Published Release Notes

Associate specifications on implementation rule forms

You can now view, add, and delete the specifications that are associated with a rule on the new Specifications tab of most rule forms. The Specifications tab is available for almost all implementation rules, except for administrative and deprecated rule types. By associating specifications with the rules that implement them, you improve the end-to-end traceability of your specifications.

For more information, see Associating specifications on implementation rule forms.

Extension attributes are not supported in PMML models

Models in the Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) format version 4.3 that contain extension attributes with the x- prefix are not valid. These extension attributes are deprecated; you must use extension elements instead. In addition, if the output type of any output field in the model is set to FLOAT, change it to DOUBLE.

For more information, see PMML 4.3 - General Structure in the Data Mining Group documentation.

Relationships between elements of Microjourneys in application inventory

A new Inventory page in App Studio helps you manage a delivery of your projects by giving you an overview of the elements of your application and how they interact with your Microjourneys™. The new Inventory page lists draft relationships between the case types, personas, and data objects that you want to implement through development. By checking releases that correspond to the items that you need to develop, you can prioritize your work accordingly. 

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

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.

Improved and simplified field-level auditing

To track the progress of your work and maintain the compliance of your cases, both App Studio and Dev Studio now support field-level auditing for case fields. Your application tracks and displays information about user updates to scalar fields, field groups, and field group lists, at any level of your case data model. For example, you can check previous and current field values, the last user to change the values, and the time of their modification. 

For more information, see Track changes in cases with improved field-level auditing (8.4), Enabling field-level auditing in Dev Studio, Enabling field-level auditing in App Studio.   

Improving basic access control

Pega Platform™ has implemented a new basic access control (BAC) to protect your application from unauthorized server calls from otherwise authenticated users.

For more information, see Access Control Checks.

Upgrade impact

After you upgrade to Pega 8.5, all the functionality in the model configurations that use auto-generated controls and actions continues to work as before. However, you must secure any customized JavaScript in your application layer that makes AJAX (server) calls  by using registration or encryption mechanisms.

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

After upgrade, to migrate custom JavaScript functionality, see Access Control Checks.

Decision tables authoring in App Studio

App Studio now supports the option to create decision tables that return values for a calculated field. For example, you can automatically calculate a life insurance rate for a customer by using a decision table that evaluates multiple factors, such as age, medical history, and current occupation. At run time, your application evaluates the values that the customer provides against the values in the decision table, and then responds with the most suitable result. By building decision tables in App Studio, you increase the flexibility of your low-code application and save time and resources, because a single decision table can provide results in multiple scenarios. You can also save and then reuse decision tables to speed up your application development even more.

For more information, see:

• Calculate values automatically in App Studio with decision tables (8.6)
• Calculating values with decision tables
• Authoring decision tables in App Studio

Enhanced product rule form for easy application packaging

The enhanced product rule form allows you to add applications in Delta mode, which includes only the patch version of the rulesets that comprise the application rule. You can also use Global exclusions to exclude one or more rules that are not associated with a ruleset version.

These enhancements allow easy packaging of non-versioned rules that are often deployed separately and reduce the need to manually add them later.

For more information, see Product rules - Completing the Contents tab.

Pulse enhancements

The enhanced layout of the Pulse interface provides a better user experience for posting messages, adding attachments, bookmarking content, and so on. You can now post messages in your activity feed, format messages, add inline images and links to messages, reference cases, and view the list of users who like messages. The Pulse email templates have also been improved to display email content in a coherent and structured format.

For more information, see:

• Pega Express 7.4 – Communicating with Pulse
• Pega Platform 7.4 – Pulse enhancements for social collaboration

Insights from 8.5 require additional configuration after upgrade

Upgrade impact

After you upgrade Pega Platform™ version 8.5 to 8.6, the Explore Data landing page might not include insights that come from the earlier version of the product.

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

Run the pxUpgrade85Insights activity to make all insights from version 8.5 accessible for you in 8.6. By running this activity, you upgrade insights with new metadata that is required in version 8.6. For example, the pxUpgrade85Insights activity provides you with the option to set the visibility of insights to private, public or shared.

For more information about insights, see Visualizing data with insights.

Use JDBC 4 compliant drivers for better performance

For better performance, ensure that you are using JDBC 4-compliant drivers.  For more information on supported and non-supported JDBC drivers, please reference the Platform Support Guide.