Published Release Notes

Support for decision tables in offline-enabled applications

You can now use decision tables to reduce the implementation time of your offline-enabled applications. By using decision tables you can further automate case processing and derive the logic from the data model. Decision tables can be referenced in a flow rule as a type of decision shape or called from the declare expression rule. No additional configuration is required to use decision tables in offline-enabled applications.

For more information, see Decision table support in offline mode.

Relevant records management shows more information

Relevant records for a class now include more information that you can use to manage the records for your application development. As a result of these enhancements, you can:

• View inherited and inactive relevant records for the specified class.
• Mark specific records as active or inactive for the specified class.
• Mark specific records as relevant on the rule form.

You can use these new details to filter the list of relevant records for a class on the Relevant Records tab of the selected class. For more information, see Managing relevant records and Marking records as relevant records.

Improved rich user interface controls in IVA for Web Chatbot

In Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) for Web Chatbot, you can use additional rich user interface controls, such as the time and date picker or a simple form, to help users accomplish tasks more quickly and to limit errors. IVA for Web Chat can now also display a welcome message in the chat window, for example, to inform the user about the person with whom they are chatting.

For more information, see Streamline conversations in IVA for Web Chatbot with rich user interface controls.

Upgrade impact

The new Ul controls for Web Chatbot are enabled by default upon upgrade. If you do not want the controls enabled, you must disable them.

Also, if you have changed the styles for the welcome message, you may need to make changes to the welcome message to incorporate the new areas in the bot conversation area (such as quick replies).

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

Existing channels will behave as they did previously, so you should determine whether you want to use the new UI controls. If you want to use the new Ul controls, configure the new design-time options.

If you have changed the default styles for the welcome message, review the new settings to ensure that the welcome message is configured properly. 

Nested conditions visible in the condition builder

Condition builder now supports the option to view nested conditions in a read-only mode, so that you can conveniently analyze and understand logic in your application. For example, if you create a condition that uses another When condition rule as a value to compare at run time, you can preview the configuration of that When condition. You can use this feature with When conditions nested at multiple levels, so that you can analyze even complex logic in your application.

For more information, see Defining conditions in the condition builder.

Signature Capture control

The Signature Capture control allows you to capture a user's signature when using either a desktop application or a mobile app accessed from the Pega 7 mobile application. Once a user has input a signature, it is added to the work item as an image attachment.

Access the Signature Capture control from the Advanced dropdown in Designer Studio.

See How to use the Signature Capture control.

Support for subflows and decision flow results in offline mobile apps

Subflows in offline-enabled mobile apps are now supported to perform additional tasks outside of the main flow. The subflow can run only on the current work item, with the subflow displaying in the main flow, in a nested subflow, or located next to an assignment. No likelihood routing is supported for subflows. It is also possible to set a flow result by using the pega.process.flow.setFlowEndStatus() JavaScript method to override the status set by a property in the subflow's end shape. The process engine also takes into account the likelihood setting if the flow result is conflicting or absent, provided the flow result is not in a subflow.

For more information, see Flow processing in offline mode.

Child case queries can be slow after upgrade

After upgrading, performance might be slow when you run queries on child cases for work tables that existed prior to the upgrade. This issue is often indicated by PEGA0005 (query time exceeded limit) alerts that can be correlated to these queries in the logs. To resolve the issue, add a database index to each of your work tables by using a multicolumn index on the pxCoverInsKey, pxObjClass, and pyStatusWork columns.

For more information, see Performance improvements for child case queries.

Enhancement for specifying filter conditions in reports

You now have the option to select comparison values from a list of available values when you add or edit the filter conditions for a report in Pega Express. This option is available for all columns, except for numeric or text columns when the comparator setting is Greater than, Greater than or equal, Less than, or Less than or equal.

For more information, see Adding filter conditions.

Class structure expanded for surveys and questions

You can now create surveys and questions at any class level. Because there is no longer a restriction on which class of flows can use the Survey and Question smart shapes, you can create more contextual surveys that reference embedded properties, or instances of classes, that you define outside the Work- class structure.

For more information about using the Survey or Question smart shapes in a flow, see Integration methods for surveys.

Support for extracting data from file attachments during email triage

With the Pega^® Intelligent Virtual Assistant for Email, when you triage email interaction cases, the system can now use defined text analyzers to detect entities in files that are attached to the received email. The following file types are supported: DOC, DOCX, ODT, PDF, RTF, and TXT. This feature improves the machine learning and case processing capability for the Email user channel.

For more information, see Enabling the analysis of attached files during email triage.