Published Release Notes

Addition of Servlet Management

Pega Platform™ now has Servlet Management in Pega Cloud® Services, which provides a simple and secure way to make changes to Pega Platform servlet definitions.

Servlet Management provides Pega Cloud Service clients with solutions to manage servlet configurations with self-service options. This reduces the cycle time for delivering configuration changes in Pega Cloud Service installations while also improving upgrade reliability. 

For more information, see Servlet management.

Upgrade impact

Clients with no application servlet customizations will not experience an impact. If you upgrade from Pega Platform version 8.5 or earlier and, prior to the upgrade, the Pega Cloud team provided your application servlet customizations, then following the upgrade, you must manually add, remove, or modify your servlet customizations in your upgraded application using this servlet management landing page in Pega Platform.

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

To manually move your pre-upgrade servlet customizations as appropriate or add new ones to your upgraded application using the new servlet management landing page, follow the steps in Adding a servlet.

Support for configuring and saving external data in App Studio

You can now configure a savable data plan to easily replace or update related data directly from App Studio, and persist those changes during the case lifecycle. This enhancement allows you to work directly in App Studio, without being limited to read-only access of data from case types.

Automation performance enhancements

To improve the performance of automation-based REST services and DX APIs, you can now configure JSON inputs and outputs in automation rules. The automation passes the JSON object directly to an automation-based REST service or DX API, eliminating the need to transform data on a page to JSON first. You can also take advantage of this enhancement if you are calling an automation from an activity. Additionally, you can simulate a JSON response in the automation rule and update the JSON sample if needed.

For more information, see <link TBD> and <link TBD>.

Cosmos React-UI supports custom authentication

Pega Platform™ now supports custom authentication in applications that use Cosmos React-UI. Depending on the needs of your users and the functionality of your application, you might need to write custom authentication schemes to meet specific requirements. 

Clients that use custom authentication in their applications can now take advantage of the Cosmos React-UI.

For more information, see Securing Cosmos React-UI applications.

Upgraded selected third-party JAR files to support Pega Platform functionalities

Pega Platform™ 8.6 now provides upgraded versions of the JAR files that support various functionalities within the Platform, such as generating documents or PPTX files.

Upgrade impact

If you have custom implementations and use any classes from the upgraded JAR files directly in your code or through JAR APIs, after your upgrade to Pega Platform 8.6, your application might experience unexpected run-time behavior if the upgraded JAR version lacks any elements from the previous version. For example, custom implementations can typically include activities, functions, or non-autogenerated sections. Unexpected run-time behavior might also occur when you use a third-party library that has dependencies on the upgraded JAR files. If you use only default Pega Platform functionalities without any customizations, the JAR files continue to work correctly without any additional actions.

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

If you have any JAR customizations, ensure that you test the upgraded JAR files for compatibility and upgrade impact. The following table lists the upgraded JAR files that might impact your application:

For more information, refer to the documentation of  your JAR provider.

Support for creating automations

You can now create automations in Pega Platform. By creating an automation, you clearly define a contract to perform a specific task. For example, you can create an automation that retrieves a list of data objects that are available in the application.  

For more information, see Creating an automation.

Support for filtering requests and responses in activity-based REST services

You can now use a JSON data transform to filter inputs and outputs in activity-based REST services. With this enhancement, you maintain high performance by filtering unnecessary properties from the REST service request and response.

For more information, see Creating a request for POST, PUT, and PATCH methods by using an activity implementation and Creating a response for Service REST methods by using an activity implementation.

Tracer file size limit to prevent disk usage issues

The maximum size of files with event details that Tracer generates is now 10 GB to avoid excessive disk usage and performance issues. Tracer applies the size limit at the node-level, so every node that runs in your system can use up to 10 GB of disk space to create an output file with event details. As a result, you can monitor the health of your system and deliver issue-free applications without experiencing disk space problems.

For more information, see:

• Avoid performance issues when monitoring applications with size limit for Tracer files (8.6)
• Tracer disk usage FAQ

Support for configuring data sources by using OpenAPI Specification

The Integration Designer in App Studio now supports OpenAPI Specification. You can provide an OpenAPI Specification endpoint or upload a YAML file to automatically generate data sources according to the specification. With this enhancement, you avoid having to manually create a representative sample JSON request and response, saving you time and increasing productivity.

For more information, see Integrating with a REST API by using OpenAPI Specification.

Integration and security tab now divided into two tabs

The Integration and Security tab is now two separate tabs on the Application Definition form: Integration and Security. While the content of these two tabs are related, they function more effectively as separate tabs. The Security tab now includes the Authentication section, so you can add existing authentication services to your Application Definition to more effectively manage the security of your application. 

For more information, see Security tab of the Application Definition.