Published Release Notes

Improved contracts for implementations

For more complete contracts, automations now support embedded pages, default values, and picklists. These enhancements provide a more robust model for inputs and outputs that is easier to update and maintain.

For more information, see Viewing automations.

Increased visibility of strategy design changes with simulation batch tests

Improve your understanding of the impact that individual changes to strategy design have on the decision funnel by running batch simulation tests directly from the strategy canvas. With batch simulation tests, you can check that your strategy changes produce the expected results, and immediately see the results in context.

For more information, see Increase the real-time visibility of strategy design changes with simulation batch tests (8.4).

Upgrade impact

After an upgrade to 8.4 and later, simulation outputs produced from earlier versions cannot be used to view canvas counts.

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

Following a software upgrade to 8.4 or later, clients must re-run existing simulations in Decision Funnel mode to view the counts in the canvas.

Enhanced OpenAPI Specification generation

To better understand the purpose of your REST API, you can now generate a more complete OpenAPI Specification (OAS) from REST service rules in Pega Platform™. The system uses relevant records to build an accurate schema definition for page and page list outputs, and generate stronger schema type definitions for all inputs, outputs, and fields, such as array or boolean. You can also generate OAS by mapping values to JSON or Clipboard in the request, or mapping values from JSON or Clipboard in the response. 

For more information, see Service REST rules.

Hierarchical table overhaul

The hierarchical table layout now uses a redesigned architecture that enhances stability and presentation. This update also improves accessibility by implementing ARIA guidelines and introducing keyboard navigation in tables.

For more information, see Creating a hierarchical table layout.

Default support for skip links

All Pega Platform™ access groups now support skip links by default. Before, you had to create special access groups for users who require skip links for screen readers. Now, the feature is automatically enabled for every group, which improves the user experience and simplifies development.

New text analytics APIs for Intelligent Virtual Assistant

Pega Platform™ now provides text analytics APIs that separate Intelligent Virtual Assistant and text analyzers into independent modules. This solution prevents integration issues when you change your text analyzer configuration.

For more information, see Text analytics APIs.

Optimized performance of embedded decision strategies

The performance of embedded strategies has now been optimized so that these strategies take less time and fewer CPU and memory resources to complete. This enhancement increases the performance of cloud and on-premises deployments.

For more information, see About Strategy rules.

Case notification enhancements

Pega Platform™ now supports creating case notifications directly in Case Designer in App Studio and Dev Studio, so that you do not need to create a notification rule first and then provide the rule name in a case. You can speed up and simplify case creation by specifying recipients for each notification, without the need to create a data page for the recipients. Push notifications and email subjects can now also include properties, for example, a case ID or a goal and deadline.

For more information, see Sending event notifications from cases in Dev Studio, Sending event notifications from cases in App Studio.

Improved and simplified field-level auditing

To track the progress of your work and maintain the compliance of your cases, both App Studio and Dev Studio now support field-level auditing for case fields. Your application tracks and displays information about user updates to scalar fields, field groups, and field group lists, at any level of your case data model. For example, you can check previous and current field values, the last user to change the values, and the time of their modification. 

For more information, see Track changes in cases with improved field-level auditing (8.4), Enabling field-level auditing in Dev Studio, Enabling field-level auditing in App Studio.   

Creation of case documents in a case life cycle

To save time and further automate your business processes, Pega Platform™ now supports generating case documents as part of the case life cycle. You can ensure that the documents include all necessary information by first creating a document template in a word processor. When you create a template, you add dynamic tags that your application populates with relevant data unique to each case, for example, the case ID and current date. To make your documentation more meaningful, you can also include attachments.

For more information, see Generate case documents in a case life cycle (8.4), Generating case documents in Dev Studio, Generating case documents in App Studio.