients must reapply the workaround for Pega Platform to recognize the SOAP definition changes.  

Resolution

This issue will be addressed in the Pega Platform Patch Release 8.4.3.  Clients who upgrade to that version or later should not see this issue.

Data page unit test case setup and cleanup

You can now use one or more data pages, data transforms, or activities to set up a clipboard page with the appropriate properties before you run a data page unit test case. You can also use activities to create any required test data, such as work or data objects.

After you run a data page unit test case, the data pages that were used to set up the test environment are automatically removed. You can now also apply additional data transforms or activities to clean up the clipboard.

For more information, see Setup and cleanup of data page unit test cases.

New assertions for data page unit test cases

You can now configure the following assertions for data page unit test cases:

• Result count assertions for page lists, page groups, value lists, and value groups
• Unordered list and ordered list assertions for page lists

The Pega 7 Platform now supports these assertions in addition to expected run-time assertions for the data page and property assertions for any property type.

For more information, see Data page unit test case assertions.

End of support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 in Pega 7.2.1

In accordance with Microsoft’s announcement to discontinue support for Internet Explorer 9, Pega 7.2.1 will not support Internet Explorer 9. You should not upgrade to Pega 7.2.1 if you are still using Internet Explorer 9. Otherwise, upgrade to Microsoft Internet Explorer 10 or later, or use Google Chrome, Apple Safari, or Mozilla Firefox, which support certain HTML5 and CSS3 standards not supported in Internet Explorer 9.

For more information about browser support, see the Platform Support Guide or contact Pegasystems Global Customer Support.

New options to manage proposition validity

Manage your decisioning strategy more effectively with proposition validity settings. You can now set your propositions as always active, inactive, or active only within a defined time period. Setting a validity period for your propositions helps you to plan your strategy and automatically activate or deactivate propositions in the future.

For more information, see Proposition validity.

Ability to import data into a Pega Cloud database

You can export a custom Pega 7 Platform database table into a CSV file and import it into a Pega Cloud database or other Pega 7 Platform database by using the Data Upload utility. This utility is available only for Postgres databases and tables that do not contain BLOB columns. This utility is useful, for example, for updating a product catalog that is used in a Pega Cloud application.

For more information, see Importing data into a Pega Cloud database.

Ability to schedule schema updates for Pega Cloud

You can schedule BLOB size and table statistic updates to database schemas to run automatically by using agents. Scheduling schema updates is useful for performance monitoring and tuning in the Pega Cloud. This feature is available only for customers who use a Postgres database.

There is an agent for updating the average and maximum BLOB sizes, and an agent for updating table statistics. Each agent can be configured separately for each schema. You can configure whether to schedule the agent to run daily or weekly. You can deactivate a running schedule on the Schema Tools landing page by clicking Designer Studio > System > Database > Schema Tools. From the Schema Tools landing page, you can configure more complex scheduling on the Edit Agent Schedule landing page. In addition, you can configure these agents by using Dynamic Data System Settings.

For more information, see Scheduling schema updates.

BIX performance improvements for CSV output in the Pega Cloud

BIX performance has been enhanced to download up to 25 GB of data per hour for extracts from a BLOB-less class table for CSV output. This high-throughput option is available only for Pega Cloud instances that use a Postgres database. This option is used automatically for these types of extracts.

When this option is used, the –x and –c command-line options for BIX are not supported, and the checkSum field in the manifest summary is not populated. If you need these options, you can revert to the previous implementation by using a setting in the prconfig.xml file.

For more information, see BIX high-throughput data downloads in the Pega Cloud.