How to use Broadcast data instance in PEGA?

Before We Begin

In general English, the broadcast is a term used for “spreading information”. PEGA allows us to create short bulletins like Welcome messages or news or message for the day by using Broadcast data instance.

What is a Broadcast Data Instance?

Broadcast Data Instance in PEGA can be used to display any announcement or daily updates or important notes to end-users in their portal.

This is an option available under the Records -> Technical category. It is created as an instance of the Data-Broadcast class. Keys for this class are pyOrganization, pyOrgDivision, and pyOrgUnit implying that there can be only one Broadcast data instance per organization division’s unit.

To create a Broadcast data instance, we need to mention the name of the Organization, Division, and Unit for which the message is applicable.

Messages of up-to 70 characters in length can then be entered.

How to display the Broadcast message?

OOTB section @baseclass.News can be referenced where ever we need to display the Broadcast message we had created.

Let us now try to display a Broadcast message for a simple use case.

Business Scenario

Consider that OSP organization has an application for HR. They want to intimate HR Managers regarding PEGA recruitment drive in their manager portal and want HR Administrators to have the capability to edit the messages anytime regarding the recruitment drive.

Implementation of Broadcast

First, let us create a Broadcast rule. For this, we need to go to Records and select Broadcast from Technical category as shown below:

In the new form for the rule, let us give a short description and enter Organization, Division, and Unit for HR Managers.

This rule has 2 tabs – Message and History. Let us fill the Message tab about the information on PEGA recruitment drive as per the Business Requirement. The message gets stored in pyMessage property inside Data-Broadcast class. When user associated to an organization division’s unit record for which a Broadcast rule is created logs in, the message that was set in Broadcast rule for that organization division’s unit record becomes available in pxRequestor.pyMessage.

Now that the broadcast message is created, we will switch gears to the UI part on where and how to display this message.

PEGA provides an OOTB section @baseclass.News which can be used to display the broadcast message.

pxRequestor.pyMessage is used to display the message. Edit button that is available in the OOTB section allows to edit the broadcast message.

Edit button by default will be visible if the logged in operator has PegaRULES:SysAdm4 privilege as per HasSecuritySysAdmin when rule. Save as the section and associate the Edit button to a different when rule based on the business needs as it is generally not a good practice to give SysAdm4 access to managers or other users of the application.

Local action @baseclass.EditNews is used to edit the message rule. Pre-activity @baseclass.NewBroadcastMessage fetches the Broadcast message associated with the current logged in operator’s Org-Div-Unit. Post activity @baseclass.EditNews, updates the corresponding Broadcast rule with the edited message.

We need to include the OOTB section in the appropriate section/harness so that the Broadcast message can be viewed by HR managers when they log in.

As per our requirement, HR Administrators can edit the message. We need to customize @baseclass.News section and associate a different visible when for Edit button which can check if the current operator is a HR Administrator.

Once these changes are made, let us login as a HR Administrator. We can see that the Broadcast message is displayed on the portal and the operator has an option to Edit the message.

Let us edit the message – say we change the date from Jan 2^nd 2020 to Jan 5^th 2020 and submit.

Let us now open the Broadcast data instance rule. We can observe that the message is updated in the rule.

The next time a user in the organization unit logs in, the portal News area displays the updated message.

Let us log in as HR Manager. We can observe that the edited message is displayed. The manager doesn’t have an option to Edit the message.

Comparison of Broadcast with Field Value

For displaying messages, we can make use of Field values. There are no restrictions on the number of characters to display in case of field value messages. Editing message needs access to Developer portal as field value rule has ruleset version associated to it. Whereas, with broadcast option, message can be easily edited without the need of Developer portal as it doesn’t have any ruleset version associated to it.

Conclusion

We can make use of Broadcast rule to present updates to user’s belonging to a particular Unit and also allow authorized users to edit the messages as needed without needing to login into Developer portal to make the changes.

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