Application Design and Build (Hands-On Exam): Case Life Cycle, Data, UI, Integrations, and Testing
The Application Design and Build hands-on exam tests whether you can construct a working Pega application in App Studio: case life cycle, data model, views, routing, integrations, validation, and test coverage. The exam rewards solutions that use declarative, guardrail-compliant rules rather than procedural workarounds.
Model the case life cycle first
Stages express the case's high-level states; processes contain steps and can run in parallel; steps are assignments or automations. Decide whether a process is case-wide or stage-only, and use alternate stages for exception paths rather than building parallel case types. Status values should reflect business meaning and drive reporting. Use routing and service levels at the process or step level, not as after-the-fact workarounds.
Build data and UI with declarative rules
Create data types for reusable business entities and relationships; use data pages to source them, and savable data pages when users edit records. Prefer data transforms for mapping and decision tables or decision trees for branching; reserve activities for procedural integration or looping that declarative rules cannot express. In Constellation, compose views and landing pages rather than custom HTML; keep UI configuration in the application layer.
Worked example
An expense approval case has Submit, Review, and Pay stages. The Submit process has a step with a form view bound to an Expense data type; a validation rule rejects amounts over 5,000 without a receipt. A decision table sets approval level from amount and cost center, and a service level escalates after two days. The Review process routes to the manager by skill. Reasoning: declarative validation and decision rules are testable and visible; the data page caches the expense record; the SLA is attached to the assignment, not a separate job scheduler.
Traps
- Using an activity where a data transform or decision table would do; it hides logic and fails guardrails.
- Hard-coding endpoint URLs; use data pages or DSS-backed connectors.
- Forgetting error handling on REST connectors, so case processing hangs.
- Building stage-only processes when the work must persist across stages.
- Skipping Pega Unit tests for automations and scenario tests for the case life cycle.