Platform '24.1 release notes

Pega Platform now offers powerful Pega GenAI™ features that can greatly enhance both designing your applications and processing Cases at run time, which helps to optimize work for developers and application users.

During application development in App Studio, you can use Pega Autopilot™ to obtain conversational support, in an interactive pane that retains conversations when you switch the authoring context. The following figure shows the Autopilot pane:

You can also automate creation of Data Objects and integrations in your application. Autopilot can create those elements for you during a conversation in a natural language. For more information, see Pega Autopilot and Data Designer.

At run time, users can converse with Agents by using natural language, to instantly obtain support and required information. Agents can also automate repetitive tasks by performing a wide variety of actions, such as starting a Case, running an Automation or a Flow Action, or retrieve information from a buddy or a Data Page. By default, Agents also process and analyze attachments uploaded by users, which can save time and minimize the risk of human errors.

The following video explains Agents in Pega Platform:

For more information, see Optimizing work with Agents.

For faster Case processing, GenAI Connect Rules now include an option to process attachments to provide Case data. After uploading a document as a part of a Case Lifecycle, the GenAI Connect Rule can extract the related data and populate fields in a Case, saving you time required for manual data extraction. For results that best fit your business scenarios, you can also test GenAI Connect Rules in App Studio, without starting a Case, and compare the results provided by different generative AI models.

The following figure shows a document uploaded by a user and related fields in a Case populated by the GenAI Connect Rule:

For more information, see Creating GenAI Connect Rules in AI Designer in App Studio.

For more information about Pega GenAI features, see Pega GenAI.

For more information, see Blueprint Import Module.

• Landing pages in Portals have been reorganized to support four templates: tabbed, default, and two dashboard templates. The new Default template supports a classic column-based UI, with or without a banner, or a dynamic layout that enables you to position and resize UI components on the page by dragging and dropping them into place in the Preview area.
• The App Studio theme designer in the Settings menu has been updated to include additional settings governing configurations such as the use of white space, background images and gradients, as well as a more granular control over colors in the theme. In addition, the theme designer now includes a quick Brand color setting that can be used for prototyping.
• Constellation applications now support dynamic text Rules, which are a tool for storing and managing text that is displayed in your application but is not included in data and Case processing, such as instructions, labels, and additional information. Dynamic text Rules occur in a number of contexts throughout the application, and support reuse, localization, rich text, and business logic (for example, When Rules).

Pega Platform '25 introduces the following infrastructure and deployment changes that impact backward compatibility and require preparation before an update.

Changes that impact only client-managed deployments:

• Withdrawal of support for virtual machine-based deployments

  IMPORTANT: This change does not impact Pega Cloud environments. The change applies only to client-managed deployments.

  Starting in Pega Platform '25, Pega no longer supports deploying Pega software on virtual machines. Starting in this release, Pega will only provide Pega Platform as a Docker image that you must deploy in a containerized environment.

  CAUTION: Migration to the containerized model requires advanced Kubernetes knowledge and involves intensive planning and testing, which might take a lot of time. Ensure that you prepare ahead and save enough time and resources to complete the update to Pega Platform '25.

  For more information about deploying in containerized environments, see Install and update Pega Platform.

• Removal of Hazelcast

  Starting in Pega Platform ’25, Pega no longer requires Hazelcast for caching and clustering functionalities in Pega Platform. All functionalities previously supported by Hazelcast are now fully addressed by Pega's built-in alternatives, resulting in a more reliable, high-performance system. Before updating to Pega Platform '25, you must remove Hazelcast from your deployment.

  IMPORTANT: Removing Hazelcast is required before updating to Pega Platform '25 in client-managed deployments. For Pega Cloud® environments, Pega removes Hazelcast for you and no client action is required.

  For more information, see the full Removal of Hazelcast release note.

Starting in Pega Platform ’25, you can configure client-managed deployments of Pega Platform to be compliant with the Federal Information Protection Standard (FIPS) 140-3.

FIPS is a set of cyber security standards that are defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and are used by the United States and Canadian governments. The FIPS 140-3 standard is a U.S. government standard that sets security requirements for cryptographic modules in hardware, software, and firmware. It ensures that sensitive government information and controlled unclassified information (CUI) are protected from unauthorized access or tampering. For more information about FIPS, see the National Institute of Standards and Technology website. For more information about FIPS 140-3 standards, see FIPS 140-3 Security Requirements for Cryptographic Modules.

For more information, see FIPS 140-3 compliance mode for client-managed deployments.

You can now apply a separate, stricter Content Security Policy (CSP) rule for Constellation UI Portals when configuring a Constellation application. Previously, all UI Portals for Constellation applications used the same CSP rule. The new CSP rule adds the following two options to the Script-Source and Style-Source directives (these options are cleared by default for both updates and new installs):

• Nonce (Number used once): Generates a new random 128-bit character identifier on every page load or reload. Only scripts with the matching nonce will be run. Select Nonce to protect your resource from inline attacks. Using Nonce eliminates the need to add the hash sources to the Style-Source directive to achieve the same protection. For strict compliance, select Nonce for both Script-Source and Style-Source directives of Constellation UI Portals. Nonce applies to Constellation UI Portals only. It is not used by traditional UI Portals, even if you select it.
• Blob (Binary Large Object): Enables you to restrict the matching of data inline resources to those defined using the Blob data type. If you select the Data option, it automatically includes Blob data types (and filesystem and mediastream data types), even if the Blob checkbox is not selected. You can select Blob only, instead of Data, to allow only Blob data types. As a best practice, select Blob for the Script-Source directive of Constellation UI Portals. Blob can be used by both traditional and Constellation UI Portals.

The following UI updates were made in Dev Studio:

Security tab of the Application Definition:

On the Security tab of Constellation UI applications, the Content security section has been renamed to Content security policy. The section displays the mode options (Reject and Report or Report only) by UI Portal (traditional and Constellation). Previously, you could not apply a separate content security policy to each UI Portal. Helper text has been added that describes each Portal type.

Policy Definition tab of Records > Security > Content Security Policy:

On the Policy Definition tab, checkboxes for Nonce and Blob are displayed in the Script-Source and Style-Source sections. Both checkboxes are cleared by default for all Portal types and for both updates and new installs.

For information about CSP settings for Constellation UI Portals, see CSP settings in Constellation.