1. Verify that you have already run the required Pega Customer Service Upgrade Checker and the optional the Sales Automation Upgrade Checker. The upgrade checkers identify rule conflicts between the current version and the new version of the application.
   For information, see Pega Customer Service Upgrade Checker and Optional: Pega Sales Automation Upgrade Checker.
2. When updating from a version that is not the previous version, review the update guides and release notes for each of the interim versions. For example, if updating from release 8.5 to release 8.7, review the 8.6 update guide, 8.6 release notes, and this guide.
   Some product changes, such as deprecated and withdrawn features, require user action before the update. See the Pega Customer Service documentation for legacy update guides and release notes. To review a list of the product changes that have update impacts, see Crucial update information for Pega Customer Relationship Management.
3. If using a Pega Customer Service application, update legacy portals if necessary. For information, see Updating legacy Pega Customer Service portals.
4. To ensure that you can resolve open cases for Pega Customer Service for Insurance case types that were refactored in release 8.5, resolve the open cases for those case types before updating.

   Alternatively, after the update, you can map the data to match the latest data model to prevent data loss and ensure that the cases can be resolved.

   The following Pega Customer Service for Insurance case types were refactored in release 8.5:

   • Change Beneficiary
   • Policy Loan
   • Report a Death Claim
   • Surrender Policy
5. Before starting an update, and before backing up your system, review the database policies and application permissions that are used by your Pega Platform update. Determine whether the application is permitted to update the database automatically or if you must generate the database scripts that your organization will use to manually make schema changes.

   To automatically update the application schema, your access group must have the SchemaImport privilege and the dynamic system setting database/AutoDBSchemaChanges must be set to true. Otherwise, you can create a DDL file to apply the schema changes manually.

   During the application update process, the import tool will have an option to automatically apply database schema updates or extract the database scripts to provide to the database administrators. If the schema updates are executed manually, the jar file installation is paused until the schema updates are applied.

6. Update to the latest version of Pega Platform 8.7, and ensure that you can log in as an administrator. For more information, see the Pega Platform Update Guide for your environment on the Stay Current with Pega page.
7. Determine which language packs are applicable to your product and check for availability.
   For information, see Pega Marketplace.
8. Update to the Pega Foundation for Insurance 8.7 as described in the Pega Foundation for Insurance Update Guide.
9. Apply hotfixes that are required to support Pega Foundation for Insurance.
   For more information, see Applying the latest on-premises patch.
10. Update to the Pega Customer Service 8.7 and Pega Sales Automation 8.7 base applications. There is a single procedure to update both of those applications.
    Follow all of the instructions, including prerequisites, in the Pega CRM Update Guide.
11. If the distribution media files for Pega Customer Service and Pega Sales Automation include patch releases, import the patch release files before continuing with the update.
12. Apply hotfixes that are required to support the Pega Customer Service 8.7 and Pega Sales Automation 8.7 base applications.
    For more information, see Applying the latest on-premises patch.
13. Optional: Because SQL database triggers are no longer supported, before you update the application, have your database administrator check for and drop triggers.

1. Verify that all rules are checked in.
2. Shut down the Pega Platform application server.
3. Use your database utilities to complete an offline backup of the Pega database.
4. Back up the configuration and environment files.
   If you edited any of the following Pega Platform configuration files in the APP-INF\classes directory of an EAR deployment or the WEB-INF\classes directory of a WAR deployment, include these files in the backup:

   • prbootstrap.properties
   • prconfig.xml
   • logging file: prlogging.xml or prlog4j2.xml
   • web.xml
   • pegarules.keyring or any other .keyring files
5. Back up any third-party or custom JAR files that you installed.
   Redeploying the Pega Platform applications might delete these files from your application server.

The following table shows which portals are supported for each application version.