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Understanding UI Capabilities in Pega Platform 8.6

Updated on September 30, 2021

While your existing applications remain unaffected upon upgrade, Pega Platform™ 8.6 provides early adopters the choice of our new UI technology stack as well as enhancements to our current UI technology stack. Review this document to understand UI offerings in 8.6 and guidance on what is appropriate for your application at this time.  

1. About Pega’s UI capabilities

Pega Platform 8.6 offers the following architectures:  

  • Theme Cosmos

    Built with the classic section-based UI architecture and offering full case management capabilities since Pega Platform 8.3, Theme Cosmos is mature, reliable, and is the default and recommended architecture for most new applications in 8.6.
  • Cosmos React (early adopter)

    Offered in early adopter mode, Cosmos React is a new and modernized UI technology stack built with ReactJS and a client-side orchestration layer. Currently offering a limited feature set. Review current limitations below to help you decide whether to deploy it to production with 8.6.

Both architectures offer an implementation of Pega’s Cosmos design system.

Hybrid mode allows blending of the two technologies by running select Cosmos React UI assets within existing section-based UI with Theme Cosmos (UI Kit is not supported).

Explore this document to understand which of these architectures are appropriate for your applications. 

2. Cosmos React UI for early adopters

Cosmos React UI is designed to offer the following capabilities:

  • Faster performance
  • Improved accessibility,
  • A modern UI technology stack with technologies including ES6, Redux,  ReactJS, and V2 of the DX-API
  • Simple authoring and upgrades
  • Improved interaction behavior and UI modelling constructs
  • Semantic URLs

However, Cosmos React UI currently prioritizes known usage patterns and high-priority use cases and configurations. As described in the following sections, many capabilities are not yet available in 8.6. 

3. Choosing between Cosmos React UI and Theme Cosmos with Section-based UI

 Recommendation for 8.6
Cosmos React UITheme Cosmos with Section-based UI
New applications
New applications that require capabilities NOT supported in Cosmos React UI for 8.6. See sections 3.1 and 3.2. 
New, simple applications that do not require unsupported features of Cosmos React UI in 8.6 and can be enhanced incrementally as the new Cosmos React UI evolves. See sections 3.1 and 3.2. 
Existing and built-on applications
Applications “built on” other section-based UI applications or Pega Customer Service or Sales Automation stack 
Surfacing Pega UI within other web applications
Web self-service (Mashup) 
Mobile 
Mobile web (browser running on mobile device) 
Mobile app (native) 
Mobile app (native) offline capabilities 
Accessibility and localization
Accessibility
Localization(US English only for Pega Platform 8.6) 
Reporting
Simple reporting and data exploration needs
Complex reporting needs with sub-reports, and joins 
Applications with UI that uses data from reports that leverage complex joins 
Authorization and authentication
Attribute-based access controls (ABAC) 
OAuth 2.0 authentication schemes
Deployment configuration changes for on-premises environments
Deployment of the Constellation static content server✅ (See section 6) 

3.1. General capabilities of Cosmos React UI for Pega Platform 8.6

The following list includes general, high-level capabilities. If a capability is not listed, assume it is not supported for Cosmos React in 8.6.

  • Persona-specific portals

  • Landing pages (lists views, tabbed and standard layout-based)

  • Out of the box widgets for worklist and Pulse

  • Case lifecycle with stages and steps

    • Optional actions and processes

    • Back-to-back assignments and multi-step forms

    • Approval/rejection flow

    • Alternative stages

    • Optional actions and processes

    • Questionnaire support

    • Automation support

    • Attachments

    • Case History

    • Case Followers

    • Sub-case support

  • Open cases from landing pages and other case references

  • Open assignments from worklist, workbaskets, and to-do lists

  • Forms with input fields, and relationships between cases and data objects, and the user (operator)

  • Form validations, stage entry validations

  • Client-side expressions and when rule-based expressions

  • Server-side declaratives

  • Initial set of collaboration capabilities via Pulse

  • Advanced search result functionality

3.1.1. Data visualization capabilities supported in Cosmos React for Pega Platform 8.6

The following list includes visualization capabilities. If a capability is not listed, assume it is not supported for Cosmos React in 8.6.

  • Filter 

  • Advanced filter 

  • Sort 

  • Grouping (Tables) / Dimensions (Charts) 

  • Legend 

  • Tooltip 

  • Drilldown 

  • Export to Excel (table insights) 

  • Visibility (Private, Shared, Public) 

  • Dual Axis charting 

  • Combo Charts 

3.2. Capabilities not supported in Cosmos React for Pega Platform 8.6

The following list provides a non-exhaustive list of currently unsupported capabilities:

Note:

This list pertains only to currently unsupported capabilities in Cosmos React (early adopter).  Applications built with section-based architecture and Theme Cosmos continue to offer full capabilities.

General:

  • Localization

  • Building implementation layer on top of Pega CRM and industry apps

  • Web mashup

  • Mobile (mobile web, native, and native offline)

  • User-configurable dashboards

  • Notification channels (publish / subscribe)

  • Multi-channel features, including email and chat integration

  • Rule delegation

  • Property-level attribute-based access control (ABAC)

  • Reports and report browser (use the data explorer and Insights instead)

  • Paragraph rule

  • Custom action sets

  • Designing and building custom layouts or components

  • Exporting tabular data to Excel

  • Development branching

Case management:

  • “Search duplicate cases”, “Generate PDF” and “Generate document” automations

  • Adjust SLA action

  • Field-level auditing

  • Specifying category for attachments

  • Geolocation tracking

  • Tagging

  • Stakeholders widget

  • Related cases widget

  • Team widget

  • Work queue / work basket widget

Questionnaire:

  • Some question types (Slider, Checklist, Multi textbox, Build a list, Radio button matrix)

  • Composing question text with Rich Text options (piping a response to next question, dynamic values in info text)

Collaboration:

  • Private messaging in Pulse

  • Documents

  • Spaces

When building new applications, use the New Application wizard in Dev Studio to choose Theme Cosmos and Cosmos React (early adopter). 

The new application wizard with three available options: Theme Cosmos, Theme UI-Kit, and Cosmos React.
New application wizard and the available types of applications

3.3. Data visualization and reporting capabilities in Theme Cosmos and Cosmos React for Pega Platform 8.6

The following table provides a list of currently supported capabilities in data visualization and reporting in Pega Platform 8.6. For more information, see the Reporting documentation.

 

Supported in Theme Cosmos (Section-based UI) in Pega Platform 8.6 

Supported in Cosmos React (early adopter) in Pega Platform 8.6

 
Report Definition 

 

Chart Control 

Data Visualization Control (DEV Studio) 

Single Axis Combo Chart (Cluster, Stack) 

  

  

Dual Axis Combo Chart (Cluster, Stack) 

✅ 

  

  

✅ 

Area (Overlaid, Stack, 100%) 

  

✅ 

Funnel 

  

  

 

Pyramid 

  

  

 

Bubble 

✅ 

  

✅ 

Pie (Normal, Exploded, Donut) 

✅ 

✅ 

  

Bar (3 types) 

✅ 

✅ 

  

✅ 

Column (3 types) 

✅ 

  

✅ 

Line 

✅ 

  

✅ 

Spark (Line, Column) 

✅ 

  

  

 

Gauge – 270 Arch 

  

 

Gauge – Speedometer 

✅ 

  

 

Gauge – Half-Dial 

✅ 

  

Gauge – Half Arch 

✅  

✅ 

  

 

Gauge – Dial 

✅  

✅  

  

 

Gauge – Linear 

✅  

  

  

 

Gauge – Horizontal LED 

✅  

  

  

 

Gauge – Vertical LED 

✅  

  

  

 

Gauge – Cylinder 

✅ 

  

  

 

Gauge – Thermometer 

✅  

  

  

 

Gauge – Progress 

  

✅  

  

 

Map 

✅  

  

  

 

Pareto Chart 

  

  

  

✅  

Scatterplot 

  

  

✅  

 

Double Donut 

  

  

✅ 

 

Radar Chart 

  

  

✅  

 

Bullet Chart 

  

  

✅  

 

Concentric Circles 

  

  

✅ 

 

Simple Value 

 

 

 

✅ 

4. Hybrid mode: Blend Cosmos React UI features into existing Theme Cosmos applications

Hybrid mode blends, or embeds, certain Cosmos React UI capabilities into your existing application based on Theme Cosmos with section-based UI. 

The advantage of the hybrid is that it allows you to incrementally update your existing application in smaller chunks, taking advantage of the enhanced speed and user experience of certain Cosmos React UI capabilities. 

The following Cosmos React UI capabilities are supported in hybrid mode: 

Tables 

Hybrid mode offers enhanced performance for rendering, sorting, filtering, and grouping tabular data. Specifically:  

  • Tables on landing pages

    Landing pages are top-level pages with lists of data, often in tabular format. When you create landing pages with App Studio, the runtime will embed the table from Cosmos React UI. (Since 8.5) 

  • Tables inside case pages

    Developers replace the traditional Table layout with a new pxListView rule, specifying the data source, displayed columns, and other table personalization features that you can enable. (New in 8.6) 

  • Explore Data page

    The Explore Data table for impromptu data exploration. (Since 8.5)

For more information, see Enhance the user experience with new Cosmos React tables (8.6).

Full case view 

  • If you use App Studio to build new case types in existing applications, the end-user experience renders the full case view from Cosmos React UI’s implementation.  

Note: Hybrid mode is not supported for applications built with UI Kit. 

5. Configuring on-premises deployments for Cosmos React UI and hybrid mode

On-premises deployments of applications built with the Cosmos React UI or hybrid architecture require a configuration of the Constellation Service. Refer to the following guide: 

https://community.pega.com/knowledgebase/articles/user-experience/85/implementing-cosmos-react-ui-pega-platform  

The Constellation Service is already configured for cloud-based deployments. 

6. Learning more

To learn more and to stay up to date with Pega’s user experience capabilities, visit Pega User Experience.   

Have a question? Get answers now.

Visit the Support Center to ask questions, engage in discussions, share ideas, and help others.

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