Published Release Notes

Improving basic access control

Pega Platform™ has implemented a new basic access control (BAC) to protect your application from unauthorized server calls from otherwise authenticated users.

For more information, see Access Control Checks.

Upgrade impact

After you upgrade to Pega 8.5, all the functionality in the model configurations that use auto-generated controls and actions continues to work as before. However, you must secure any customized JavaScript in your application layer that makes AJAX (server) calls  by using registration or encryption mechanisms.

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

After upgrade, to migrate custom JavaScript functionality, see Access Control Checks.

Accessibility improvements

Several improvements are now available that enable application accessibility. These improvements affect the wait indicator, overlays, and collapsible layouts.

The wait indicator, or throbber, announces its status to an assistive technology such as JAWS.

• When loading, the throbber announces “Loading content” or other text that can be edited in the pyThrobberLoadingText property.
• When loading is completed, the throbber announces “Loading completed” or other text that can be edited in the pyThrobberLoadingCompletedText property.
• The loading announcement is set by default to a three-second delay, which can be modified in the pyThrobberAnnouncementDelay property.

Overlays are announced by an assistive technology and overlay content can be tabbed through by using the Tab key without closing the overlay. Overlays can be closed by pressing the Esc key. This behavior applies to all overlays and modal dialog boxes that are opened as local actions and popovers that are part of the autogenerated UI.

All users, including those not using an assistive technology, can focus the expand and collapse feature of a layout by using the Tab key. The expanded or collapsed state is announced by screen readers.

New JWT access token format: Authorized Access Token

Pega Platform™ is changing from using opaque tokens to using JSON Web (JWT) tokens and the JWT access token format: Authorized Access Token (AAT). An AAT enables a client application to validate the server for user permissions and authorizes a specific application to access specific parts of a user’s data.

The major benefits to using the JWT format are:

• The JWT is a self-contained token that has authentication information, expire time information, and other user-defined claims digitally signed.
• A single token can be used with multiple applications.
• The tokens are short-lived and can minimize damage if transport security is compromised, as the token signature is verified.
• As the token is verified with the signature, there is no need to verify against a database, thus reducing latency (usually important for Web APIs).

For more information, see Understanding authorized access tokens.

Access views in one location

You can access the relevant views for your case type in one place. By using the Views tab in Case Designer, you can review and edit views that are used in your case life cycle. You can also configure standard views to quickly customize the fields that are displayed when a user creates, edits, or reviews a case.

For more information, see Views in a case type.

Access views in one location

You can access the relevant views for your case type in one place. By using the Viewstab in Case Designer, you can review and edit views that are used in your case life cycle. You can also configure standard views to quickly customize the fields that are displayed when a user creates, edits, or reviews a case.

For more information, see Views in a case type.

Control group configuration for predictions

You can now configure a control group for your predictions in Prediction Studio. Based on the control group, Prediction Studio calculates a lift score for each prediction that you can later use to monitor the success rate of your predictions.

For more information, see Customizing predictions.

Date control for past and future years

The Date control can be configured to show only past dates, only future dates, or any date range that includes the current year. The Display range can be set to include a configurable range of previous years or next years. The number of years is relative to the user’s date.

Improved access to Cosmos UI settings

The Settings tab in the App Studio case designer now includes tools for configuring Cosmos UI. With this enhancement, you can adjust design system settings without the need to specialize individual When rules in Dev Studio, which simplifies UI creation and saves development time.

For more information, see Managing Cosmos UI settings in case designer.

Ability to restrict access to the Import wizard

You can now restrict access to the Import wizard so that users implement an automated pipeline to deploy changes between environments such as staging and production. Deployment Manager is one method by which to create pipelines. By using pipelines to propagate changes, users can apply a standardized and automated deployment process for migrating their applications.

For more information, see:

• Ensuring that users migrate applications with a pipeline by restricting the Import wizard
• Understanding model-driven DevOps with Deployment Manager

Custom DX API attributes for auto-generated controls

Auto-generated controls now include the option to add custom attributes for use with the Pega Digital Experience (DX) API. The attributes are part of the DX API response to the front end and you can use them to modify the run-time behavior of the UI elements in your application. For example, you can add an attribute to a field that displays a tooltip text for that field at run time. This enhancement introduces significant flexibility to application development and gives you greater control over UI components.

For more information, see Adding custom attributes for version 1 DX API to auto-generated controls.