What's new in PRPC 6.2 SP2

These new features support applications which have rich and potentially complex cases.

• Dependency relationships among cases — By introducing a new kind of assignment and new features in the Case Designer, V6.2SP2 allows developers to define temporary "hold or wait for status" conditions among cases. See case type dependency.
• Case Worker portal — A new composite portal targets application users who are not line managers. This portal similar to the Case Manager portal (introduced in V6.2SP1) but omits the My Dashboard, My Events, and My Reports tabs. See About the Case Manager and Case Worker portals.
• Case tagging — Optionally, caseworkers can apply text tags to open cases, using words of their choosing. Thereafter, any application user retrieve the cases that are associated with a specific tag. Using the Tag Configuration landing page tab, developers or system managers can define an initial list of suggested tags that a user may associate with a case. See Understanding tagging and Process and Rules category — Social page.
• Case following — Optionally, a user can elect to "follow" a case, by clicking a toolbar icon. This adds the case to the My Cases tab of the portal, and optionally makes updates to the case through the RSS feed. See follow.
• Case specialization — Optionally, you can cause work items created through the Case Designer to have special conditions based on property values. See Process and Rules category — Case Designer.

• Stages view — You can group the work item status values in your application into a smaller set of stages. An easy-to-grasp "chevron view" on the user form shows the progress of the work item through these stages. See stages and Process and Rules category — Case Designer

These enhancements to the Designer Studio support development work throughout the life cycle of an application.

• Application Express — The Application Express tool is extensively redesigned. You can use the Application Express, rather than the Application Accelerator, to create a starter application. The Application Express requires fewer steps and is appropriate when you don't need to create a new organizations and operators, and don't need to create an enterprise application class structure. See About the Application Express tool.
• Profile Explorer — A new display in the Explorer area of the Designer Studio tracks your progress in developing an application. You can see a percentage complete bar, and counts of how many elements (Actors, Correspondence, Reports, and so on) have been created so far. See About the Profile Explorer.
• Private checkout — Developers can make a copy of a rule that belongs to a locked RuleSet version in their personal RuleSet. This allows them to experiment or prototype possible changes with the rule, though any changes to be kept must ultimately be checked in to an unlocked RuleSet version. See checkout.
• Parallel development with Branch RuleSets — To facilitate parallel, simultaneous development by two separate teams who need to create or update rules in a single RuleSet Version, you can now create one or more "branch' RuleSets. When development completes, a new wizard is available to merge the rules in the branch RuleSet into a version of the original RuleSet. See About the Merge Branch wizard and Application rule — Completing the General tab.
• Private Check-out — You can check out a rule that's part of a locked RuleSet Version, to work on. (A later check in must, as always, be to an unlocked RuleSet version.). See Understanding checkout and your personal RuleSet.
• Discovery Maps — Presentation of the Discovery Map (on the Diagram tab of the Flow form) is enhanced more clearly label the function of shapes. Discovery Maps are no longer frozen after the Application Accelerator or Application Express is run. You can evolve the Discovery Map diagram from the Diagram tab of the Flow form, or through the Profile Explorer or Case Designer. See Discovery Map basics.
• Tab bar — Icons and colors in the Designer Studio are redesigned for a more modern look. (The function of the facilities has not changed from previous releases.) See Designer Studio — Using the Tab bar.

Service Pack 2 incorporates many improvements to user interface facilities.

• Navigation rules — A single user selection in a navigation rule can trigger a sequence of multiple actions. See Navigation form — Completing the Node Details fields. Also, these additional choices of actions are available in navigation rules:
  • Start a flow in a modal window — See modal flow.
  • Run an activity
  • Move focus to a specific field
• Specialty controls — Developers who are familiar with advanced user-interface technologies can integrate external software packages such as JQuery, Adobe Flash, and FusionCharts into your application. Sections — Completing the HTML tab.
• Placeholder text — The pyTextInput control and other autogenerated can optionally contain initial placeholder text, for example Enter your email address, which immediately and automatically disappears when focus moves to the field. Adding a Text Input Control.
• UI Gallery — The UI Gallery landing page provides additional working examples of controls and other UI facilities that you can exercise, review, and copy into your application. See User Interface category — UI Gallery page.
• Harness UI — The row of icons at the top of a harness form is autogenerated and can be updated directly using drag-and-drop controls. Similarly, the row of buttons at the bottom of a harness form is autogenerated and can be maintained directly.
• Internet Application Composer — The IAC portal can present open work item as tabs, similar to browser-based portals, rather than as individual pop-up windows.
• Always editable fields — You can mark a field in a section as Always Editable (as an alternative to Read Write or Read Only). This value overrides a Read Only setting in the enclosing element, and is useful for example, when a search input textbox is included in a form that otherwise is Read Only.
• Progressive loading — As an alternative to all rows of a large grid at once, or loading groups (pages) on demand, you can cause pages to be loaded automatically as a user scrolls down.
• Grid actions — Users can operate on grid rows using key presses or click events.
• Cut, copy, and paste — You can use icons (, and ) or standard keyboard shortcuts to cut, copy, and paste layout elements in harness, section, and flow action forms.
• Branding wizard — The branding wizard provides new options:
  • You can control the presence, style, and color of borders on grid rows
  • You can develop two new types of tabs known as fixed and stretched (for sections, containers, and harnesses).
  • You can place tabs on the right, left, or bottom edge of the tabbed element, as alternatives to the top edge.
• Autocomplete — Enhancements improve performance and developer control. Harness, section and flow action forms — Adding an Auto Complete field.

New features improve ease of use and access to data.

• Report Editor — The Report Editor, extending the Report Viewer, makes it easy for managers or developers to add and delete report columns, add or update computations, and make many other changes, without using the Report Definition form. See Working with the Report Editor.
• Report Viewer — The Report Viewer is enhanced so that managers or developers can change the order or columns, or add counts, totals or groupings. See Working with the Report Viewer.
• Standard management reports — Over xx30XX management reports previously available through the V5 Monitor Activity workspace as list view/summary view are now available as report definitions. See:
  • Atlas — Standard management reports — Monitoring Assignments.
  • Atlas — Standard Report Definitions — Analyze Performance
  • Atlas — Standard Report Definitions — Work Analysis
  • Atlas — Standard Report Definitions — Monitoring Work
• Access to all properties — Reports can include values of properties that are not exposed as database columns, although performance is impacted. This feature can be visible or hidden the Display Unoptimized Properties.. option on the Report Definition form. Report Definition form — Completing the Data Access tab.
• Report statistics— Instances of the Log-ReportStatistics class record each report execution. See Understanding the Pega-RulesEngine agent.

V6.2SP2 provides new approaches, substantially enhanced guidance, and new capabilities for upgrading existing systems. Consult the upgrade guides for details.

• Planning guidance — Additional information is available to help you prepare for upgrades, understand and choose among alternative approaches to production upgrades, and understand the factors that influence the elapsed time for upgrade processing.
• Upgrade Readiness tool — After this is installed into a pre-upgrade system, you can search for rules and conditions that might affect upgrade processing or backwards compatibility, before performing the upgrade itself.
• Upgrade landing page — A new page guides you through post-upgrade steps. See System Category — Upgrade landing page.

New integration features can broaden the capabilities of your applications.

• Email setup — The Email Account form is revised to display parameters for both incoming and outgoing email in a single tab. Through standard data transforms, you can easily set up connections to popular server configurations such as Microsoft Outlook 2007 and 2010, Google Gmail, Microsoft Hotmail, and Yahoo mail. See About Email Account data instances.
• Work processing through email — The Email setup wizard is enhanced to simplify construction of workflows that are conducted through a sequence of email messages. While communicating with your application only through email, users can enter work, complete assignments, and resolve work. See Understanding email-based work processing and About the Email Accelerator.
• OAuth consumer support — Your application can act as an OAuth 1.0 consumer/client. As a result, your application can access private resources stored in external web sites like LinkedIn, which support the OAuth 1.0 protocol. See About Oauth Client data instances.
• Security Token Service support — SOAP service calls can support Web Security Policies that reference STS. See Connect SOAP rules — Completing the Advanced tab.
• REST support — A new connector rule type allows your application to access internal or external web sites with a full URL and query string, consistent with REST constraints (Representational state transfer). Responses in the JavaScript Object Notation format can be accepted and parsed into clipboard values. See About Connect REST rules.
• Web Services Security — WS-Security support is available as an option for Connect SOAP and Service SOAP rules. Connect SOAP rules — Completing the Advanced tab and Service SOAP rules — Completing the Advanced tab.
• SOAP MTOM support — SOAP service calls can use Message Transmission Optimization mechanism, to more efficiently send binary data to or from web services. See Connect SOAP rules — Completing the Advanced tab.

• Password restrictions — A new Security Policies landing page tab allows system administrators to define password requirements and optionally include a CAPTCHA challenge on the login form. See System category — Settings page.
• Access — Internal security changes have increased protection against "dictionary" password attacks.
• Logging — You can record detailed information about failed login attempts in a log.

Version SP2 offers improved run-time performance.

• Numerous internal changes have improved performance for application users and developers. Significant changes have reduced browser, network, server, and database demands.
• Certain caches are partially pre-loaded during system startup, to improve response time during initial use.
• Users of existing applications can realize many of the SP2 performance gains with no mandatory configuration changes.
• Through optional use of new SP2 features such as linked properties and progressive load in grids, your applications can achieve further performance gains.

• Lock and roll for all RuleSets- The Other Applications tab on the Application Structure landing page lets you see unlocked RuleSet Versions in all applications. See Application Structure landing page.
• Linked Properties — You can define a Single Value, Text mode property in one Applies To class as a linked property — a property that holds values for a key of another concrete class. This defines a "foreign key relationship" between the Applies To class of the property and another class. Through the linkage, property references in sections, decision rules, and other rules can efficiently access and display (read-only) values of properties in other classes. See Property rule — Completing the General tab — Value modes. By using a linked property, your application eliminates the need for any activities that perform a simple Obj-Open method to retrieve the linked object and add it to the clipboard. Built-in internal processing for linked properties uses a new cache structure to assure efficient access to the values.
• Tracer — The Tracer can trace events that affect any top-level clipboard page (not only the current primary page and, for activities, the step page). Tracer facilities are evolved to focus on potential performance issues, as well as functional issues. Tracer output can record cache hits and misses for linked properties. Tracer output can include performance alerts, providing helpful context. See Tracer — Setting options.
• Rule Security Analyzer — This security tool is built in as a Pega button menu choice, and so no longer requires alterations to access groups to run. Access is restricted. See About the Rule Security Analyzer.
• Private check out — An enhancement to the check out processing allows developers to check out rules from a locked RuleSet version or to check out a rule that is already checked out by another. (Special constraints and processing apply to check-in in these situations.) Two new toolbar buttons and provide this capability. See check in and check out.
• The activity referenced in a Declare Trigger rule can accept parameters, although the parameter values you supply must be literal constants.
• Specification rules — The rules known as Use Case rules in V6.2SP1 and earlier versions are now known as Specifications. This name change does not alter the use or behavior of rules. About Specifications.
• Narrative tab on work item audit display — See About audit trails, attachments and case narratives .
• Guardrails — Check for variances with guardrails and best practices using the new Guardrails landing page (previously the Application Preflight tool). See Application Guardrails landing page.
• Security for JSP tags — For handcrafted user interface rules, a new option richtext for the pega:reference tag filters out HTML code that might introduce a cross-site scripting vulnerability, but has no effect on the final display appearance. Reference JSP tag.
• Security for rich text" properties— If your application allows users to create "rich text" such as HTML format email messages using the RichTextControl, a new standard edit input rule pyFilterRichText provides added protection against HTML code that might introduce a cross-site scripting vulnerability. Property form — Completing the Advanced tab

• SP2 includes support for a future Pegasystems product (scheduled for 1Q2012) which is supported by the Pega-Mobile RuleSet. Visit www.pega.com/about-us/news-room for the latest product news.