Published Release Notes

Discuss documents more effectively by using collaboration feedback

Create meaningful documentation for a case by collaborating with other users of your portal, such as the Case Manager or Worker portal. The collaboration feedback features in Pega Platform™ provide options for you to add Pulse comments to a document by responding to a notification email, share documents as URLs, and download documents as PDF files for offline viewing and editing. Collaboration feedback is a convenient and fast way to add valuable content for your case.

For more information, see Adding content to a space (for App Studio), Adding content to a space (for Dev Studio).

Access work items directly after login

You can now directly access work items that you receive as email notifications or URLs. The Pega 7 Platform opens the work item after successful user authentication instead of redirecting you to the portal. For a valid user, the type of authentication or number of failed login attempts does not affect this direct access.

For systems that use basic or secure basic authentication, administrators can disable the redirect URL by setting the authentication/basicschemes/redirectToLoginScreen switch to false.

Send and receive queued messages securely with IBM MQ servers

You can now configure applications developed on the Pega 7 Platform for secure message queuing with IBM MQ servers by using the MQ server rule form. You secure the connection by specifying the cipher suites with encryption standards that meet your requirements and the SSL/TLS X.509 certificates that you use for authentication.

For more information, see Configure secure message queuing with IBM MQ servers.

Support for round icons in Android 7.1 mobile apps

To improve the look and feel of Android mobile apps, round icons are now supported in apps that are created for Android 7.1. You can add the icons to the assets.zip file during the customization stage when you build the app in the Pega^® Platform.

For more information, see Branding mobile apps.

Custom mobile app assets file validation at upload

When you build a custom mobile app, and upload branding assets or custom modules within a compressed file, Pega^® Platform validates the file that you upload and displays confirmation and warning messages. For more information, see Uploading branding assets and custom modules.

New branch quality dashboard

Pega Platform™ 8.4 introduces a new branch quality dashboard that shows the following metrics:

• The branch’s guardrail compliance score and the number of guardrail violations
• The percentage and number of unit tests that passed for the branch
• The percentage and number of rules that the tests cover
• Potential merge conflicts that can be addressed directly from the branch quality dashboard

For more information about the new branch quality dashboard, see Viewing branch quality and branch contents.

Updated architecture of the data flow service

Benefit from improvements to data flow architecture that increase the stability of data flow runs and minimize the need for manual restarting of data flow jobs. Real-time data flows now use improved node rebalancing for better handling of failed or restarted nodes. If the topology changes, batch data flows no longer attempt to pause and resume the run. As such, there are fewer interactions with the database and between the nodes, resulting in the increased resilience of the Data Flow service.

If you are upgrading from a previous version of Pega Platform™, see Changes to the architecture of the Data Flow service for an overview of the changes to the Data Flow service compared to previous versions.

Enhancements to token lifetime limits

Pega Platform™ uses OAuth 2.0 authorization codes, access tokens, and refresh tokens to provide flexible token-based security for applications. Expiration settings for these codes and tokens now adhere to certain strict value range based on industry leading practices. For example, the lifetime specified for the authorization code must be in the range 1-600 seconds.

These can be configured in the OAuth2 Client registration rule form.

For more information, see OAuth 2.0 Management Services.

Support for mobile mashup demo app in the Mashup channel configuration

When you configure the Mashup channel interface in Pega^® Platform, you can now also test your cases in a mashup demo app. By testing, you can improve customer self-service because you can immediately visualize how your cases are extended into a native mobile app. During configuration, you must download the Pega Mashup Preview mobile app from the Apple App Store or Google Play and scan the QR code by using the app.

For more information, see Configuring the Mashup channel.

Updated default system pulse processing settings

The default settings for system pulse processing have been updated in this release.

Upgrades to Pega 7.1.9 from a previous version of the Pega 7 Platform use database pulse by default. Database pulse synchronizes rule changes at a periodic interval across all nodes in a system.

New installations of Pega 7.1.9 use cluster-based pulse by default. Cluster-based pulse immediately updates rule changes across all nodes in a system after the changes are saved.

You can change the database pulse setting to the cluster-based pulse setting by updating the value attribute for initialization/pulse/transport to "cluster" in the prconfig.xml file or in the Dynamic System Settings. Changing from database pulse to cluster-based pulse requires a full cluster restart after the changes are made.

For more information, see Pega-RULES agents.