Published Release Notes

Add the security checklist to applications created before 7.3.1

The security checklist is now automatically added to applications. You can manually add the security checklist to applications that were created in earlier versions.

You can improve the security of your application by completing the tasks on the checklist.

The following task reflects the procedure on how to manually add the security checklists to Designer Studio prior to 7.3.1:

1. In the header of Designer Studio, click the name of the application, and then click Definition.
2. Click the Documentation tab.
3. In the Application guides section, click Add guide.
4. In the Application guide& field, enter pxApplicationSecurityChecklist.
5. Click the Configure icon in the Available in column and select the portals (App Studio and Dev Studio) that you want to add the security checklist to.
6. Click Save.

Enabling security policies now requires current password

As part of Pega’s initiative to protect against malicious attacks, the change password dialog has been enhanced.  When Security Policies have been enabled for your system, new users or those with expired passwords will now be prompted for both their existing password as well as their desired new password.

For more details, review the Designer Studio > System > Settings > Security Policies landing page.

Designer Studio

Numerous usability improvements were made for this release. A group of cosmetic, functional, and performance enhancements were also included.

• Treegrid controls work more quickly in IE9 and IE10.
• On application ruleforms, the 5.4 "Place Properties on Thread Page" checkbox will work in 7.1.
• Message error handling has been improved.
• Log messages have been cleaned up.
• Connectors may now be used in Data Pages.
• Move Rules wizard has been enhanced to work in Version 7.1.

Guardrails compliance score

The Application Guardrails landing page has been enhanced to help you build more guardrail-compliant applications. Increase transparency and accountability on your projects by responding to the following compliance score metrics:

• A weighted compliance score (0-100) based on warnings, severity, and justification
• A percentage of compliant rules in your application
• Total number of rules in your application
• Total number of rules in your application with warnings (justified and unjustified)

Additional metrics include alert and interaction count trends over the last four weeks.

For more information, see Guardrails compliance score.

Access Manager portal

Changes to the Access Manager simplify the process of modifying the access rights of features for an application. The changes, including creation of an Access Manager portal, make it easier for non-technical users, such as business architects, to set access rights even if they may not have a deep understanding of Pega 7's security model and class inheritance structure.​

Directed inheritance view in Application Explorer

You can now specify which inheritance model is used to populate classes in the Application Explorer. From the top level menu, use the “Explorer Inheritance” option to choose between:

• Pattern: only display class names whose prefix matches the root node class name.
• Directed: first display classes that explicitly name the root node as the parent class; then display classes with pattern inheritance.

By default, the Application Explorer loads using Pattern inheritance. 

Save Application Explorer filter selections

Application scoping control selections made in the Application Explorer are now persisted between sessions. These preferences are stored in an operator record on an access group level. If you delete (and later re-add) an access group on your operator form, the application scoping control defaults to all layers selected:

External access control DASS

A new Dynamic Admin System Setting (DASS) controls the Designer Studio's access to external systems, specifically the PDN RSS feed found on the home page.

By default, Pega-Desktop.AllowAccessToExternalSystem is set to TRUE. Update this setting to FALSE to hide the PDN RSS feed and ensure that no RSS fetch is performed.

Compare rule versions in a rule form

You can now compare different versions of rules from the Actions menu when you work within a rule form instead of using the Rule Compare utility. You can inspect changes that were made between versions directly on the rule form, make updates, and save any changes to the rule form.

For more information, see Rule version comparison within a rule form.

View all nodes in a cluster from the Cluster Management landing page

Use the Cluster Management page to view information for all of the available nodes in a cluster. To view the nodes, click Designer Studio > System > Operations > Cluster Management. To access detailed information about a single node, click Actions.

For more information, see System Operations.