Table of contents

Introduction

Pega Interview Questions for Freshers

2.1.

1. What do you mean by workspace or studio in the context of Pega?

2.2.

2. Explain about classes in Pega

2.3.

3. What do you mean by a work object in the context of Pega?

2.4.

4. What do you understand about DCO in Pega?

2.5.

5. What do you know about SLA in the context of Pega?

2.6.

6. What are the different types of SLA?

2.7.

7. Explain the Page-Validate and Property-Validate methods in Pega. What distinguishes them from one another?

2.8.

8. What is the distinction between Edit validate and Edit Input rules?

2.9.

9. How can I store five different work objects in 5 tables in my application?

2.10.

10. What is the inheritance concept in Pega (rules, class)?

2.11.

11. How can we connect several Pega applications?

2.12.

12. How do I store a class instance in a specific database?

2.13.

13. How can I see the values of the activity's local variables?

2.14.

14. What is the Pega ruleset?

2.15.

15. What are the various developer tools utilized by Pega?

2.16.

16. What are the various debugging tools offered by Pega?

2.17.

17. What are StepStatusGood, StepStatusFail rules?

2.18.

18. How to import rules using PZinsky?

2.19.

19. What workspaces are supported in the most recent Pega release?

2.20.

20. What are the many classes that PRPC (Pega Rules Proccess Commander) supports?

Pega Interview Questions for Experienced

3.1.

21. Where assignments will be stored in the Pega rules database?

3.2.

22. Is it feasible to start a flow with an activity? If so, what is the method employed?

3.3.

23. What exactly is a portal in Pega, and where will it be configured?

3.4.

24. In Pega, what are the different categories of requestors?

3.5.

25. What do you mean by DCO in Pega?

3.6.

26. How can you use activity to resolve work objects?

3.7.

27. What is the difference between activity and utility?

3.8.

28. What are the different sorts of flows in Pega?

3.9.

29. What do you mean by SLA (Service Level Agreement)? What is its function?

3.10.

30. What is the Requestor Type in Pega?

3.11.

31. What is Locking in Pega and what are its types?

3.12.

32. What exactly is Forward Chaining?

3.13.

33. What is the name of the table that is used for adding a note in Pega?

3.14.

34. In Routing activity what is the default property used to route the object?

3.15.

35. What exactly is Backward Chaining?

3.16.

36. How can we identify SLA (Service Level Agreement) in Pega?

3.17.

37. What are the various sorts of assignments, and where do they reside in the Pega database?

3.18.

38. What exactly is an access group in Pega, and what does it do?

3.19.

39. How do you call an Activity from Javascript?

3.20.

40. How do we deal with Escalation?

Conclusion

Last Updated: Jun 14, 2024

Medium

Pega Interview Questions and Answers

Author Samikshya Sarangi

Introduction

Pega is a low-code platform that enables businesses to unify their processes and customer experiences from start to finish. Low code is a relatively recent term in the application business. It usually refers to a program that allows you to develop code using a simple interface rather than writing it yourself. These applications assist you in writing code by doing so for you. Instead of learning a programming language, you merely know how to utilize the software, and it does the rest. Drag and drop graphic interfaces make learning how to use the software simple.

Pega addresses one of the modern business's most significant roadblocks: the proliferation of applications and systems. Pega provides a customized platform to allow organizations to get a single view of the client, workflow, and data. Its platform enables the development of totally configurable user interfaces. Because no software installation is necessary, its browser-based apps make it convenient. It enables adaptive analytics to learn from prior behavior.

This blog covers some of the most important and frequently asked Pega interview questions and their answers. This article is intended to help you get a hang of essential questions that will help you to come out with flying colors after your interview with Pega!

To help you understand better, we have divided this article into three sections: Easy level, Medium level, and Hard level. Let’s get started.

Pega Interview Questions for Freshers

This section contains the basic Pega interview questions to build a solid foundation. To establish a strong foundation, we first take up the easy questions.

1. What do you mean by workspace or studio in the context of Pega?

Ans:A workspace is an environment that provides specific tools and features. By using different workspaces to develop and manage your application, you can help team members focus on the tasks that align with their expertise.

Pega Platform™ provides four role-based authoring workspaces, known as studios:

App Studio
Dev Studio
Prediction Studio
Admin Studio

2. Explain about classes in Pega

Ans: Pega Platform groups rules into classes according to their capacity for reuse. Each grouping is a class. Each application consists of three class types.

The Work class contains the rules that describe how to process a case or cases, such as processes, data elements, and user interfaces.
The Integration class contains the rules that describe how the application interacts with other systems, such as the integration assets that connect the application to a customer database or a third-party web server.
The Data class contains the rules describing the data objects used in the application, such as a customer or order items data type.

3. What do you mean by a work object in the context of Pega?

Ans: A work object is the primary unit of work completion in an application and the primary collection of data that a flow operates on. Workers using an application create, update, and eventually resolve and close work objects. Every work object has a unique ID (property pyID), an urgency value, and a status (property pyStatusWork).

4. What do you understand about DCO in Pega?

Ans: Directly Capture Objectives (DCO) is the Pega Express^™ way of collaborating from beginning to end. DCO encourages alignment between stakeholders and drives high-quality engagement between business and IT. DCO is a discipline — a way of working that forms a continuous cycle of collaboration, iteration, and validation.

5. What do you know about SLA in the context of Pega?

Ans: A service-level agreement (SLA) establishes a work completion deadline. Organizations often establish service-level agreements to enforce on-time performance. These obligations range from informal response-time promises to negotiated contracts. It is a mechanism used to define and enforce the expected response or resolution time for a particular task or case. SLAs help in measuring and managing the performance and timeliness of various processes in an application.

6. What are the different types of SLA?

Ans: There are three basic types of SLAs: customer, internal and multilevel service-level agreements.

A customer service-level agreement is between a service provider and its external customers. It is sometimes called an external service agreement.
An internal SLA is between an organization and its internal customer -- this could be another organization, department or site.
A multilevel SLA will divide the agreement into various levels that are specific to a series of customers using the service.

7. Explain the Page-Validate and Property-Validate methods in Pega. What distinguishes them from one another?

Ans: Page-Validate: Use this method to validate all of the properties on a page. If a page has embedded pages, this method recursively validates all of the properties. This method takes a long time and consumes a lot of system resources. To validate specified properties, use the Obj-Validate method in conjunction with the Rule-Obj-Validate rule.

Property-Validate: This method is used to impose restrictions on a property's value. Use the Edit validate rule in conjunction with the Property-Validate method to implement constraints. Multiple properties can be validated using the Property-Validate method.

8. What is the distinction between Edit validate and Edit Input rules?

Ans: Edit Validate: Use the edit validate rule in Java code to validate the property value. To change validate rules, use Property-validate, Rule-Obj-Validate, or Property rules.

Edit Input Rules: Use input rules to convert data the user enters into the appropriate format. If a user enters a date in MM/DD/YYYY format, the edit input rule changes it to DD-MM-YYYY (needed format). We must write java code once more for this transition.

9. How can I store five different work objects in 5 tables in my application?

Ans: For each class, open/create a Data-Admin-DB-Table object and specify the table name. As a result, individual work objects will be placed in the new table you described in the Data-Admin-DB-Table instance. This is a good approach if there are too many object instances for each class.

10. What is the inheritance concept in Pega (rules, class)?

Ans: Inheritance concept in Pega for Rules and Class:

Rules: Inheritance that can maximize rule reuse while allowing for localized overriding as needed. Inheritance, often known as polymorphism, allows a rule written for one class (perhaps an abstract class) to be applied to multiple classes that inherit from it.

Class: To identify available rules, class inheritance searches for rules from a concrete, lower class up the class hierarchy. Class inheritance is classified into two types: directed inheritance and pattern inheritance.

11. How can we connect several Pega applications?

Ans: SOAP(Simple Object Access protocol), HTTP (Hypertext transfer protocol), JMS(Java Message Service) , and MQ (Message Queue) is used.

12. How do I store a class instance in a specific database?

Ans: Within the DB, create a separate DB table for that working class or map to an external DB, and all future saves will be directed to that DB.

13. How can I see the values of the activity's local variables?

Ans: Log message is used to see the values of the activity’s local variables.

14. What is the Pega ruleset?

Ans: In Pega, a RuleSet is a collection of business rules that define an instance. The ruleset is a subset of PegaRULES required to refer to instances in the database.

15. What are the various developer tools utilized by Pega?

Ans: Pega's development tools are Designer and Pega Express.

16. What are the various debugging tools offered by Pega?

Ans: Tracer, Clipboard, SMA(Service Management Agreement), and PLA (Programmable Logic Array) are some of the debugging tools provided in Pega.

17. What are StepStatusGood, StepStatusFail rules?

"StepStatusGood" means a particular step or action has been completed successfully and without problems. It indicates that things are going as planned, and there are no issues to worry about.
"StepStatusFail" means a step or action has not been completed successfully. It indicates a problem, error, or failure during that step, needing attention or correction to proceed with the task or process.

18. How to import rules using PZinsky?

To include or bring in rules using PZinsky (assuming you meant Python's z3 library, as "PZinsky" is not recognized), you follow these steps:

Import the Library: Import the z3 library into your Python script. You do this with the import z3 statement.
Define Rules: Create your logical rules using the functions provided by z3. These rules describe constraints, equations, or logical relationships.
Check Satisfiability: Use z3 to check if your rules are satisfiable, meaning they can be true under certain conditions.
Solve or Analyze: Depending on your use case, you can solve equations, analyze constraints, or find valid solutions based on the rules you've defined.

19. What workspaces are supported in the most recent Pega release?

Ans: Pega's most recent release supports the four workspace types listed below:

App Studio: Helps to build an application without any line of code, it is multichannel and helps in UI development.
Prediction Studio: Its built-in AI power and Decisioning help to Pega find the next best decision.
Admin Studio: It basically manages security, users, the runtime status, and cloud performance for all your apps
Dev Studio: Helps developers to go deeper into Pega’s advanced features.

20. What are the many classes that PRPC (Pega Rules Proccess Commander) supports?

Ans: PRPC is a framework for developing and deploying business process management, customer relationship management (CRM), decision management, and case management systems. Pega PRPC is a Java-based automated backend tool from Pega.

The following are the various classes that PRPC supports:

Base Class: It is the ultimate base class, and its child classes include work-, Data-, Rule-, Assign-, History-, and so on. Pega only supports two kinds of classes: abstract classes and concrete classes.

Abstract Classes: Abstract classes are those that terminate in '-,' and they cannot create any work object instances.
Concrete Classes: Concrete Classes do not terminate in '-' and will generate work object instances.

Pega Interview Questions for Experienced

21. Where assignments will be stored in the Pega rules database?

Assignments in Pega are stored in the pc_assign_worklist table, unless they are specifically configured to be stored in the pr_assign table. This includes assignments for worklists, workbaskets, correspondence, and external systems.

22. Is it feasible to start a flow with an activity? If so, what is the method employed?

Ans: Yes. Activity can be used to start a flow. The method employed in this is called Flow-New.

23. What exactly is a portal in Pega, and where will it be configured?

Ans: A portal is a user interface that appears for Developers or End Users. Portal can be set up in Access Group. Examples: Developer portals, management portals, user portals, admin portals, and so on.

24. In Pega, what are the different categories of requestors?

Ans: The following are the many sorts of requestors in Pega:

Browser requestor: Its name begins with the letter 'H.’This is used to access the Pega Platform portal through HTTP or HTTPS from a web browser, or from a browser displaying a Pega composite application. For requestor sessions that use this instance, the requestor ID starts with the letter H. When the
Batch requestor: Its name begins with the letter 'B.'This is utilized by background processing listeners, services, agents, and daemons. For requestor sessions that use this instance, the requestor ID starts with the letter B. When the PRPC (Pega Rules Process Commander): Agents access group is first implemented, all BATCH requestors have access to it. If you make a modification to Data-Admin-Requestor. When you BATCH so that it no longer has access to the PRPC: Agents access group and then upgrade the Pega Platform, the system may fail to boot.
Application requestor: Its name begins with the letter ‘A’.Listeners and other client systems use this to access the Pega Platform, such as through a service request (other than JSR-168 requests using Rule-Service-Portlet rules). In requestor sessions that use this requestor type instance, requestor IDs that begin with the letter A are used.
PRPC: Unauthenticated access group is first implemented, all BROWSER requestors have access to it.
Portal requestor: Its name begins with the letter 'P.'For HTTP access as a portlet, this is used in conjunction with Service Portlet rules.

25. What do you mean by DCO in Pega?

Ans: DCO is an acronym for Direct Capture of Objectives in Pega. It is made up of resources, tools, application artefacts, and processes for gathering, storing, and processing data on the Pega platform.

26. How can you use activity to resolve work objects?

Ans: To resolve work items using activity, we must take the following steps:

The first step is to open the object.
Second, add the appropriate ticket to your flow or click Finish Assignment.

27. What is the difference between activity and utility?

In Pega, "activity" and "utility" are both pieces of functionality. Activities are like step-by-step instructions that tell the system what to do, often involving data processing or decision-making. Utilities, on the other hand, are small reusable activities that perform specific tasks, like calculations or validations. Think of activities as detailed plans for a task, while utilities are like specialized tools used within those plans to make tasks easier. Both help in building efficient and organized business processes within Pega applications.

28. What are the different sorts of flows in Pega?

Ans: Pega's flow types are as follows:

Process flows
Screen flows
Subflow’s
Straight through process flows

29. What do you mean by SLA (Service Level Agreement)? What is its function?

Ans: SLA is a Rule-Obj-Service Level Rule type instance that may be attached to assignment and work objects. SLA has two time intervals: Goal and Deadline, which reflect the expected time for the assignment and the time to resolve the task object. If an assignment isn't completed within the time restriction, the system can raise it and cancel the entire flow, and so on.

30. What is the Requestor Type in Pega?

Ans: In Pega, the requestor type refers to a requestor that connects to the Pega platform via an external application, an internal background process, or a browser session.

31. What is Locking in Pega and what are its types?

Ans: Locking involves gaining possession of a work item before performing any activity on it and ensuring that only one user performs operations on a work object at a time. As indicated below, there are two forms of locking.

Default Locking: A work object can only be worked on by one user at a time.

Optimistic Locking: This is a new feature in Pega 7 that allows many operators to work on the same object at the same time.

32. What exactly is Forward Chaining?

Ans: Forward Chaining performs automatic property computation by running the declarative rule whenever any of the input property values changes.

For example, if the Perimeter property of a circle is dependent on the radius properties, Forward Chaining causes the Perimeter property to be recalculated if the radius value changes.

33. What is the name of the table that is used for adding a note in Pega?

Ans: The table that is used for adding a note in Pega is pc_data_workattach.

34. In Routing activity what is the default property used to route the object?

Ans: pxRouteTo=Param.AssignTo =” workbasket name” for work basket.s

For work list:

pirouette =Param.Worklist=”true” &&Param.AssignTo =”pxRequestor.pyUserIdentifier” for work list.

35. What exactly is Backward Chaining?

Ans: Backward chaining automates the calculation of the property by executing the declarative rule when the value of the property is required rather than when an input changes.

For example, if the area property is dependent on the length and width properties, the area property is recalculated each time the area property is needed.

36. How can we identify SLA (Service Level Agreement) in Pega?

Ans: To track SLA in Pega, we may utilize the following steps:

By terminating the agent.
By postponing it.
By launching the agent.
Delay it once more.
Select the delayed requestor and then click on the tracer.
Within 60 seconds, route this case to a specific assignment holding the SLA.

37. What are the various sorts of assignments, and where do they reside in the Pega database?

Ans: There are two types of assignments: work-list assignments and work-basket assignments. Pega stores these assignments in distinct worklists.

The pc_assign_worklist stores work-list assignments
The pc_assign_workbasket stores work-basket assignments

38. What exactly is an access group in Pega, and what does it do?

Ans: In Pega, an access group is an example of a Data-Admin-Operator-Access Group class that is used to generate a set of RuleSet for the requestors. It is the developer's responsibility to define access groups and allocate them to distinct users.

The access group is used to manage security based on job duties. It is a Data-Admin-Operator-AccessGroup instance. The following are the different aspects that an access group can control:

Default and available types of works (also called work pools).
Primary rulesets (Access Control to rulesets).
Assigned roles.
Portal layout.
Default ruleset for making changes (Default ruleset whenever the user creates/ saves as a rule).

39. How do you call an Activity from Javascript?

Ans: We call an Activity from Javascript as follows:

HashStringMapactivityKeys = new HashStringMap();
activityKeys.putString(“pxObjClass”, “Rule-Obj-Activity”);
activityKeys.putString(“pyClassName”, workclass);
activityKeys.putString(“pyActivityName”, “HistoryAndAttachments” );
tools.doActivity(activityKeys , workpage, tools.getParameterPage() );

40. How do we deal with Escalation?

Ans: Any processing within a Process Commander application that causes high-priority work objects to become visible to users and managers and to be processed immediately is referred to as escalation. Escalation can happen as a result of a service level rule connected with the flow or as a result of background processing by the Pega-ProCom agent.

Conclusion

In this article, we have discussed Pega interview questions in detail. We started off with a basic introduction about Pega and why it is used. Then, we moved to Pega interview questions and saw the questions ranging from easy to hard level.

We hope that you are now well aware of the Pega interview questions. Also, if you want to explore more such interview-related articles, Coding Ninjas got you covered!

Check our interview-related articles on the given links:

Please refer to our guided paths on Coding Ninjas Studio to learn more about DSA, Competitive Programming, JavaScript, System Design, etc. And also, enroll in our courses and refer to the mock test and problems available. Have a look at the interview experiences and interview bundle for placement preparations.

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