Published Release Notes

Enhanced Wait shape

Pega Platform™ now supports the enhanced Wait shape that configures the case to wait for the resolution of all child cases instead of only the child cases of a specific type. When you set up the Wait shape to stop a case until it reaches a certain status, you can decide whether the shape considers statuses from a whole case life cycle, or only the statuses after the wait begins. The enhanced Wait shape provides you with greater control over resolution of your cases. 

For more information, see Pausing and resuming processes in cases in Dev Studio, Pausing and resuming processes in cases in App Studio.

Wait and Create Case shapes support parameter passing

You can now pass property or parameter values to Wait and Create Case process modeler shapes, rather than use a hard-coded case type value to create a case.

Create case and Wait smart shapes are available for stage steps

You can design case types more efficiently by using smart shapes, which are steps with preconfigured functionality. Use the Create case step to create a case from an existing case type, or to create a new case type, and transfer information from the original case to the new one. Use the Wait step to pause case processing until another case reaches a specified status.

For more information, see Adding a preconfigured step to a process.

Create case and Wait smart shapes available in Case Designer

Two smart shapes have been added in Case Designer. Use the Create case smart shape in a case step to create another case, a child case, or multiple child cases. Use the Wait smart shape to pause the process of a case under specified conditions.

For more information, see Adding a preconfigured step to a process.

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.

The Run Data Flow shape replaces the Run Interaction shape

The Run Interaction shape in flows has been replaced by the Run Data Flow shape to introduce a consistent way of making decisions and capturing responses. You can now run a single-case data flow by referencing the data flow in the Run Data Flow shape. The data flow must have an abstract input and abstract or dataset output.

For more information, see Running a decision strategy from a flow, About Data Flow rules and Interactions in flows are no longer supported by the Run Interaction shape.

Data Flow transformation shapes cannot be used in combination with the Compose or Merge shapes

When you reference another data flow from a data flow that contains the Compose or Merge shape, the referenced data flow cannot contain transformation shapes (EventStrategy, Decision strategy, Convert).

Data flow validation does not currently prevent you from designing a data flow that goes against this design pattern. Make sure that your data flows follow this design pattern by checking the referenced and referencing data flows.

New shape on the strategy canvas

The Strategy rule has been enhanced with the Embedded strategy shape, which simplifies the configuration of decisioning strategies that simultaneously apply to multiple types of audiences, for example, Devices, Households, and Subscribers. The Embedded strategy shape eliminates the need to switch between various classes to create a substrategy for each audience type that you want to target. Now, you can perform all configuration tasks on a single strategy canvas.

For more information, see Strategy components – Embedded strategy and Multilevel decisioning strategies.

Enhancements to the Send Email smart shape

The following enhancements have been made to the Send Email smart shape:

• You can now configure the Send Email smart shape in Pega Express.
• You can use templates, such as a rejection template, in your email.
• You can use property values, which allow you to insert the value of a field in your case type, such as First Name, within the email.
• You can insert a link to the case ID in your email.
• You can more quickly configure your recipient list by using two options, instead of one, to send messages to either a list of email addresses or to fields.
• You can choose to send either all case attachments in an email, or you can send attachments of a specified attachment category or an attachment type field. You can specify multiple attachment categories and attachment type fields.

For more information, see the following help topics:

• Sending email from a case (Pega 7.3)
• Sending email from a case (Pega 7.3 express)

High number of busy waits when using Oracle SecureFiles

You might experience a high number of buffer busy waits when using Oracle SecureFiles for BLOB storage. An Oracle buffer busy wait occurs when a session cannot access a database block in the buffer cache, because another session is either reading the block into the buffer or changing the buffer. As a best practice, use Oracle 11.2.0.4 or later, because earlier versions have more problems with SecureFiles. In addition, to minimize the number of busy waits, set the hidden Oracle parameter _securefiles_concurrency_estimate to 50, and partition the table by using a composite range hash partition that is based on the pxCreateDateTime and pzInskey columns.

For more information, see Troubleshooting: High number of busy waits when using Oracle SecureFiles.