Published Release Notes

MBeans deprecated in favor of Pega API

The use of MBeans for cluster management has been deprecated, although MBeans will continue to function for legacy deployments. The recommended best practice for automating system management is to use the Pega API. For more information, see Pega API.

Create, Save As, and Specialization forms

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

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

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:

1. Navigate to the <tomcat-home>\webapps\prweb\WEB-INF\classes directory.
2. Open the prlogging.xml file.
3. Locate the "appender" definitions section that contains the "@{web.tmpdir}" string
4. 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.

REST APIs added for management of agents and requestors

You can use new REST APIs to download a module version report or manage requestors and agents in Pega Platform™. For example, you can use a requestor REST API to end a requestor process, and you can use an agent REST API to start or stop an agent. These APIs allow external systems to report and manage Pega resources.

For more information, see Pega API for Pega Platform and Pega API.

Identify team members working on a rule

By using the team collaboration widget, you can see who on your development team is working on the rule that you are viewing. This widget is displayed in the section header when you are using the Case Designer, Data Designer, or Channels and interfaces configuration pages. When you update a page, a notification is sent to other collaborators stating that the content has been updated and prompting them to refresh to see the latest content.

Troubleshooting offline-enabled applications in a browser

You can now troubleshoot offline-enabled applications by using the Tracer tool and developer tools that are available in a web browser. You can troubleshoot scripts that are running when the application is running, without having to use additional debugging tools.

For more information, see Application debugging using the Tracer tool, Troubleshooting offline-enabled applications with the Tracer tool in a browser, and Offline capability.

Automatically populate columns on import

If an imported archive file adds columns to existing tables, Pega Platform ™ can automatically expose and populate the new columns during the import. For more information, see Import wizard.

Automatically revalidate and save classes after upgrade

To automatically revalidate and save classes after an upgrade, edit the product rule definition. After you upgrade the application, the classes you specify are revalidated and saved under the application version context you provide. If the application version exists on the target system before the upgrade, the revalidate and save process is not called.

For more information about editing the product rule, see Specifying product rule deployment options.

Add and populate new indexes on import

If you import an archive that includes new indexes, use the Import wizard advanced mode to schedule a post-import job to automatically add and populate the new indexes. For more information, see Import wizard.