Published Release Notes

Improvements to Visual Business Director (VBD)

Business monitoring and reporting no longer depends on the external Visual Business Director service because VBD is now embedded in the Pega 7 Platform. You add a VBD node to the cluster to access VBD for simulations and monitoring. In addition, when you use the Google Chrome browser, VBD launches as a new HTML client that provides the visualization.

For more information, see The Visual Business Director (VBD) HTML client and Accessing Visual Business Director (VBD).

New Proposition Filter rule

Instances of the Proposition Filter rule allow you to define the validity, eligibility, and relevancy criteria for a set of strategy results. Proposition Filter rules improve performance of filtering propositions that are based on proposition data and customer properties. Proposition filters give more testing and debugging capabilities by offering explanation properties. They are referenced in strategies through the Filter component.

For more information, see About Proposition Filter rules and Strategy components - Arbitration.

New Text Analytics landing page

The Text Analytics landing page allows you to create the sentiment and classification text analysis models using a wizard. The wizard allows you to upload training data, train a model using different algorithms, analyze the accuracy of the model, and export the model. You can also create a binary rule file that contains the model and upload it as part of taxonomy or sentiment decision data.

For more information, see Text analytics functionality enhancements.

Free Text Model rule form enhancements

Enhancements to the Free Text Model rule in DSM expand the text analysis functionality. On the Select Analysis tab, you can include text analysis models in the sentiment or classification analysis. This option enables the combination of rule-based and machine-based learning approaches in text analysis and provides more accurate and reliable results. On the new Advanced tab, you can configure language detection settings, enable spell checking, set the score range for the neutral sentiment, and control the text categorization settings based on various criteria.

For more information, see Text analytics enhancements.

NLP outcome mapping enhancements

Enhancements to NLP outcome mapping in DSM allow you to better navigate to an exact entity or category occurrence and highlight overlapping sentiments. For sentiment analysis, the text is now highlighted in the color corresponding to the sentiment detected in a particular sentence or the overall sentiment of the document. For classification analysis, you can examine various elements identified in the analyzed corpus, like categories, entities, and so on.

For more information, see Text analytics functionality enhancements.

Strategy rule form Test Run panel enhancements

The enhanced Test run panel on the Strategy rule form enables an in-depth analysis of your strategy both in terms of the distribution of propositions among customers and strategy performance. For enhanced analysis of decisioning outcomes, you can now test your strategy on real data by selecting data flows and external input as the sources for the test run. For detailed performance analysis, you can use enhanced metrics with various statistics that provide insight into how the strategy execution impacts the performance of the system.

For more information, see Strategy rule enhancements.

Skins can inherit formats from a parent

Skin inheritance allows a dependent skin to inherit formats and mixins from a parent skin. This feature provides a modular organization of styles, reducing the cost of maintaining skins. You can create a specific mobile skin to include mobile-specific styles and disable unused styles to decrease the size of the CSS. Inherited formats are displayed on the Inheritance tab of the skin. Formats that are specific to the skin are displayed on the My formats tab.

For more information, see Skin inheritance.

Paginated lists in repeating dynamic layouts

Repeating dynamic layouts can now display paginated lists. Pagination reduces the cost of loading the entire list onto the browser. You configure pagination on the General tab of the layout properties.

For more information, see Dynamic Layout Properties - General tab.

Heading level support

You can configure heading levels for containers that support headings. Headings facilitate accessibility by making the UI understandable to assistive technologies. You can edit headings in the Base settings tab of the skin.

For more information, see Base settings.

End of support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 and Internet Explorer 10

In accordance with Microsoft’s announcement to discontinue support for Internet Explorer 9 and Internet Explorer 10 in January 2016, Pega 7.2 will be the last version of the Pega 7 Platform to support Internet Explorer 9 and Internet Explorer 10.  

For Pega 7.2.1, you must upgrade to Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 or later, or use Google Chrome, Apple Safari, or Mozilla Firefox.

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