Published Release Notes

Escalation actions removed from case-wide goals and deadlines

The option to define an escalation action for a case-wide goal and deadline has been removed from Case Designer because the standard actions, Notify assignee and Notify manager, apply to assignments, not cases. You can still define escalation actions for goals and deadlines that apply to an assignment.

For more information, see Defining an escalation action for an assignment.

User Interface

This release had a focus around improving support for accessibility for all the PRPC UI Components as well as extending capabilities for responsive design with grids and tabs. A series of cosmetic changes and fixes are included.

• Improvements have been made for action items being opened in a dynamic container.
• Row repeat functionality in sections has been improved to better handle source properties.
• Screen layouts have been optimized for the iPhone platform
• The display on dynamic containers has been enhanced to provide the same behavior for both single-mode and multi-mode.
• The Launch Harness feature has been improved to launch into a pop-up window.
• The operator menu will now display from the Case Manager portal.
• The Primary Page functionality has been enhanced for control-defined Repeating Tab Headers.
• Using local actions defined as modal windows has been enhanced to work in an iPAD using a Safari browser.
• When using a modal dialog to open a flow action in a repeat grid, to add an item to the list, users may now cancel out of this dialog if no changes are needed.

Email listeners no longer copy the email subject text to the email body

As of Pega^® 7.2.1, email listeners no longer copy the email subject text to the email body when the body is empty. If your customer application expects text in the body of the email, the application might fail. You can configure email listeners to copy the subject text to the body by using the following Dynamic System Setting:

Owning Ruleset: Pega-IntSvcs

Purpose: email/copyBodyNoContent

Value: true

For more information, see Creating Dynamic System Settings.

Changes to the architecture of the Data Flow service

In Pega Platform™ 8.4, the architecture of batch and real-time data flows uses improved node handling to increase the stability of data flow runs. As a result, there are fewer interactions with the database and between the nodes, resulting in increased resilience of the Data Flow service.

If you upgrade from a previous version of Pega Plaftorm, see the following list for an overview of the changes in the behavior of the Data Flow service compared to previous versions:

• Responsiveness
• Updates to lifecycle actions
• Starting a run
• Triggering pre- and post-activities
• Selecting a node fail policy
• No service nodes and active runs

Responsiveness

Nodes no longer communicate and trigger each other, but run periodic tasks instead. As such, triggering a new run does not cause the service nodes to immediately start the run. Instead, the run starts a few seconds later. The same applies to user actions such as stopping, starting, and updating the run. The system also processes topology changes as periodic tasks, so it might take a few minutes for new nodes to join runs, or for partitions to redistribute when a node leaves a run.

Updates to lifecycle actions

To make lifecycle actions more intuitive, the Stop action consolidates both the Stop and Pause actions. The Start action consolidates both the Resume and Start actions.

You can resume or restart stopped and failed runs with the Start and Restart actions. The Start action is only available for resumable runs and continues the run from where it stopped. The Restart action causes the run to process from the beginning. Completed runs can only be restarted. If a run completes with failures, you can restart it from the beginning, or process only the errors by using the Reprocess failures action.

Starting a run

New data flow runs have the Initializing status, and start automatically. You no longer need to manually start a new run, so the New status is now removed.

If there are no nodes available to process a run, the run gets the Queued status and waits for an available node.

Triggering pre- and post-activities

The system now triggers pre-activities on a random service node, rather than on the node that triggered the run.

The system triggers post-activities only for runs that complete, fail, or complete with failures. If you manually stop a run with the Stop action, the post-activity does not trigger. However, restarting the run with the Restart action triggers first the post-activity, and then the pre-activity.

You can no longer choose to run pre- and post-activities on all nodes.

Selecting a node fail policy

For resumable runs, you can no longer select a node fail policy. If a node fails, the partitions assigned to that node automatically continue the run on different nodes.

For non-resumable runs, you can choose to restart the partitions assigned to the failed node on different nodes, or to fail the partitions assigned to the failed node.

No service nodes and active runs

If the last data flow node for an in-progress run fails, the run remains in the In Progress state, even if no processing takes place. This behavior results from the fact that data flow architecture now prevents unrelated nodes from affecting runs.

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.

Open cases in a mobile app with push notifications sent from Pega 7 Platform applications

Push notification smart shapes in a workflow of a Pega 7 Platform application can now send push notifications that open a case in a custom mobile app. Users working in the field can use this feature to instantly access priority assignments instead of having to search for changes manually.

For more information, see Configuring the Push Notification shape.

Ignore locale settings requires refresh after server restarts

The Ignore locale check box in operator preferences is selected to display Designer Studio in U.S. English. After a server restarts, screens initially ignore this setting. When the screen is refreshed or reopened, the screen is rendered as expected.

Improved identification and handling of code assembly errors

Code assembly error logs are now more meaningful and help you identify root causes with better accuracy. Pega Platform™ now also invalidates erroneous assembly to facilitate successful reassembly when the code is accessed again. For example, if a section is not correctly assembled when a user first signs in to the system, the application attempts to reassemble that section the next time a user signs in. In this way, you can avoid lingering issues and improve stability.

Open authoring for rule forms has been removed

Open authoring for rule forms has been removed. You can now edit decision tables and map values by using the application and supported browser of your choice; Microsoft ActiveX controls are no longer required. In addition, support for external XML, HTML, and Java IDE editors has been removed.

HDFS data sets support Parquet files

The Parquet file format has been added to the list of supported file formats for data storage in the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) data set record. On the Pega 7 Platform, you can now access an HDFS data set that stores data in the Parquet file format and perform various operations on that data set.

For more information, see Big Data enhancements in decision management.