Back Forward What's new in Version 5.5?

 zzz Show all 

Pegasystems announced Process Commander V5.5 in March 2009. This topic highlights several functional enhancements and contains links to the relevant help topics. Version 5.5 is known as Project Potomac.

Access the Pega Developer Network at WWWpdn.pega.com for the latest knowledgebase articles that describe these features and demonstrate their development and benefits.

 zzz Introducing the Federated Business Framework products

Three products were announced concurrently with Version 5.5, to support enterprise-wide Process Commander deployments and simplify access and reporting to application data. Consult the Pega Developer Network for the latest documentation on these facilities.

 zzz Introducing the SmartBPM PaaS (Platform as a Service) product

By acquiring and implementing the optional SmartBPM Platform as a Service offering, Process Commander can support "cloud computing". SmartBPM PaaS allows one Process Commander system to host multiple virtual, independent, secure Process Commander systems. Additional virtual systems can be generated quickly as needed.

For more information on PaaS, consult the Pega Developer Network.

 zzz What's new for application developers?

Features listed in the following table bring new capabilities to Process Commander applications or improve developer productivity:

Benefit

Description

Topics
Ease of use, flexibility A new type of portal is available that offers easier customization, new controls, and full localization. Two sample composite portals — User and Manager — are available. The User portal allows workers to open and update multiple work objects at once, and find work objects using the full-text search facility. .

Composite portal

User portal basics

Ease of use You can view or edit shape parameters for most types of tasks in a flow rule without starting Microsoft Visio Update assignments, utility tasks, decision tasks and others by right-clicking the shape on the Diagram tab of the flow form. Flow form — Interacting with the Diagram tab
Quality V5.5 provides more extensive validation (for example, activity parameters) when editing a flow in Visio  
Ease of use Designing attractive work object forms is simplified by using Smart Layouts, which unify spacing, styles, and appearance. Smart Layout
Ease of use When editing a flow rule in Visio, you can quickly switch between a portrait or landscape presentation, show or hide a background grid, and recompute likelihood percentages. Flow form — Editing in Visio — Completing the Flow Properties panel
Ease of use Creating and maintaining iterations (loops) in activities is simpler and faster. Iteration scope can now include multiple steps, and iterations can be embedded within other iterations in a single activity. Activity form — Completing the Steps tab — Iteration
Ease of use In the Application Explorer and other explorers, you can filter to select rows that contain specific values or strings in a key part. Explorer tools — Workspace Results
Power A new tool provides a comprehensive summary of an application, including the rules organized by 6R group, rule type, and data objects. Two "heat maps" show counts of rules by category and rule type. Both displays let you drill down to individual rules.

About the Application Visualization tool

Simpler flow diagrams When editing a flow rule in Visio, you can specify router and notify activities directly in the Assignment Shape panel, rather than through separate shapes. Flow rules — Editing assignment shape properties
Power On a flow diagram, a swim lane can be associated with a router task. A new flow shape — router pools — can group multiple swim lanes.

Flow form — Editing in Visio — Router pool tasks

Ease of development A new Rules Inspector option Styles allows you to explore and temporarily override the CSS styles that are in force for any element on a work object form.

About the Rules Inspector

Ease of development A new control simplifies the process of adding an image to a harness, section, or flow action form. Harness, Section, and Flow Action forms — Adding an image
Power The expressions in a model rule can reference values from other pages, identified on a Pages & Classes tab.

About Model rules

Power The Obj-Browse method can create lists of the objects in an external class.

Obj-Browse method

Ease of testing When testing a flow execution or previewing or testing a harness rule, you can specify a preference that overrides the skin rule to render the work object forms and worklists. Developer Portal — Setting preferences
Power The Application Skin wizard is substantially enhanced to allow detailed style editing for both composite and legacy portals. About the Application Skin wizard
Ease of use You can create a RuleSet and an initial Version of that RuleSet in a single step.

RuleSet form — Completing the New dialog

Productivity You can create starter versions of decision rules or flow action rules directly from a Draft mode flow. See the PDNPega Developer Network knowledgebase.
Ease of development Correspondence rules, correspondence fragment rules and paragraph rules can be composed and maintained using a built-in rich text editor, as a simpler alternative to hand-coding HTML tags. Correspondence rules — Completing the Corr tab
Ease of development The Application Document wizard is enhanced to produce a more attractive Microsoft Word DOC file, and to optionally contain live links to the rules that it documents. See the PDNPega Developer Network knowledgebase.
Ease of use You can "prune" portions of the Application Explorer display to show only rules in one or a specific set of RuleSets, to improve access to those rules most important to your development work. About the Application Explorer
Power and performance The Advanced Search facility supports full-text searches for numbers as well as text strings. Using a newer version of Lucene, search operations are faster. Search syntax and stop words
Flexibility Through an option on the Class form, you can exclude all work objects of a specific work type from Lucene indexing. Class rules — Completing the Advanced tab
Flexibility When editing a flow rule in Visio, you can change the Visio stencil in use, or change the Visio presentation between Portrait or Landscape mode. Flow rules — Editing in Visio — Flow Properties
Ease of use The My Alerts count My Alerts counts alerts from the STANDARD Thread since you logged on. The My Alerts display shows alerts from all threads. You can receive a brief pop-up notification as each alert appears. Working with the My Alerts display
Performance insight A new Clipboard tool menu option Analyze Clipboard shows the size in bytes of each clipboard page. Using the Clipboard tool
Productivity The system can automatically populate, when accessed, the value of Page mode (or Page List mode) properties that correspond to entire instances of concrete classes. Auto-populated property
Data integrity During execution of a screen flow, if the user clicks away from one step to resume or start a different step out of normal sequence, the flow action validation and post processing can run. Flow rules — Creating and editing screen flows
Ease of development While building a SOAP connector with the Connector and Metadata wizard, you can test each method in the WSDL file. About generating Connector rules
Productivity As you complete the New or Save As dialog for a rule that has an Applies To initial key part, you can speed selection by limiting the SmartPrompt to show only those classes that belong to the implementation level or the framework level.

implementation class

framework class

Productivity List view and summary view rules with an Applies To class corresponding to a framework automatically execute at the associated implementation class. List view rules — Completing the New or Save As form
Power When interacting with a work object form, user actions can cause sections of the form to be refreshed from the server. Implementing dynamic flow actions and the Client Event Editor
Ease of learning Property panels accessed from the Harness, Section, and Flow Action forms are reorganized for consistency and clarity.  
Power A new menu bar control is available, primarily to support navigation in composite portals. Harness and section rules — Adding a Menu bar
Productivity A new Style Discovery tool — part of the Rules Inspector — allows quick identification of the CSS styles that apply to any runtime HTML element. About the Rules Inspector tool
Flexibility Optionally, either or both of two distinct Smart Info displays are available from a row on a list view or summary view display: one accessed by right-click and a second accessed by hovering the mouse pointer. List View form — Completing the Format tab
Ease of testing The Automatic Testing facility allows testing of activities (in addition to flow rules and decision rules). Activity form - Unit testing an activity
Faster development The Application Profile tool is enhanced to include a heat map display of project elements, and provide greater security over who can access and modify the profile. It presents an interactive timeline of project phases. See the PDNPega Developer Network knowledgebase.
Faster development The Application Document wizard has hyperlinks to the rules it documents, allowing direct access to review or update the rules from the document. See the PDNPega Developer Network knowledgebase.

 zzz What's new for integrators?

Enhancements described in the following table help development teams integrate Process Commander applications with other systems and code:

Benefit

Description

Topics
Faster development The form for defining XML Stream rules now presents the transformation in a graphical tree structure. About XML Stream rules
Faster development The form for defining XML Parse rules now presents the transformation in a graphical tree structure. XML Parse created in versions prior to V5.5 can be directly upgraded. About XML Parse rules
Simpler file output A new type of connector allows your flows to write output to a file system. About Connect File rules
Performance Connector calls to external systems using SOAP or HTTP can execute asynchronously. About Connect Request Processor data instances
Security SOAP connectors can use Web Services Security, defined in a keystore. About Connect SOAP rules
Database access Support of Oracle stored procedures is enhanced. Connect SQL rules — Data Mapping
Flexibility Your application can copy files to a remote system using File Transfer Protocol. About FTP Server data instances
Faster development When debugging MQ services, a new button MQ Explorer on the MQ Server form allows you to get or put messages to a specific queue. MQ Server form — Completing the Environment tab
Faster development A new rule type — Structured Map rules — simplifies the process of assembling fixed-layout record-oriented string values. About Map Structured rules
Faster development A new rule type Connect File allows a flow execution to output a file. About Connect File rules
Faster development When debugging JMS services, a new button JMS Explorer on the JNDI Server form allows you to get or put messages to a specific queue. JNDI Server form — Completing the Environment tab
Process integration Process Commander flow rules can be exported as XML documents in WMC XPDL format or OASIS BPEL format. Flow rules — Completing the Design tab
Performance Optionally, Service File rules can execute asynchronously on multiple nodes for higher throughput. Service File rules — Completing the Service tab
Flexibility and performance Connect HTTP and Connect SOAP rules can execute asynchronously, allowing the flow execution to continue without waiting for the connector response.

Connect SOAP rules — Completing the Service tab

Connect HTTP rules — Completing the Service tab

Faster development Simulation of connectors is easier to turn on and control. Creating connector simulations
Ease of debugging New features on the JMS listener form allows interactive debugging of message queues. JMS Listener form — Completing the JMS Properties tab
Ease of debugging New features on the MQ server form allow interactive debugging of message queues. MQ Server form — Completing the Environment tab
Power Parse Delimited rules can directly parse Comma-Separated-Value (CSV) files. About Parse Delimited rules

 zzz What's new for system administrators?

Enhancements described in the following table help with security, operations, and other administrative tasks:

Benefit

Description

Topics
Control Six new alerts (PEGA0030 to PEGA0035) provide managers and developers with additional insight into unusual or potentially adverse system conditions and behavior. Understanding alerts
Performance Passivated requestor information is stored as a file on the Process Commander server, rather than in the PegaRULES database. This facilitates use of high-performance disk strategies such as stripping and RAID. Understanding passivation and timeouts
Flexibility and power The Product rule form has new options that allow you to easily specify entire applications, and new options to control which instances and which classes are included in a product ZIP archive. Product form — Completing the Contents tab
Reliability Two standard agent activities in the Pega-ProCom RuleSet now use queuing. This change improves throughput and avoids issues that can arise when the agents run on multiple nodes. Understanding the Pega-ProCom agent
Flexibility The Search/Replace a String wizard is enhanced to allow finer control over which rules are modified, and to allow updating rules that belong to locked RuleSet Versions. About the Search/Replace a String wizard
Flexibility The Rename a Class wizard is enhanced to allow finer control over which rules or other objects are modified. If a class derived from the Work- base class is renamed, the keys of the work objects can be updated to reflect the new class name. About the Rename a Class wizard
Flexibility The Delete a Class wizard is enhanced to allow deletion of rules from locked RuleSet versions (after the administrator provides the appropriate password). About the Delete a Class wizard
Ease of development A new tool allows rules that apply to a class to be moved from one RuleSet Version to another, and one Applies To class to another. in a single operation. About the Refactor Rules tool
Flexibility A new option for listeners allows complete control over listener startup in a multinode cluster, at the individual node level. Email Listener form — Completing the Properties tab
Performance Static content (such as image files, CSS style sheets, and JavaScript source code) can be deployed to one or more remote "edge servers", to improve user response time and reduce HTTP traffic. static content
Performance Through a prconfig.xml setting, you can cause the system to automatically passivate infrequently accessed User clipboard pages; the pages are restored to JVM memory as needed. Understanding passivation and timeouts
Performance and flexibility A new Column Populator utility populates values into newly exposed database table columns. This utility operates significantly faster than the previous Resaver servlet, can execute using multiple threads, and includes new options to specify which table rows it operates on. Using the Column Populator utility
Ease of use From the access group form, you can quickly identify all operators associated with the access group. Access Group form - Using the Associations tab
Security Outgoing mail can be include a digital signature, certifying the From party based on a certificate from a keystore. How to send digitally signed email
Productivity A new wizard allows you to copy, move and merge multiple RuleSets and RuleSet versions into a single target RuleSet version, with a unified approach. About the RuleSet Maintenance wizard
Performance analysis A new option in the System Management Application allows quick review of clipboard memory demand, both at the requestor level and at the individual page level. clipboard
Performance analysis A new option in the System Management Application allows you to determine the size and record count of several JVM-memory caches. Understanding caching
Performance List view and summary view reports can be based on data from a "slave" or mirror database dedicated to reporting, reducing the query processing demand on the master PegaRULES database. Data Table form — Completing the Database tab
Performance Skill-based routing uses a new index, for substantially faster performance. intelligent routing
Performance A stored procedure improves rule resolution performance for models and certain other rule types. No changes to existing rules are required.  
Audit and security A new capability allows optionally logging of which operators executed specific harness rules (for work object forms) and flow action rules, even when no data is updated.

Flow action form — Completing the Security tab

Harness form — Completing the Display Options tab

 zzz What's new for application users and managers?

These enhancements help with business management, user training and productivity:

Benefit

Description

Topics
Usability An animated busy indicator (Busy indicator ) provides visual feedback when the browser client waits for server responses such as report or chart generation.  
Flexibility Optionally, report displays can include an Export to PDF link that converts the report output to a downloadable PDF (Portable Document Format) file. List View form — Completing the Organize tab
Usability Optionally, report displays can indicate the number of rows selected and whether additional row not displayed met the selection criteria. - List View form — Completing the Content tab
Productivity Optionally, full-text search of work objects (or of specific work types) is available to application users. How to enable and control the full text search facility
Ease of use A new DataGrid control offers a natural and efficient way to review, sort, or update rows of a table, corresponding to values of a Page List or Value List property. Harness, Section, and Flow Action forms — Adding a DataGrid control
Ease of use Report selection criteria can reference symbolic dates or date intervals such as Last 30 Days or Yesterday. symbolic dates
Ease of use Developers can customize the list of data sources that appear in the Report Wizard, preventing users from reporting on specific classes. Report wizard customizations - Data sources
Ease of use User input into one value on a work object form may cause automatic refresh of multiple sections within the form.
Run on Client tests can involve multiple property comparisons, and can use the Java operators || and && to combine multiple comparisons.		 Implementing dynamic flow actions and the Client Event Editor
Flexibility Users can access a Smart Info pop-up or inline expansion with details for a report row using right-click, as an alternative to — or addition to — a Smart Info details accessed by hovering the mouse pointer. List View form — Completing the Format tab
Business perspective The default work object history display is more meaningful in business terms. Your application can include a customized display by overriding a list view rule and section rules. User portal basics — Work object history and attachments
Attractive attachments Users can compose note attachments using a rich text editor, allowing basic HTML styling in notes such as fonts, font sizes, bold and italics, and colors. User portal basics — Work object history and attachments
Complete history Operators can initial an email conversation with a party or parties in the work object. All responses containing the email thread can be tagged and automatically attached to the work object. More about Email Account data instances
Flexibility The work object history and attachment form can be customized by overriding a list view rule and section rule. You can provide greater control over the layout, appearance, and functions available to users when adding attachments. The screen shot and scanned image attachment types are available to users without special configuration. User portal basics — Work object history and attachments
Ease of use When a list view report is displayed, for columns that display a property of type Text, Date, DateTime or TimeofDay, the user can sort on the column. When enabled, a user can filter the report to show only those rows that match a specific text value. User portal basics — Interacting with list view displays
Browser support The Where-Am-I? display is now localizable, and operates with the Firefox browser. Using the Where-Am-I? display
Ease of use Managers, when using bulk processing of assignments, can transfer all assignments, even those that do not provide the Transfer local action. WorkManager portal — How to process assignments in bulk
Ease of use You can associate a small picture or other image with an operator ID. This image appears on the View > My Profile display. Operator ID form — Completing the General tab
Useful history Attachment categories now apply to all types of attachments, not only file attachments. A new rule type controls the names and security for attachment categories. About Attachment Category rules
Ease of use Applications that use composite portals can allow users to open and work on multiple work objects at once. Harness and section rules — Adding a Work Area control
Flexibility The drill-down destination from an interactive chart or summary view display can be a separate list view rule. Summary View rules — Completing the DrillDown tab
Related topics Process Commander documentation
What's new in Version 5.4?

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