Migrating to the interaction portals
Pega Customer Service provides two user portals: the Interaction Portal (for traditional contact center users, Customer Service Representatives, and Customer Service Representative Manager) and the Account Manager Portal (for back office, research, and sales users). These portals include a distinct set of features and behaviors that are different from those in the legacy portals from earlier versions of Pega Customer Service. Migrate to the new portals to use the latest improvements to the Pega 7 Platform and the Pega Customer Service application.
The legacy portals continue to be included with Pega Customer Service and will be available for some time. While you are encouraged to move to the new portals, they are not a requirement for upgrading to Pega Customer Service 7.1.3 or later versions. However, most of the UI investment is focused on the Interaction Portal and Account Manager Portal, and support for new features in Pega Customer Service or the Pega 7 Platform might be limited or unavailable in the legacy portals.
Advantages of the Interaction Portal and Account Manager Portal
The new portals provide an improved user experience with an interface that is modern, intuitive, and efficient. The user experience is designed to keep customer data and context always at the fingertips of the CSR, while limiting the need to click and navigate around a complex user interface (UI).
Key advantages of the Interaction portal include:
- Auto-generated UI – The portal and its components are built using the Pega 7 Platform User Interface capabilities, which significantly reduce the amount of manually built user interface. This improves portal performance, makes it easier to maintain and faster to develop, and lets it evolve in sync with the capabilities of the Pega 7 Platform.
- Consistent Omni-Channel experience – Interactions in every channel follow a familiar and consistent look and feel, making it easier to work across multiple channels without requiring additional training. Application styling is configured by using the skin rule.
- Enhanced user experience – The new UI provides an enhanced user experience with an interface that allows users to easily access the customer data while processing cases. You can support multiple cases and multiple customers concurrently to improve overall efficiency.
- Easy access to legacy data using Pega Live Data (Data Pages) – Live Data simplifies the use of data in business processes by automatically applying the right data, in the right places, at the right time.
- Accessibility support – The new portal supports the accessibility features of the Pega 7 Platform.
Differences between the Interaction Portal and the legacy portal
There are differences in the behaviors, functions, and design of the legacy portals and the new Interaction Portal and Account Manager Portal. Some features that you use in the legacy portals might not be available in the new portals or might behave differently.
The following table summarizes some of the key features in the legacy portals that either have changed or are no longer available with the Interaction Portal and the Account Manager Portal. Review this information before you upgrade to the new portals, so that you can plan for the changes in order to achieve the greatest benefit from the new portals.
Legacy portal feature | Support for that feature in the new portals |
|---|---|
Research interactions are temporary objects and are not committed to the database. | Support for temporary interaction objects are extended. Portal interactions use data pages keyed on .pyID.Research interactions are available for interaction reports. |
The maximum open interactions and cases is set in the portal gadget. | Maximum documents (interactions and service cases) is limited to 16 by default. This setting can be overridden by updating pyMaxDocs in the Rule-File-Form class and the EmbedHarness-Section class. |
Leveraging thread family pages to share data across service cases on an interaction. | Thread families are not used in the new portals. Data pages are parameterized, and the values are set at the requestor scope to provide visibility to multiple threads. Pages are cleared from memory when the interaction is closed. You should migrate thread family data pages into requestor scope pages when moving to the new portals. |
Composite tabs are configured in the Interaction Driver (tabbed navigation) or in the section (classic navigation). Tabbed navigation uses distinct harness rules for each interaction. | Composites and composite tabs are contained in the CPMCompositesContainer section. Tab visibility is set on the section rule and not in the driver. |
User-configurable hot keys are available in user preferences. | User-configurable hot keys are not supported. |
Users can tear off the composite harness and display it in a separate browser window or on a second monitor. | The composite is embedded in the harnesses as an included section and cannot be torn off. |
Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is supported for Pega 7 Platform versions. | IE8 is not recommended and is not supported in ML9 or later versions of the Pega 7 Platform. |
Starting activities are used to launch cases from the driver. Starting activities are configured on the Intent Task rules. | The Intent Task rule configuration requires the class and flow name to launch a service case. Starting activities are no longer supported or required. These changes require an update to your application’s Intent Task rules. |
Interactions created in the legacy portal can be opened only in the legacy portal. | Interactions created in the legacy portal cannot be opened from the Interaction Portal. Service processes created in the legacy portal can be processed in the Interaction Portal. |
Child interactions (sub-interactions) are launched by using the LaunchSubInteraction control. | The LaunchSubInteraction control is no longer used. Child interactions are launched by using the createWork API. |
The Express Action control (CPMLaunchServiceProcess) is used to create links that launch service cases from outside the Interaction Driver menu (for example, from the composite). | The Express Action control is no longer required. To launch cases from outside the driver menu, configure links or buttons with a standard action set that uses the createWork API to create the case |
To change interaction context from the composite, the CPMSelectContext control is applied to a list of accounts or other elements, and configured to reset the customer context. | Changing the context is done by using standard Pega 7 Platform UI elements (local flow action and repeat grid) and also an action set that sets the context on the selection of a row within the grid. The CPMSelectContext control is no longer used. |
The interaction flows CAInteraction and CAInteractionDriver control interaction processing and might have been customized in your local implementation. | The interaction flows in the new portal are CPMInteraction and CPMInteractionDriver. Customer-specific customizations to the old CAInteraction flows must be ported to these new flows if these customizations are still required. |
Wrap-up is handled as a step in the interaction flow. | Wrap-up is handled by the CPMWrapup flow. Any customizations to the old CAWrapUp flow must be ported. A quick wrap-up option is available in the Interaction Driver rule. |