Published Release Notes

Use standard Developer portal

Customized versions of the Developer portal rely on legacy components and are not supported.

To avoid backwards compatibility issues, update your access group to point to the standard Developer portal prior to upgrade.

Top-level (named) pages may no longer be classless

Newly created top-level (named) pages may no longer be classless or have a blank pxObjClass property. This change can affect applications upgrading from versions prior to Pega 7 to the latest version, especially when:

• Application logic relies on a blank value in the pxObjClass property.
• An activity assumes a new top-level page is classless and explicitly sets pxObjClass in a Property-Set step.
• A data transform assumes a new top-level page is classless and explicitly sets pxObjClass using a Set action.

To avoid application failures, remove or update any logic that expects a blank pxObjClass. Where possible, use the new engine API that finds a page by both name and class:

findPageWithException(PageName, ClassName);

Activities and data transforms continue to create a top-level page when one does not exist. The class name is now derived from the Pages and Classes tab.

Upgrade changes system name

As of Pega 7.1.7, the following renaming behavior no longer occurs.

The upgrade process renames your system to “PRPC” and modifies any custom requestor rules in your application to use this name. After the upgrade completes, you must apply these changes to revert your system:

1. Identify all custom requestor rules (browser, batch, app, portal) with access groups that point to prior versions of PRPC.
2. Open the relevant access groups (for example, PRPC:Unauthenticated and PRPC:Agents) and update the name and version fields to point to the current PegaRULES application.
3. Reset your system name to its original value. You can set the Dynamic System Setting prconfig/identification/systemName/default or use the Designer Studio > System > Settings > System Name landing page.
4. Restart the system.

Required DB2 settings

For customers using the DB2 Version 4 drivers (“db2jcc4.jar”), it is necessary to set the custom connection property useJDBC4ColumnNameAndLabelSemantics to “false”.   

For customers using DB2 with WebSphere, the useJDBC4ColumnNameAndLabelSemantics property in the DB2 data source needs to be changed from a Boolean to an Integer and set to "2". 

Internet Explorer 11 support

7.1.5 now provides support for Internet Explorer 11 (IE11). For those customers interested in information about IE11 support in previous releases, refer to the Platform Support Guide.

Customize your report headers

You can customize the way that the header for all of an application's reports will be displayed by overriding the section pyReportEditorHeader. Save a copy of this section into the application's ruleset, then edit it to display the information, images, and layout that you desire. Once changes are saved, each of your application's reports will automatically use the updated header.

Guardrails compliance score

The Application Guardrails landing page has been enhanced to help you build more guardrail-compliant applications. Increase transparency and accountability on your projects by responding to the following compliance score metrics:

• A weighted compliance score (0-100) based on warnings, severity, and justification
• A percentage of compliant rules in your application
• Total number of rules in your application
• Total number of rules in your application with warnings (justified and unjustified)

Additional metrics include alert and interaction count trends over the last four weeks.

For more information, see Guardrails compliance score.

Automatically remove all inline styles

To ensure reusability and ease of maintenance, you can remove inline styles from all sections in all unlocked ruleset versions in your application from the HTML Application Readiness landing page. In the Sections Using Inline Styles section, click the Remove inline styles from all sections button.

Automatically upgrade smart layouts to dynamic layouts

An automated command that upgrades from a smart layout to a dynamic layout is available in Designer Studio when creating new section layouts. Note that some smart layout configurations may not have a one-to-one correspondence with dynamic layouts, so these require some modification.

Advanced inline report filters

You can create a custom section and use it to display report filter controls at the top of the report, replacing the default display. The custom section can include basic controls (such as a drop-down menu or text entry field), and the controls can only provide values for the filter functions established in the Edit filters section of the Query tab for the Report Definition.