What's new in PRPC 6.3?

These new features enhance case management facilities.

Case Management Gallery

The Case Management Gallery contains a working example of a case management application that demonstrates many process and user interface capabilities. You can explore the configuration, and copy and adapt the rules into your application. Also included are descriptions and links to more than 40 standard flows, flow actions, and sections that are commonly used in case management designs.
See Process and Rules category — Case Management Gallery .

Federated Case Management

Your application users can create, display, update and resolve cases in a separate V6.3+ PRPC system using Federated Case Management facilities. The control system and the remote system communicate using Interactive Application Composer. This approach eliminates the need to create services and connectors for the intersystem communications, or the need to replicate features of the remote case type in the control system's application. See Federated Case Management and remote case.

Discovery Map

When editing a flow in Discovery Map form, you can define Page and Page List properties, as well as Single Value properties. This allows you to build a more complete data model supporting your application while still using the Discovery Map. See Flow form — Editing processes with the Discovery Map view.

Process Modeler supports metrics reporting and Policy Override

From the Diagram tab of the Flow form, when using Process Modeler, you can access reports that present statistics about use of each shape in the diagram. The Task Volumes, Flow Analysis, and Task Duration reports, known as Overlay reports, were available only for Visio flows in V6.2SP2. Similarly, the Policy Override feature is now available for Process Modeler flows. See Flow form — Process Modeler — Interacting with the Diagram tab.

These enhancements to various rule forms add power and reduce the need for creating activities.

Data Transforms

Within a data transform rule, you can sort the pages in a Page List based on the values of one or more embedded Single Value properties on each embedded page. This enhancement eliminates the need to create an activity to perform such sorting. See Data Transform — Completing the Definition tab — Sort Action.

Declare Pages options

In a Declare Page rule, three additional data sources are available:

• Object Lookup — The page contains a clipboard page of a single instance.
• Connector — The page contains the results returned from running a connector that queries an external system or database. Use a data transform to initialize property values for the connector request.
• Data Transform — The page contains property values set in a data transform.

Also, you can use a new type of Declare Page rule (Load Only), to initialize a clipboard page that does not have the read-only restriction. This allows activities to take advantage of the many ways to populate a page.

See Declare Page rules — Completing the Definition tab.

Linked Properties

Support for linked properties in many additional rule types. Using a linked property to access — in a read-only way — property values in a related object eliminates the need for a custom activity. In V6.3, these additional rule types allow linked property references:

Activities Access when Circumstance template rules various Connect rules Decision trees, decision tables various Service rules

Constraints rules Correspondence Data transforms Declarative rules (all) Report definitions Service level rules Validate rules

The Branch RuleSet facility, introduced in V6.2SP2 to facilitate parallel development of applications by multiple teams, is enhanced.

Branch Checkout

In a single operation, you can check out a rule that's in a locked RuleSet version directly into a branch RuleSet. In V6.2SP2, this required two operations. See Designer Studio — Using the toolbar — Check Out to Branch.

Merge Branch RuleSets wizard

When merging a branch RuleSet version into a RuleSet, you can call two flows of your choice as extensions to the standard flow. See About the Merge Branch RuleSets wizard.

Your PRPC applications can work with external systems and devices using these enhancements.

Service REST rules

Your application can respond to requests from external clients that use the Representational State Transfer (REST) protocols and styles. This enhancement complements Connect REST rules, introduced with V6.2SP2. See About Service REST rules.

Access Roles

Through an enhanced landing page facility, you can create a new access role, and also create a set of access-of-role-to- object rules, by copying those from another access role. See Organization and Security category — Security Landing page.

Stock Trader integration examples

Built into V6.3 is a working demonstration of several integration facilities, through an application that allows the user application that allows the user to buy and sell stocks, manage their portfolio and manage their account. This sample application follows good design practices, and demonstrates PRPC's conformance with various Web Services Interoperability standards. After a one-time installation and setup, you can run these samples and access the underlying rules to see their relationships and the design and implementation approaches that they demonstrate. See Integration examples — Stock Trader portal.

Other integration examples

Your system includes sample configurations that demonstrate:

• A service email rule that creates a work item from incoming email
• A SOAP service rule

The samples include the calling (client) rules as well as the service rules. With a few added configuration steps, you can exercise these samples in your system. See More about Service Email rules and More about SOAP services .

Scanner support

Users who have a TWAIN-compliant optical scanner can operate the scanner through a flow action. See About Pega Document Scanning. The updated Image Viewer lets you view, rotate and adjust images. See Using the Image Viewer.

External CMIS storage of attachment category

If your system stores work item attachments in an external document management system (through the Connect CMIS facility referenced on the Advanced tab of the application rule), you can optionally include the attachment category name in the external repository.

WS-Addressing support

Connect SOAP request message headers can include WS-Addressing message routing data.

V6.3 supports the Pega Mobile facilities introduced with V6.2SP2.

The Pega Mobile add-on product allows users of your PRPC applications to create, update, and resolve work from a mobile device, including Apple's iPhone and iPad devices, devices based on Google's Android operating system, and Blackberry devices from Research in Motion. Pega Mobile allows users to operate the same application from a traditional (workstation) browser and from the mobile device. See Understanding Pega Mobile.

Continuing progress on a product commitment that began in 2010, V6.3 includes numerous performance enhancements, improving the user experience for application users, application developers, and those who upgrade PRPC systems. For most of these changes, the improvements are automatic and require no configuration changes.

Application-Based Assembly mode

A new cache, known as the Application-Based Assembly (ABA) cache, provides a notable runtime performance benefit for applications that employ it. Use of this cache is recommended for new applications developed in V6.3+, and is available for most applications developed in releases before V6.3. Because the ordering of a user's RuleSet list when in the ABA mode can differ — in uncommon special situations — from the order of the RuleSet list in previous PRPC releases, a fully backwards compatible option is available. See Understanding Application-Based Assembly mode.

Transient Properties

Where appropriate, you can mark a property as transient, meaning that the property values are needed only to support current computations, and are not needed in the future. When a page containing a transient property is committed to the database, the property is first removed from the clipboard. The value is not saved in the database, but must be recomputed in the future if needed later. Transient properties are a special case, but when appropriate they reduce database storage and network traffic demands. See transient property and Property Form — Completing the Advanced tab.

Lookup JSP tag

Performance of the lookup JSP tag is improved. When new 6.3 operations are enabled, the lookup tag no longer extracts a property value from the BLOB (pzSourceStream) column when the value is also available as an exposed database column. In addition, the values of such extracted properties are saved temporarily on a clipboard page (similar to the linked property mechanism).

You must create a dynamic system setting to enable this feature. See JSP tags: lookup.

Other performance enhancements

In-browser user interactions with Process Modeler diagrams, Discovery Map diagrams, and Strategy Maps are faster.

In a multinode cluster, full text searches are faster, due to use of Connect HTTP rules rather than Connect SOAP rules.

For report definition rules, the generated SQL queries are cached, for faster reuse.

The Direct Capture of Facilities capabilities of V6.3 are enhanced.

Guardrails

PRPC 6.3 makes it easier for your development teams to develop applications that are guardrail-compliant to a great degree, thereby reducing project risks, maintainability risks, performance risks, security risks, and cost. Three landing pages provide quick access to information on the sources, types, and severity of guardrail warnings. See Application category — Guardrails landing page.

• Dashboard — Charts that present highlights of guardrail compliance
• Summary — Report on the extent to which rules in the application have warnings
• All warnings — Provides full listings of all rules with warnings

Additional warnings are introduced, to help your developer team become aware of best practices and practices to avoid. The What's Happening display (the RSS newsfeed) and the Recent Actions landing page tab are enhanced to include information about warnings. Warning severity levels now appear as English words (Severe, Moderate, and Caution) rather than as numeric values.

Project Management Framework integration

The Project Management Framework (PMF) allows PRPC application developers to define, manage and track progress of development projects. PRPC V6.3 provides tighter integration between development systems and a separate PMF installation, allowing easier initial configuration and fewer steps for updating. See About the Project Management communications link. During check in, developers can view and directly access their PMF worklists.

Application Express enhancements

The Application Express is enhanced to provide near parity with the capabilities of the full Application Accelerator, while requiring many fewer inputs and steps. An application created with the Application Express can be built upon another application, such as a framework, or upon the PegaDM application to include decisioning capabilities. If you build on a framework, the work types and case types of the framework are duplicated within the implementation layer, so you can specialize or adapt them. See About the Application Express tool.

Document wizard

From any of the Specifications landing page tabs, you can produce a document, similar to the format of the full application document, for a single specification. Select Document from the Action menu. For example, see the Specifications tab on the Process and Rules category — Correspondence landing page.

You can create an application document at any time, reflecting the current state of development. You can create a single document for large applications with many work types, using the Application Document wizard.

Profile Explorer

While working with the Profile Explorer, you can initiate an email exchange with others — who may not be operators who use the development system you are working in — to have them participate in the evolution of the application. See Invite Collaborator window — Inviting collaborators.

Enhancements improve the appearance, ease-of-development, and power of report definitions and other reporting capabilities, for users of both the Designer Studio and Case Manager portal:

Charts

V6.3 offers a larger set of chart types and more attractive presentation of charts, and supports a wide range of browsers. At runtime, users can select between two-dimensional and three-dimensional chart presentation. See Report Definitions — Completing the Chart tab and Working with the Chart Editor.

Report Editor

When interacting with a report using the Report Editor, you can rapidly switch between using simulated data and live data. The simulated presentation provides a faster display for the report format and structure.

You can use drag-and-drop operations to reorder columns. See Working with the Report Editor.

Business Intelligence Exchange (BIX)

The Business Intelligence Exchange 6.3 add-on product, allows you export PRPC data to be imported into a data warehouse or other databases, included with the PRPC 6.3 media. Topics in this help system describe the Extract rule form and basic BIX operations. See BIX and About Extract Rules.

New features provide power and ease-of-use for system administrators:

Hotfix Trial and Rollback

Two new landing page tabs provide greater insight and control over hotfixes in your system. You can install a hotfix provisionally, tagged for possible later back out. If required, you can back out such hotfixes. See System category — Update Manager landing page.

Upgrade enhancements

Upgrade steps run faster. Also, during the upgrade process, you can optionally remove lower-version Pega-* RuleSet versions. For example, you can choose to remove the 06-01-NN RuleSet versions, when V6.2 and V6.3 are installed. If the upgrade is interrupted or stopped, it can be restarted from the most recent completed step.

System Name

A new landing page tab simplifies the process of changing the current system name. See System category — Settings landing page.

Static assembler landing page

You can directly run the static assembler from a landing page to pre-assemble the rules of an application for improved runtime performance. This operation can be performed without bringing down the system. See System category — Static Assembler page.

Locking changes

As a byproduct of a performance enhancement, the details of releasing locks have changed slightly. If one Operator ID has two or more requestor sessions, each session can release only the locks it holds. Beginning with V6.3, requestor A cannot release locks held by requestor B, even though both are sessions of a single operator ID. See Understanding Object Locking.

Performance tool

The accuracy of the Performance tool (PAL) statistics have improved, so that less elapsed time and less CPU time is unaccounted for. Time (and CPU time) spent performing SQL operations on the PegaRULES database is now reported separately from results for external databases accessed through Connect SQL rules. Time (and CPU time) spent by the internal engine on seeking to avoid rules assembly by qualifying and finding existing Java code for a specific rule is now visible. See About the Performance tool.

Using V6.3, your application user interface is easier to develop and easier to use.

Up-to-date values

The V6.3 user interface is even more responsive to changes in property values. The UI can update whenever a property value changes — regardless of whether that change is the result of a user interaction, or a server side update triggered by a declare expression, a data transform or an activity.
Every interaction between the client and the server now automatically checks for updates to the values of properties displayed in the UI and reflects those changes. There is no special configuration required for this behavior. Any time there is a post from the client to the server, server side changes are automatically updated on the client.

Skin rules

The Skin rule is enhanced to provide direct access to the many font, color, and other CSS style parameters that together define the appearance and behavior of user forms, reports, and portals. See About Skin rules.

The Skin rule includes an overall font and Style Presets — reusable groups of settings that you define in a single location and then apply to multiple elements in the skin rule. Using Style Presets to develop your application skin helps to ensure consistency across your user interface, maximize re-use, and minimize maintenance. A change to a style preset cascades throughout all elements using that style preset in the application skin. See Skin form — Styles tab — Style Presets.

Using the Skin rule, you can create custom formats for grids, tabs, smart layouts, buttons, and links. You can also create custom styles and attach additional style sheets if necessary. See Skin rules — Completing the CSS tab.

This greatly expanded form replaces the Branding wizard, but is fully backward-compatible with existing skin rules created through the Branding wizard in previous releases. No upgrade steps are needed.

Events and Actions

Client Expressions (Visible When, Refresh When, Disabled Conditions), Grid actions and Control actions take up-to-date values. The initial values are now replaced with property references which are tracked and kept up to date. Buttons, icons and links use up-to-date property values, rather than being tied to generation-time values. With this feature, you can place an icon, link, or button next to an editable field and base the action on the user-entered value in the editable field.

Auto-generated controls support the Change event and, using the Apply Conditions keyboard event, you can evaluate conditions on the client as the user types, displaying and refreshing sections dynamically. See Control form — Completing the Control tab.

You can refresh a user form (or section) whenever a value changes, whether the value changes by editing a field, or through a server change in the value of a property. See Harness, section and flow action forms - Using the Condition Builder to configure dynamic UI actions.

Dynamic Container

A new autogenerated control known as a Dynamic Container is available for the runtime presentation of single or multiple work items and worklists in composite portals, replacing the functions of the WorkArea control. The Case Manager and Case Worker portals are enhanced to include the Dynamic Container rather than the older WorkArea control. See Harness and section forms — Adding a Dynamic Container.

Grids

Use additional configuration and navigation options to create customizable grids. Grids can now display filtered data from report definition rules or use nested pages as a data source. You can set focus to a grid row from outside of the grid.

Customize default grid, tree, and tree grid actions, now accessible in a template rule and enable users to expand or collapse row details in an expand pane grid using a custom icon or link that you locate anywhere in the row. See Harness, Section, and Flow Action forms — Adding a Grid layout.

You can enable users to use the keyboard to navigate and open items within grids and tree grids by configuring keyboard events. See Control form — Completing the Control tab. Easily distinguish between a selected row and a row that has focus. See Skin form — Styles tab Layouts — Repeat Grid.

Overlays / Advanced Picker

You can configure buttons, icons, links, and text input controls to launch local actions in an overlay, a panel that overlays the current window. Overlays can display lists, charts, and reports. Users can set and change values in an overlay. Note that overlays do not require user input — the user can dismiss an overlay by clicking outside the overlay area or through an explicit Display>Close action, configured in the local action. See Control form — Completing the Control tab.

Deferred Load

You can now specify an activity to retrieve information for a section configured with Defer Load. This provides the ability to call external services or retrieve data without preventing the rest of the page from loading.

V6.3 includes these enhancements.

When condition enhancements

The Conditions tab of the When form is redesigned to present individual conditions in an interactive tree format. For those conditions that are described completely on that tab, the new format is easier to understand and use. All existing When conditions are automatically converted to this format. See When rule — Completing the Conditions tab.

The when condition rule accepts parameters. See When rule — Completing the Parameters tab.

Survey rules

The optional PegaSurvey RuleSet lets you create and deploy surveys in your applications. You can facilitate data-gathering, opinion-sampling, and information-building tasks: use PegaSurvey to organize questions into logical groupings, dynamically display questions based on the answers to earlier questions, and make answering easy through a convenient user interface deploying radio buttons, checkboxes, and text input areas. This help system documents PegaSurvey features. See Understanding surveys.

Case Manager portal

The tag cloud on the Case Manager portal shows only tags associated with the currently selected application. See Case Manager portal — Using the My Dashboard tab.

Clipboard display

When multiple work items are open in the current portal (such as the Designer Studio or Case Manager portal), each corresponds to a distinct, dedicated Thread. The Threads menu in the Clipboard tool now identifies the work type and work ID that corresponds to each Thread. See About the Clipboard tool.

Other

You can create and update decision tables with thousands of rows. For decision tables with more than 500 rows, editing is assisted by Microsoft Excel.

Decision trees, decision tables, when condition rules, and map values accept parameters.

A new security alert SECU0007 is logged when a requestor attempts to release locks for a separate requestor, if the operator full names do not match.

Two new utility functions pxDoesHandleExist() and pxDoesInstanceExist() and a similar when rule pxDoesObjectExist allow your application to test for the existence of a rule, work item, or other object without creating an activity. These functions and rules do not alter the clipboard and provide faster performance than an equivalent activity that uses the Obj-Open or Obj-Open-by-Handle method.