Difficulty identifying triggering mechanism for Standard Agents during migration to Queue Processors

General
1

Hello Pega Community, Good day!

We are currently working on an initiative to modernize our Pega application by replacing legacy Agents with Queue Processors and Job Schedulers.

We are facing challenges specifically with Standard Agents, as their triggering mechanisms are not explicit and difficult to trace.

Challenges:

  • Unable to identify where and how standard agents are triggered

  • No direct references found (e.g., Queue-For-Agent) for these agents

Questions:

  1. What is the recommended approach to identify the triggering mechanism of Standard Agents in Pega?

  2. Are there any tools, logs, or tracing techniques that help in tracking when and why a standard agent gets invoked?

  3. Are there any best practices or migration guidelines specifically for handling standard agents during such modernization efforts?

Any insights or guidance from your experience would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

2

Standard agents are schedule-driven, not event-driven. They run at configured intervals and execute an activity that typically scans the database (using Obj-Browse or RDB methods) to pick records based on certain conditions. This is why their triggering mechanism is not always obvious.

How to identify the triggering logic:

1. Check the Agent rule
  -Review the activity and schedule details. This tells you when the agent runs.

2. Analyze the Agent activity
  -Look for database queries (Obj-Browse, Obj-Open). Identify filter conditions such as status, timestamps, or flags. These conditions determine what records are processed.

3. Trace back the data changes
  -Identify where those conditions are being set (e.g., status updates in flows or activities). This effectively represents the business trigger.

Migration best practices:

  • Identify the pattern:

    • Polling-based logic → Queue Processors
    • Time-based jobs → Job Schedulers

  • Replace table scanning with event-driven processing
    Trigger processing using Queue-For-Processing instead of periodic scans.

  • Extract reusable logic from agent activities before migration.

Finally, Standard agents work on a scheduled polling model, where the trigger is implicit in data conditions. During modernization, it is recommended to move towards event-driven processing for better performance, scalability, and maintainability.

3

Thanks @Aditya_Gopal_Chetty