Create, Save As, and Specialization forms
Valid from Pega Version 7.1.4
The familiar “New” and “Save As” forms have been streamlined to make record creation faster and more intuitive. You can easily target a specific layer in your application stack, interactively define the record’s configuration and select only those circumstance definitions that make sense for your use case.
While the underlying behavior for creating a record is not new for this release, the redesigned UI of these forms and new defaulting strategy for fields is worth noting:
To launch these forms, use one of the new options found in the action area of the form header:
Note that not all record types support the ability to specialize by circumstance.
For more guidance on how to use the Create, Save As and Specialization forms, please refer to: Intuitive record creation and specialization
Redirect users to logout screen
Valid from Pega Version 7.1.4
New applications built in Version 7.1 will automatically redirect users to the PRPC login page upon logout.
A new template, Web-Session-Return-Template, has been added, to allow developers to customize their applications to redirect users to a logout page, if they wish. This template can be copied to a ruleset visible to unauthenticated requestors (via node configuration) and used to override Web-Session-Return.
Tomcat log files moved to work directory
Valid from Pega Version 7.1.2
For Tomcat application server users, the default path for PRPC logs has been changed to the "work" directory for Catalina. For example:
<tomcat>\work\Catalina\localhost\prweb
This directory can be cleaned up during administration. To avoid loss of files, you can redirect logging to a different directory after installation:
- Navigate to the <tomcat-home>\webapps\prweb\WEB-INF\classes directory.
- Open the prlogging.xml file.
- Locate the "appender" definitions section that contains the "@{web.tmpdir}" string
- Update the FileNamePattern values to point to the new directory.
For more details, refer to the “Change the default path to PRPC logs” section in the Tomcat installation guide for your database.
Real-time pulse processing for multinode systems
Valid from Pega Version 7.1.9
Multinode development environments now use real-time pulse processing. Previously, when a change was made on one node, the pulse processing interval could take a minute or more for that change to be reflected on another node. Now, when a rule is changed on one node, that change is immediately reflected on all the other nodes in the cluster. This change helps to ensure that users are running a rule on the same node as where the rule was changed.
Verifying that a Pega 7 Platform instance is running
Valid from Pega Version 7.1.9
You can verify whether a Pega 7 Platform instance is up and running by entering this URL: http://<<hostName:port/contextName>>/PRRestService/monitor/pingservice/ping
The Pega 7 Platform Engine responds with HTTP Response Code 200 if the instance is available. The response contains JSON text in the format { "duration":"<time in milliseconds>" }. Any other response codes or timeout indicate that the instance is unavailable.
Database storage used for passivation in High Availability mode
Valid from Pega Version 7.1.9
When an application is running in High Availability mode, the value attribute for initialization/persistrequestor/storage in the prconfig.xml file or the Dynamic System Settings now defaults to "database."
Previously, applications running in High Availability mode required shared passivation, where either initialization/persistrequestor/storage was set to “OnTimeout” or a custom passivation mechanism was used. The change to using database by default provides persistent storage for passivation, and provides control for the landing page for High Availability.
For more information, see Understanding passivation and requestor timeouts and the High Availability Administration Guide.
Pega 7 Express is available on-premises
Valid from Pega Version 7.1.9
You can now experience Pega 7 Express by switching your enterprise application from Designer Studio to express mode. By default, users with access to the Developer portal can switch between these two development environments. You can also create an express application to work in express mode exclusively.
Trial versions of Pega 7 Express continue to be available on the cloud. To view the documentation for both the cloud and on-premises environments, see Getting started with Pega 7 Express.
Access to Pega 7 Express from within Designer Studio is not supported on mobile devices.