Published Release Notes

Ability to import and export Intelligent Virtual Assistant or Email Bot training data

You can now copy Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) or Pega Email Bot™ training data between Pega Platform™ application environments by performing an export and import action. Importing and exporting training data between Pega Platform application environments results in greater accuracy of entity detection. Entities are detected by the system in a chat conversation, including attachments, to help respond to the user correctly, and consist of proper nouns that fall into a commonly understood category such as a person, organization, or a ZIP code. The ability to copy training data also makes it easier to maintain IVA or Email Bot, and build its artificial intelligence.

For more information, see Copying training data to another environment and Copy training data and model to another IVA or Email Bot environment.

Support for enterprise and express applications

When you run the New Application wizard, you can create two types of applications:

• Enterprise – A full-scale application that has access to all the capabilities in the Pega 7 Platform.
  
  By default, enterprise applications are developed in Designer Studio, but users have access to express mode.
• Express – A small-scale application that has access to a subset of the capabilities in the Pega 7 Platform.
  
  Express applications are developed in express mode, and are ideal for new users or for quickly testing functionality.

For more information, see Express applications.

Create pluggable web storage components for case and Pulse attachments

You can now implement and post your own pluggable web storage components for use with case and Pulse attachments. These web components can be plugged in to Pega^® Platform without the need to make changes to Pega Platform itself. The ability to create a pluggable web storage component is useful when you want to use a web storage provider that does not have an existing pluggable web storage component.

For more information, see Guidelines for creating pluggable components for storing and sourcing case and Pulse attachments.

Support for PMML version 4.3 in predictive models

You can now leverage predictive models in the Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) version 4.3 by importing them into predictive models on Pega^® Platform. Pega Platform utilizes a large part of the PMML standard with the exception of some PMML 4.3 features that are not supported in the Predictive Model rule.

For more information, see Support for PMML version 4.3 in predictive models and Creating a predictive model.

Consistent search experience in App Studio

Pega Platform™ now supports a unified search mechanism in App Studio. Instead of manually locating a single item, such as a case type, a channel, or a data object, you can simply use the Search option in the navigation pane. You can also use Search in case types and personas landing pages, to conveniently access the information that you need, for example channels and case types associated with a persona.  

For more information, see Plan your Microjourneys more conveniently in an improved Case Designer (8.5), Creating a Microjourney for customer success.

Excessive service invocation count

Apply a hotfix to eliminate excessive service invocations. After upgrades, the service invocation count for Lucene search results might be up to four times greater than before the upgrade. The Pega 7 Platform moved from Lucene to Elasticsearch in Pega 7.1.7.

If any of the following situations apply to your installation, you must apply a hotfix:

• You installed any version prior to Pega 7.1.7 and you do not plan to upgrade at this time.
• You upgraded from any version prior to PRPC 6.3 to any version prior to Pega 7.1.7.
• You upgraded from 7.1.6 or earlier to Pega 7.1.7 or Pega 7.1.8 and you did not change your indexing to Elasticsearch.

The workaround depends on your version:

• For PRPC 6.3 SP1, apply HFix-27840 and HFix-28856.
• For other versions of the Pega 7 Platform, use My Support Portal to request the hotfixes for your system.

Beginning with Pega 7.1.9, the issue has been resolved.

Questionnaire shape replaces Survey shape in legacy flows

In flows that reference deprecated surveys, the Questionnaire shape has replaced the Survey shape. Although legacy surveys continue to function in this release, update your flows to use the Survey shape because it provides the latest survey capabilities, and deprecated features are not supported.

For more information about the new survey authoring experience, see Improved survey authoring.

Fast-track change requests for high-priority business needs

Perform urgent rule updates through fast-track change requests. The new type of change requests supports addressing high-priority business needs and deploying them immediately, without the need to disrupt an ongoing revision.

For more information, see Release urgent business rule updates through fast track change requests (8.3) and Creating application overlays.

New Mobile Apps form for defining and building mobile apps

You now create and build mobile apps from the Mobile Apps form instead of from the Mobile tab of the Application rule form. The new console is a control center for mobile apps where you can gather applications, services, components, and settings in one place to fully customize your apps in the Pega 7 Platform. You can create and build one instance of a custom mobile app and define multiple native mobile apps that can use the Pega Mobile SDK. To push notifications to an Android or to an iOS device, you must define an SDK mobile app in the Pega 7 Platform with a certificate set that has push notifications enabled.

For more information, see Configuring a custom mobile app and Configuring push notifications for an SDK app.

Rule revalidation after updating properties without restarting nodes

When you update certain property attributes, such as a property's maximum length, rule types that reference the property might not reflect the change. You do not always have to restart nodes to revalidate the referencing rules when they cannot be resaved, for example, when they are in a locked ruleset. For Pega Platform™ 8.1 and later, for non-stream rules, such as activities, data transforms, and so on, use the reassemble API in Admin Studio or truncate the assembled classes table.

For stream rules, such as sections, harnesses, paragraphs, and so on, reassemble the rules and restart the nodes. For more information, see More about properties.

For previous versions of Pega Platform, use the System Management Application (SMA) to revalidate stream and non-stream rules.