Help: Using the Clipboard tool

Use the Clipboard tool when developing and debugging to:

Examine property values and messages associated with them
Find the information necessary to reference a property — the page names and the property name
Quickly create, update, delete, and modify pages using the Action menu
Quickly start activities and flows using the Action menu

Your clipboard resides in memory on the server. As you interact with the Clipboard tool at your workstation, you see a static snapshot copy. Choose Refresh from the Action menu at any time to update the snapshot. To interact with your clipboard:

Select a Thread from the right panel Thread menu.
Interact with the tree structure in the left panel to select a page, list, or group.
Review or interact with the right panel.

Review page structure in the left panel

The left panel presents the entire clipboard for the currently selected Thread as a tree, growing from the left.

Click a name or plus sign () to expand any node in the left panel to view the page structure it contains. Click again or click a minus sign () to collapse (hide) the pages within a page.

The clipboard contains three groups of pages:

User Pages — Top-level pages created by your normal processing, sorted alphabetically by page name.
Declared Pages — Read-only declarative pages (created if necessary when accessed, defined by declare pages rules.
Linked Property Pages — Read-only pages retrieved because a harness, section, flow action or other rule contained a property reference based on a linked property. These pages are read-only, and never updated. They are removed automatically whenever your requestor performs any Commit operation.

Three top-level pages are always present:

pxThread — A single system-maintained page known as the Thread page.
pxRequestor — A single system-maintained page known as the requestor page, which contains information about your access roles, RuleSet list, and HTTP protocol parameters.
pxProcess — A single system-maintained page known as the process page, which contains information about the server's Java Virtual Machine and operating system.

Other top-level pages are created during authentication. These correspond to the organization, division, access group, application rule, and organization unit of the operator. These pages are not present for guest users.

Each top-level page may contain other pages that in turn may contain other pages, and so on. For most pages, the class of the page appears in parentheses after the page name and a single space. (For group and list properties, additional parentheses appear around subscripts.)

Every embedded page is defined by a property. Properties of mode Page ( icon), Page Group (), and Page List () may appear as embedded on the clipboard. Pages may contain properties (of any mode) and messages.

The branch structure of the tree in the left panel directly corresponds to the fully qualified name of a property reference. For example, the property reference:

pyWorkPage.pxFlow(VacationRequest).pyConfirmationNote

identifies a Single Value property named pyConfirmationNote embedded on a page () named pxFlow("VacationRequest"), an element of a Page Group () named pxFlow on the top-level user page named pyWorkPage.

The icon and red text identifies page messages.

Square brackets and the term [Refers to ..] indicate a reference property. The text in the square brackets identifies the non-reference page.

Review property values in the right panel

When you select a page in the left panel, all Value List, Value Group, and Single Value properties on that page appear in the right panel, sorted by property name. Property messages appear in red text.

Use the left panel to click the page (either top-level or embedded) that contains the property.

You cannot directly search through the clipboard for a property.

If you don't know what page contains a property:

Use the Designer Studio Search facility to list properties containing the name as a key part.
Review any properties on this list.
Identify the Applies To key part of the property you seek.
Return to the Clipboard tool display. Click the plus signs () on in the left panel to find a page with that class. Class names appear within parentheses following the page name.
Select the page to display the contents of that page.

Values of TextEncrypted properties are encrypted. They appear as blank in this display.

Searching the clipboard

For a value

To find properties containing a known text value:

Select Find from the Action menu.
Type the text that is the full or partial value of the property.
In the Pages box, select a page name or All Pages.
Click Go .

Some clipboard values are Base64-encoded text representing binary objects, such as JPG image files, Word DOC files, or compiled programs. You can't search for a word that appears on the image or within the DOC file.

For a property

You cannot directly search the clipboard for a property name.

Use the Designer Studio's Search facility to identify the Applies To class of the property. Enter the property name. See Designer Studio — Using the Search facility.
Review any properties found with that name.
Identify the Applies To key part of the property you seek.
Return to the Clipboard tool display. Click the plus signs () on in the left panel to find a page with that class. Class names appear within parentheses following the page name.
Select the page to display the contents of that page.

Messages

Page Messages

Below each page in the left panel, find the Page Messages link (). Click Page Messages to view any messages associated with properties on that page. Generally, a message indicates that a property value is invalid.

In addition to the Page Messages page, messages may appear immediately below a property. For example, if you see message(1) below a property, the property value is not valid.

Property Messages

Property messages appear in the right panel in red text.

The Clipboard display doesn't include properties with names that start with pz. These standard properties support internal operations.

Using the Thread and Action menus

If your requestor has multiple threads, use the Thread menu to select which Thread (and so which clipboard) you are viewing. The single thread Standard identifies the Designer Studio session. Each open work item has a dedicated, numbered thread named PegaThread(n) and identifies the work type and work item ID of the work object; for example, PegaThread1 - Audit - A-1221.

Use the Action menu to test a rule without the need to create a test activity that creates the pages and properties expected as starting conditions for the rule.

Changing your clipboard contents or structure may affect the integrity of your system or your application results. Change clipboard values with this tool only in a debugging situation. Deleting pages or saving altered pages may introduce invalid data into the database.

Action menu options that update the clipboard are available only to users who have the hold the clipboardViewerUpdate privilege.

Menu	Description
`Refresh`	Select to cause the Clipboard tool to display the most current pages, properties, and values.
`Refresh Current Page`	Select to cause the Clipboard tool to access and redisplay only a single aggregate property and its elements. The selected aggregate object in the left panel may be of mode `Page`, `Page List`, `Page Group`, `Value List`, or `Value Group`. Information in the top-level page containing the currently selected property is refreshed, and the current property remains selected. The remainder of the clipboard display is not refreshed and possibly stale. This operation is faster than a complete `Refresh` operation, but may result in an inconsistent representation of your clipboard contents. If the property currently selected (or a containing page) was removed and is no longer present in the clipboard, a message appears.
`Find`	Choose `Find` to search through values on one of your clipboard pages, or on all pages. Click `Find` to open a new panel below the right-hand panel. Enter in the `Find` box of this panel one or more text characters that may be present in the value of a `Single Value`, `Value List` or `Value Group` property. In the `Pages` box, select a page name or `All Pages`. Click Go . The system searches the (internal representation of) property values at all levels, and reports the full property reference of any matches and the value (or a segment of the value, if the value is longer than 60 characters). The search is performed on your current clipboard, which may be more up to date than the contents in the Clipboard tool display on your workstation. The display contents may be stale. You cannot search for blanks, non-printing characters or null values. Also, the text of Page-Message clipboard elements is not searched.
`Create Page`	After you choose `Create Page`, enter the page name and the class of the page into the resulting dialog box. You cannot create an embedded page.
`Update Page`	To update the contents of a top-level page, select the page in the left panel and choose `Update Page`. Enter one or more `Single Value` property references and a value for each, or update the values of properties already listed. The order of rows in this panel is not significant. Click Update Page at the bottom of the panel to save your changes to the clipboard page on the server. This does not save the modified page to the PegaRULES database. You can't use the `Update Page` menu item on an embedded page or a declarative page. You can't use this menu item to enter values for a `Value List`, `Value Group`, `Page`, or other aggregate property. You can't enter values for pz properties.
`Delete Page`	To delete a page, select a page in the left panel and choose `Delete Page.` Confirm the deletion in the resulting dialog box. You can't delete a declarative page.
`Execute Activity`	Select a page in the left panel and click `Execute Activity`. The selected page becomes the primary page for the activity. A dialog displays the class of the selected page. Enter the Activity Name key part. Click Parameters to enter values for parameters.
`Save Page`	Select a page and click `Save Page` to save the page to the database. PRPC does not validate properties on the page. This action can introduce invalid data into the database. You can't save a declarative page.
`Start Flow`	To start execution of a flow, select a page (with a class derived from the Work- base class ) and choose `Start Flow`. A dialog box appears. Select a Flow Name (second key part) using SmartPrompt. Enter any parameters that the flow needs.
`Analyze Clipboard`	To review a tabular report showing the approximate size in kilobytes of each clipboard page, the page name and class, the number of accesses (read or update), and date and time of the last access, and passivation history. See Understanding passivation and requestor timeouts. If the `Collect Details` mode is enabled, the display contains stack traces showing how pages were created or deleted and historical information about pages no longer on the clipboard.
`Collect Details`	Click to enable, or disable, automatic collection of detailed clipboard size and access information. A check mark next to this menu option indicates that data collection is active. A pop-up window confirms your menu action. While enabled, select the `Analyze Clipboard` option to review the size and use of each page on the clipboard, including pages that were removed during the data collection period. To eliminate unnecessary processing, disable this facility except when you need the additional detail it provides.

Limitations

Refresh to present current information

As you work, the system creates and updates clipboard pages related to your work. However, these changes are not automatically reflected in the Clipboard tool display. Select Refresh from the Action menu to send the latest clipboard contents to your workstation.

Viewing pz properties

The Clipboard display doesn't include properties with names that start with pz. Such standard properties support internal system operations.

To see pz properties and other clipboard entries that aren't truly properties, right-click in the left panel and select Show XML. To see the contents of unnamed pages, use the Tracer.

What properties don't appear?

The primary pages of some activities are not named and don't appear on the Clipboard display. The parameter page of an activity is not part of the clipboard. Use the Tracer to view these pages.

Properties of mode Java Object, Java Object Group, and Java Object List do not appear on the Clipboard display.

	declarative page, primary page, requestor page, Thread, top-level page
	Understanding page names and reserved pages
	Standard properties on the pxProcess page (Code-Pega-Process class) Standard properties on the pxRequestor page (Code-Pega-Requestor class) Standard properties on the pxThread page (Code-Pega-Thread class)

About the Clipboard tool