Published Release Notes

Pega Express methodology in App Studio for successful Microjourneys

App Studio now supports the Pega Express™ methodology to help you visualize the key factors of your Microjourneys™ - case types, personas, and data objects. With Microjourneys, you can analyze and clearly communicate who the parties that interact with your cases are, what channels of communication they use, and what data they need to resolve a case. Associating personas and data objects with case types also helps you manage your development team's workload by using a list of the draft elements that they need to develop.

For more information, see Plan successful microjourneys in App Studio (8.4), Creating a microjourney for customer success.

Upgrade impact

During a Pega Infinity™ upgrade to 8.4 and later, clients using App Studio are asked to update their applications to support use of the Pega Express™ methodology. Without this application update, the Persona landing page and Data objects and integration landing page are empty. For more information, see Pega 8.4 Deep Dive: Pega Express methodology in App Studio.

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

In order to utilize the Pega Express methodology in App Studio and use the Inventory page, click Start now to complete the update of your application and add the required rules to it. If you choose to cancel, App Studio continues to work as expected without the Pega Express methodology features; you can click Start now at the top of your application overview page at any time to install the required rules in your application.

Support for Data streaming service for Pega Cloud Marketing 7.4 applications

Pega Cloud Marketing 7.4 applications support the Kafka-based Stream service featured in Pega Platform 7.4.

Fetch quality metrics for Pega unit tests by using the REST API

You can use the REST API to fetch quality metrics for the Pega unit tests of your application, such as unit test compliance, unit test execution results, test coverage, and guardrail compliance.

You can use the metrics returned by the service for gating purposes in a release pipeline.

For more information about the Pega API, see Pega API for Pega Platform.

Triage cases archiving in the email bot (Pega Cloud Services)

For Pega Platform™ that is installed in Pega Cloud^® Services, you can configure Pega Email Bot™ to archive resolved triage cases that are older than a specified number of days. Archiving triage cases improves the overall performance of your system by reducing the primary storage consumption and cost because the system places such resolved triage cases in a secondary storage.

For more information, see Archiving resolved emails for an email bot (Pega Cloud Services).

The UpdateAdaptiveModels agent causes an exception after Pega 7.2 to 7.2.1 upgrade

After the Pega 7 Platform is upgraded from version 7.2 to 7.2.1, the log files might show an error that is caused by the UpdateAdaptiveModels agent. This agent is enabled by default and is responsible for updating scoring models in the Pega 7 Platform. If you use adaptive models in your solution, you can avoid this error by configuring the Adaptive Decision Manager service. If you do not use adaptive models, disable the UpdateAdaptiveModels agent.

For more information, see Configuring the Adaptive Decision Manager service and Pega-DecisionEngine agents.

Support for Pega Infinity Mobile Client in offline-enabled applications

To take advantage of Pega Platform™ offline features, you can now build offline-enabled applications using Pega Infinity Mobile Client™. An offline-enabled application is built with Pega Infinity Mobile Client by default, and is fast to create and load. 

For more information, see Build offline-enabled applications using Pega Infinity Mobile Client, Offline-enabled application and Pega Infinity Mobile Client, and Pega Mobility and mobile clients.

Pega Cloud Services upgraded the default database version in existing environments

Pega Cloud Services completed upgrading the default database to PostgreSQL 9.4 for environments running Pega Platform 7.4 or earlier. This enhancement ensures that environments have the latest PostgreSQL 9.4 security fixes.

This change was completed in Q3 2018.

Rules can no longer access Pega internal Java packages

You can no longer create rules that access Java packages that reference internal APIs (syntax com.pega.platform.*.internal*). This change does not affect rules that access Pega public API packages.

If you encounter issues when running existing rules that reference internal Pega APIs, contact Pega Support.

Upgrade impact

After an upgrade to 8.4 and later, clients can no longer save new or modified rules that access Pega internal APIs; existing rules that reference internal APIs can still be run but cannot be modified. 

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

Following a software upgrade to 8.4 or later, clients can refactor existing rules into guardrail compliant rules. To find rules to refactor, run the validation tool from designer studio (Application > Tools > Validation) to identify what rules fail validation; failed rules that include the message "Test compilation failed : Illegal internal class reference : com.pega.internal.XYZ" can updated to reference appropriate APIs.

Pega Cloud Services support for the AWS EU (London) and US East (Ohio) regions

Pega Cloud Services now supports deployment to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) EU (London) and US East (Ohio) regions. Deployment across multiple availability zones within a geographical region protects against zone faults and localized service disruptions, and ensures high availability.

For more information about regions and availability zones, see Pega Cloud Services capabilities.

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These additional regions are available as of QIV 2017.

Declarative Network Viewer tool uses Pega components

The Declarative Network Viewer tool now uses out-of-the-box Pega components. In earlier releases, the tool relied on Adobe Flash Player, which is gradually being phased out of modern browsers. This enhancement maintains the original functionality, while ensuring product and technological continuity.

For more information, see the Declarative Network Viewer article in the Pega Marketplace.