Published Release Notes

Improved view authoring

Case authoring in Cosmos React UI now features updated view authoring tools. The redesigned view tab and overlay provide a more intuitive interface for creating views, applying design templates, and adding fields and controls. This enhanced work environment improves the user experience and reduces context switching, which contributes to a lower development effort.

For more information, see Editing views in a case type.

Default views for cases and data objects

Pega Platform™ now generates default views for new case types and data objects. Because of this feature, your application now automatically creates a case summary and case details view for every new case type, and a list view for each data object. The default views automate a common recurring task, and improve productivity by reducing development effort.

Enhancements for fields in views and data models

Pega Platform™ now provides a unified experience of adding fields to views, the case type data model, and the application data model, by using an intuitive dialog box. For greater clarity, a new field type, data relationship, replaces data references, field groups, and field group lists. As a result, you can conveniently reuse data objects in your application. 

When you upgrade to Pega 8.5, your system automatically converts your field groups, field group lists, and data references to data relationships. The case type data model now displays all the fields by default, including any referenced fields, and provides an application layer that contains each field. Use this functionality to view how the data is organized across your system.

For more information, see Define fields in data objects intuitively (8.5), Adding data relationships to fields and data models.

Web portal reuse removed from the mobile channel

The reuse of web portals for creating mobile apps with a single web view is no longer supported. You can conveniently update your existing channels that reuse web portals to take advantage of the multiple-views experience and native mobile capabilities, such as native mobile list views or floating action buttons.

Upgrade impact

The Reuse web portal option is removed from Pega Platform 8.5 and later.

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

App developers need to use the migration tool available on the mobile channel to move their apps to the recommended new navigation designer. When users open existing mobile channel with the Reuse web portal option configured, they are prompted to run through the wizard to upgrade the mobile channel to the latest Pega Mobile Client based configuration. When this is done, app developers should rebuild the app.

Post files and links with pxPostMessage API

The pxPostMessageAPI now supports text messages, file attachments, and hyperlinks. You can programmatically update Pulse streams using this API from activities or SLA rules.

DCO

This release focused on improving the user experience of creating new rules and tightening up the use of specifications in the Case Designer.  The layout of the New and Save As forms were made more intuitive and intelligent.  Specification actions were made to be more consistent across various aspects of the Case Designer.

• After removing specification references, users can create and save a new specification.
• Developers may now choose either an existing specification or create a new one for subflows and Split-For-Each shapes.
• If a specification is not associated with flow shapes such as sub flows, Utilities, or Split-For-Each, it is possible to import speciications with the same names, and the flow shapes will default to using those imported specs.
• In the outline view, specification changes will be preserved when switching from tab to tab.
• The View Full Details functionality from either Configure Step or the Outline View will display all details, including the specification requirement links.

Extended currency control

The currency control can now display a different currency than the locale currency. This means a user in one country can view amounts that are designated in a foreign currency, using that currency's international conventions.  For example, a credit card transaction in Germany might need to be posted in US dollars. 

Reports with visualizations of performance and automation levels for the email bot

In the Email Manager portal, you can now use built-in reports to visualize Pega Email Bot™ performance and the automation levels that are related to received emails, triaged cases, and created business cases. You can plug the reports to display the report data in other portals, for example the Case Manager portal. Based on the information displayed in the reports, you can adjust the machine learning models to achieve greater automation in the system.

For more information, see Viewing the reports for the Email channel and Built-in reports for the email bot.

Default Create stage in a case life cycle

Pega Platform™ now adds a default Create stage to a case life cycle every time you create a new case type, both in App Studio and Dev Studio. The default Create stage includes a view that users interact with to provide initial data before case processing begins. Consequently, you can now easily locate the view to make any necessary changes. In the background, the Create stage makes a case type independent from the starting process, which removes relevant advanced configurations and makes application development faster.

For more information, see Capture initial data faster with the default Create stage (8.5), The Create stage.

External data flow rules are deprecated

External data flows are now deprecated and no longer supported. To improve your user experience with Pega Platform™, the user interface elements associated with these rules are hidden from view by default. Identifying unused features allows Pega to focus on developing and supporting the features that you need.

For more information, see Deprecated: External data flows.