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.

Reporting

This release had a focus on extending key capabilities to improve the functionality and ease of use of reporting features based on early adopter feedback.  A series of cosmetic changes and fixes are also included.

• Multiple boxes may be checked on List view checkboxes
• Dashboard Charts slider has been improved.
• Summary View reports and charts have been enhanced.
• Column properties can be added to a report in the Report Editor.
• List view column widths can be set by Smart Info.
• Listviews will display correctly for updated systems.
• Improvements to the GuardRail Report.

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.

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.

Enhanced swipe support for case actions

UI authoring in the mobile channel now offers more case-wide actions that can be performed by swiping on list items. For example, you can add a swipe action to attach an invoice to your expense work item. This enhancement increases usability and work efficiency as it allows for fast, instinctive mobile interactions.

For more information, see Designing a new mobile list page.

Scenario tests now honor application stack settings

The application stack defined on the Application Quality Settings page of Dev Studio now serves as a foundation for creating, viewing, and running scenario tests. 

Dev Studio will now:

• Display scenario tests based on the application stack settings on the Dev Studio landing page.
• Store scenario tests with the configured stack settings.
• Report metrics in the application quality dashboard with respect to the configured stack settings.  

For more information, see Creating UI-based tests with scenario testing.