Published Release Notes

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.

New capabilities of the rich text editor

The enhanced rich text editor has a new plug-in that helps the users skip a few configuration screens by uploading image files directly from the file system. When they copy and paste content from a word processor or a spreadsheet, the text retains the original formatting. The developers can now configure all toolbar options, such as bulleting or font formatting, so the users can focus only on the tools that they need and work more efficiently.

For more information, see Selecting the property for a Rich text editor control.

Default filter settings for Pulse feed sources

Set default filters for Pulse messages, so that users see only relevant posts. Users can temporarily change these settings at run time to view messages from different feed sources, and restore the default settings by refreshing the page.

For more information, see Adding a feed source for the activity feed.    

Streamlined user interface for designing case life cycles

Case life cycle design now supports reorganizing stages by dragging them to a different position and renaming stages by selecting their text field. The user interface for designing a case life cycle is now more intuitive and provides a better user experience.

Token credentials authentication service

You can create a new type of authentication service for token credentials authentication, which is useful for offline mobile applications. With token credentials authentication, users need to enter their credentials only once in a session. Subsequent access to the server is authenticated with a token. The token can be generated by the Pega Platform™ authorization layer (OAuth 2.0) or issued by an external identity provider.

For more information, see Configuring a token credentials authentication service.

Platform truststore for validating certificates

Pega Platform™ now includes a platform truststore, to which you can import X.509 certificates that are common across platform applications. When a certificate needs to be validated, Pega Platform looks for the certificate at the connector level, then in the platform truststore, and finally in the application server (JVM) truststore. You can add, update, and delete certificates in the platform truststore without having to restart the server, which is useful when TLS certificates are changed for reasons such as key rotation.

For more information, see Importing an X.509 certificate.

Test coverage support for more rule types

Test coverage has been expanded to include the following rule types. Test coverage support for these rule types enables developers to more accurately measure the effectiveness of their tests.

• Collection
• Declare trigger
• Map value
• Navigation 
• Report definition
• Scorecard

For more information about test coverage, see Test coverage.

Upgrade impact

The new rule types may impact the test coverage metrics for your applications. Due to the increased number of supported rules, the reported test coverage percentage will decrease.

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

Run your coverage reports after upgrading to see the latest metrics.