Pega - Post Upgrade fixing process

Moving an application to a newer Pega version does not end when the upgrade scripts finish. The rules that were built years ago still have to be revalidated, and some old constructs need to be replaced by their modern equivalents. This post walks through a real assessment from Pega 6 to 7 and the tool we built to find the leftovers.

Upgrade assessment: what we did

1. Built a sample application, SecurityIPApplication, on Pega 6.x to use as a test subject.
2. Exported it as a Rule-Admin-Product (RAP) file and saved it locally.
3. Imported the RAP into a Pega 7.2.2 system.
4. Changed the built on application from PEGARULES:06-02 to 07-10 and saved the application.
5. Logged in to the application to confirm it opened.
6. Fixed ruleset prerequisites. Any ruleset that required Pega-Rules-ProcessCommander was changed to PEGA-PROCESSCOMMANDER:07-10-99.
7. Revalidated and saved the main rule types: sections, harnesses, flow actions and properties.
8. Ran the upgrade utilities, including ConvertFlowactions, UpgradeCSSpyActionAreaConversion and the general upgrade utilities.

What was still wrong after the utilities

• Dynamic Select controls had not been changed to Dropdown.
• Fields still carried inline styles.
• The portal still used Panel Sets instead of Screen Layouts.
• Smart Layouts had not been converted to Dynamic Layouts.

These are typical gaps. The utilities do the mechanical conversions, but they do not modernise the design of every screen.

The helper application

To make the clean-up manageable, we built a small framework application in Pega 7, SL-FW-Upgrade-Work, to find the rules that needed attention:

1. Choose the application name and version to inspect.
2. Choose the rule type to check, and whether to list rules with errors, deprecated rules, or warnings.
3. Click Get Rules. The application fetches the matching rules and shows them in a repeating grid.
4. Open a row to see more detail about the rule and its warnings.

Screenshots

A repeatable checklist

• Back up first, and keep the old RAP.
• Fix ruleset prerequisites before anything else, or the application will not resolve rules properly.
• Run the upgrade utilities, then list the remaining warnings by rule type.
• Fix the high-volume items first, such as Panel Sets and inline styles.
• Retest the main flows with real users before sign-off.

Related reading: upgrading DynamicSelect to Dropdown, in-place vs out-of-place upgrades, and the Upgrade label.