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Pega Mobile

People work in flexible, non-traditional ways, and the ability to connect anywhere at any time has become a necessity for productivity. With the surge of remote work, the expectation for those experiences to be mobile and intuitive is increasing. It is crucial to be agile and rapidly build, modify, or automate to fill process gaps. Additionally, seamless and intuitive user experiences are a universal expectation.

Pega Platform™ provides a comprehensive solution for creating and managing mobile applications. With Pega Mobile Client™, CSRs can access their applications from iOS and Android devices. Develop mobile applications using the same design environment as for web applications.

Pega Mobile provides online and offline capabilities so that CSRs can work without an internet connection. Pega Mobile supports features, for example, data synchronization, push notifications, and mobile device management. Pega Mobile supports the iOS and Android products.

Traditional mobile app approach

The traditional approach to mobile app development is often slow and complex. Solutions commonly follow a channel-centric approach, embedding logic in each separate channel, such as a mobile app. This approach leads to disconnected and frustrating customer experiences, resulting in increased churn rates and maintenance costs because changes require re-coding in each channel.

Pega Mobile

The low-code approach of Pega Mobile simplifies the mobile app development process by taking a Center-out™ approach to business architecture, starting with the customer journey and building out from there. By starting from the center and building out, users can have a consistent experience as the Microjourney® is common across channels, including mobile. Any updates to the application are instantly reflected in the environment to which you deployed. It is not necessary to use a native development or test environment to build a Pega Mobile app.

In the following image, click the + icons to learn about the differences between the traditional approach to building a mobile app and the Pega Mobile approach:

Offline processing

Offline-enabled mobile apps are helpful for users who work in locations without network connectivity. By using offline-enabled apps, users can create new Cases for Case Types that developers enable for offline processing. Additionally, users can process Assignments within offline-enabled Cases while working offline. Data synchronization between the mobile device and the server occurs automatically when the mobile device is online.

Prerequisites

A Pega Platform™ application with a mobile channel configured for the application.

Approach

  • Create an offline-enabled mobile app in Pega Platform. 
  • Configure Case Types for offline access. 
  • Use App Studio functionalities and avoid custom code. 
  • Identify and enable appropriate Case Types for offline processing. 
  • Identify a Stage with offline Steps. 
  • Configure a reconciliation process after the offline Stage to handle conflicts. 
  • Define a data synchronization strategy (for example, full versus delta synchronization). 
  • Define a strategy to improve data synchronization speed. 
  • Enable caching data in offline-enabled apps to help users begin work quickly. 
  • Disable server-side postprocessing in offline-enabled Cases to avoid redundant actions and increase app performance. 

Case Type considerations

When multiple users must perform the same offline Task, create a child Case to perform the Task independently.

Process design considerations

  • Pega Mobile apps typically rely on the server for various UI and processing features, and an unavailable server disrupts those features. Use offline-supported flow processing features, controls, and actions. For more information about which Rules have support offline, see Understanding offline features
  • You cannot place rules such as activities and smart shapes in the offline Stage. However, you can place remote system updates and notifications at the end of the offline Stage. 
  • Avoid using declarative indexes in offline-enabled apps to prevent duplicate index entries in the database. 
  • Rules that work in offline-enabled apps do not support parameters.

During application design, it is important to consider that mobile devices have slower processing speeds than desktop devices. As a mobile app developer, prioritize performance over web applications. Follow these best practices to ensure a modern and consistent user experience: 

  • Design a simple, efficient, and consistent user interface. 
  • Use the out-of-the-box user interface elements, design templates, and default rules provided to create a mobile-ready application. 
  • Apply a responsive and adaptive user interface design to ensure that your application's content is displayed correctly on any device, regardless of its Type, size, or operating system. 

UI architecture recommendations for mobile apps

In Pega Platform™ '23, the recommended UI architecture for mobile apps is Constellation. There are two available UI architectures for mobile apps and one legacy design system:

Constellation

The latest Pega UI offering for low-code configuration and efficient development. Constellation apps require less effort to use and maintain. Templates and prefabricated components help reduce time to value and eliminate the need for deep Pega Platform knowledge and front-end expertise. Constellation provides a new paradigm but includes fewer features and a prescriptive experience. Constellation apps use native Android and iOS components to create a new run-time interface.

Traditional UI

Features the familiar Theme Cosmos design system. Based on a front-end UI library, the section-based traditional UI architecture helps you build apps by relying on ready-to-use templates, patterns, and themes, which you can also customize to fit your business requirements. Traditional UI apps support a wide variety of mobile features. The interface of Theme Cosmos apps relies on web components.

UI Kit

A legacy design system for traditional architecture that is no longer actively developed. UI Kit consists of a sample end-user UI in design resources, such as rules and skins.

Recommendations for new mobile apps

Select Constellation as the UI architecture for your new app. Constellation apps offer a variety of mobile features, ensure high performance, and provide a great experience for users. 

Recommendations for existing mobile apps that use UI Kit

Move your app from UI Kit to Constellation or the traditional UI architecture with Theme Cosmos for optimal performance results and an improved user experience.

Adding offline mobile capabilities with an existing Constellation app

Suppose you create an online-only application but want to add offline mobile features later. In that case, you can do so in your Constellation application development if the application initially supported offline use on creation. Constellation apps do not support offline directly, but you can add offline support by designing your Constellation app and a traditional UI app to share the same parent framework application.

For more information, see Designing Constellation applications to support offline mobile features.

Security mechanisms for mobile apps

You can use security mechanisms to ensure that your Pega Mobile Client-based app meets your company's security requirements. These mechanisms consist of an authentication method and an optional app lock. Authentication methods require users to validate their identity upon sign-in by providing credentials to their account. An app lock secures the app by displaying a lock screen when signed-in users reopen the app. Users then unlock the app with one of the available unlocking mechanisms, such as a fingerprint scanner. With an enabled app lock, users enter account credentials only upon first sign-in and then continue to access the app with a selected unlocking mechanism.

Pega Mobile Client provides several authentication methods for mobile apps, including Pega Platform account authentication, Single sign-on (SSO) authentication, and Access without authentication. Pega Platform account authentication allows users to sign into the app using their Pega Platform account credentials. This method supports multi-factor authentication (MFA), which enables users to provide additional identity factors, such as a unique six-digit PIN that users receive in an SMS message. To enable MFA, edit the out-of-the-box Pega Platform authentication service. For more information, see Multi-factor authentication with a one-time password.

By using SSO authentication, users sign in to the app through an external authentication service, such as Google or Amazon Web Services. Users can either select an authentication service from a list of all enabled services or use one authentication service for all users to access the app. Pega Mobile Client supports OpenID Connect and Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0 authentication services. For more information about creating custom authentication services, see Creating an authentication service

Access without authentication allows users to access the app without authentication. The app generates an operator for each user that accesses the app. 
 
To increase security and improve the user experience, configure the app to display a lock screen every time that signed-in users reopen the app. You can also display the lock screen after users are inactive for a specified period or after sessions last longer than a specified period. 
 
After turning on the automatic app lock, select one of the available unlocking mechanisms so that users can quickly and conveniently unlock the app. Pega Platform offers various mechanisms for unlocking your apps, including native biometrics and device locks, native biometrics lock and app PIN, and App PIN. Users can configure the app PIN after the first successful sign-in and can reset the PIN by repeating the authentication process. Specify the number of characters for the app PIN.

Pega Mobile AI features

Pega Mobile also has features with which you can turn any voice or text-based channel into an AI-powered virtual assistant that uses natural language processing (NLP) and text analytics to deliver hyper-personalized engagement across today’s most popular channels. As a result, you can assist your customers where and when they need it.

For more information, see Intelligent Virtual Assistant.

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