Concur Invoice Standard Edition Administration Help

March 2021 Travel Standard Edition Admin Summary

Initial Post

Release Note Summaries

The items in this section are summaries of the release notes for this month. The Standard Edition release notes are accessible from What's New - Standard Edition

Administration

**Ongoing** New User Administration Pages (Standard Edition Only)

On February 11, SAP Concur made new Add User and Edit User pages available to all Standard edition clients. Clients can opt-in to use the new pages and can provide feedback on the pages through a survey.

The functionality of these pages is the same as the functionality of the preexisting Create User and Edit User pages. The format of the pages has changed and the fields on these pages have been reorganized.

On March 11, 2021, thenew Add User and Edit User pages became the default pages and clients now have the option to revert to the current pages.

On April 8, the new Add User and Edit User pages will replace the current Create User and Edit User pages for all clients and the option to revert to the current pages will be removed.

These changes provide a simpler, more efficient experience for user administrators.

Profile

Enforce Travel Profile API LastModifiedDate Parameter

In the current Travel Profile 2.0 API, the request to get travel profile summaries has one required parameter: LastModifiedDate. This allows users to get profile summaries of other users whose profiles have changed since that date. SAP Concur development discovered a defect where this required parameter is not enforced. So today, if a user omits the parameter LastModifiedDate, they receive profile summaries for all of their users.

Beginning in February 2021, SAP Concur development enforced the inclusion of the LastModifiedDate parameter, as documented. Users who omit LastModifiedDate, will receive an error.

For users who would like to get profile summaries for all of their users, they can set LastModifiedDate to 1900-01-01T12:00:00.

Fixing this defect to match current documentation ensures a consistent and improved experience for all users.

Miscellaneous

Service Description Guide Link Added to the Help Menu

SAP Concur has added the Service Descirption Guide link to the Help menu on the SAP Concur home page. This change is provided in accordance with SAP Concur Legal requirements.

This update allows access to the Service Description guide from within SAP Concur products.

**Ongoing** Deprecation of HMAC Initiates Migration to SSO Self-Service

SAP Concur support for Hash-Based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) is being deprecated. Travel Management Companies (TMCs) and SAP Concur personnel are currently assisting customers who use HMAC to migrate to SAP Concur SAML v2 SSO (SAML v2).

SAP Concur provides a Single Sign-On self-service option that enables client admins to setup their SAML v2 connections without involving an SAP Concur support representative.

This change provides better security and improved support for users logging in to SAP Concur products and services.

**Ongoing** SAP Concur Legacy File Move Migration

This release note is intended for the technical staff responsible for file migrations with SAP Concur solutions. For our customers and vendors participating in data exchange, SAP Concur solutions is maintaining our file transfer subsystem to provide greater security for those file transfers.

SAP Concur is in the process of migrating entities that currently use a legacy process for moving files to a more efficient and secure file routing process that relies on APIs.

These changes provide greater security and efficiency for file transfers.

Planned Change Summaries

The items in this section are summaries of the changes targeted for future releases. SAP Concur reserves the right to postpone implementation of – or completely remove – any enhancement/change mentioned here.

IMPORTANT: These Planned Changes may not be all of the upcoming enhancements and modifications that affect this SAP Concur product or service. The Planned Changes that apply to multiple SAP Concur products and/or services are in a consolidated document. Please review the additional Planned Changes admin summaries available in the March 2021 Shared Planned Changes Standard Edition Admin Summary.

Flight

**Planned Changes** CIBT – Retirement of Legacy Integration

In February 2020, SAP Concur and CIBT launched a new integration method through the Concur App Center, where the new CIBT app is available since then. The legacy integration method with CIBT is still supported during a transition period but SAP Concur will eventually retire the Legacy Batch File protocol integration method. The original retirement date announced with the release notes in February 2020 was November 2020. To give our customers and business partners more time for the transition and ease a little the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic may have had on some organizations, SAP Concur decided to extend the transition period. The retirement will be communicated prior to the release.

The CIBT service is available for additional countries. Travelers whose profiles are associated to a Concur Travel configuration based in Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Norway or Sweden can now benefit from CIBTs visa services.

CIBT has integrated with SAP Concur’s Itinerary API and Travel Profile API and has released an App Center Connector to facilitate the continuous, real-time flow of itineraries to better serve clients and travelers.

CIBT will be able to support clients and travelers in more countries and with a more stable, scalable integration. The new integration method also reduces configuration effort for admin users in Concur Travel.

**Planned Changes** Gogo Inflight Wi-Fi Decommission

Concur Travel currently provides scheduled Wi-Fi availability for a flight, and the ability to purchase Wi-Fi access in advance for a select number of airlines via Gogo Inflight Wi-Fi.

The feature was introduced in the early days of in-plane Wi-Fi when this capability was less widely available.

Targeted for the April 2021 release, this feature will be decommissioned for the following reasons:

  • Most users purchase this product in-flight rather than in advance; accordingly, it is not optimal to have this item for purchase in the air shopping path of the booking tool.
  • Other Wi-Fi options are available to travelers in addition to the Gogo Inflight Wi-Fi product. The Gogo Inflight Wi-Fi indicator icon for scheduled flights does not fully reflect of available Wi-Fi offerings and capabilities across the entire global airline landscape.
  • eReceipts are not supported (requires manual reimbursement process for travelers).
  • The Concur Travel vision for Flight includes the introduction of more comprehensive and universal coverage of airline product details, including Wi Fi offering by flight.
**Planned Changes** Park ‘N Fly Decommission

Concur Travel currently provides travelers the capability to purchase Park ‘N Fly off airport parking near certain airports with a discounted rate at the time of booking.

This feature was provided to offer a cost-effective alternative to on-airport parking at many airports in the United States.

Targeted for the April release, Park N Fly becomes a maintained feature (feature requests or support cases will no longer be accepted). Targeted for the June release, this feature will be decommissioned for the following reasons:

  • Continued pre-pandemic declines in usage of Park ‘N Fly booked via Concur Travel, combined with requirements to maintain the service and necessary functional updates (such as airport locations due to permanent Park ‘N Fly location closings) makes future investment in this feature uneconomical.
  • Other discounted off-airport parking options are available to travelers in addition to the Park ‘N Fly product. A generic parking solution that is limited to US locations does not fully reflect all offerings and capabilities across the global off-airport parking landscape.
  • eReceipts are not supported (requires manual reimbursement process for travelers).
**Planned Changes** Travelport Seat Map Upgrade

Concur Travel now supports a new version of seat maps using the Travelport Universal API (uAPI) platform.

The SAP Concur Dev team will run a pilot with pre-selected customers and TMCs, targeted for the first week of April. The new seat map is targeted for release to all customers by end of the second quarter.

The new seat map user experience is accurate and reliable, considering the customer’s Frequent Flyer status and the fare type selected. The old seat maps did not account for either of these.

The new seat map provides an improved seat selection success rate as we now have better understanding of seat availability.

Priority (P2) Communications

**Planned Changes** Travel P2 Communications and Personalized Concur Open (PCO)

Concur Travel Priority 2 (P2) Communications are currently published and available on a concurtraining.com landing page. Targeted for April 2021, the Travel P2s will be published on the Personalized Concur Open dashboard. At the same time, the concurtraining.com landing page for P2s will be archived. They will no longer be maintained for any new P2 communications.

TMCs and clients will be able to view P2 notifications in a similar format with a description of the issue, regular updates, and resolution. TMCs and clients will be able to subscribe for P2 notifications via email at https://open.concur.com in a manner that is similar to that for P1 notifications.

Profile

**Planned Changes** Canonical Values Enforcement for Name Prefix, Name Suffix, and Preferred Language

Currently, SAP Concur solutions doesn’t enforce any validation for the NamePrefix, NameSuffix, and PreferredLanguage fields via the Travel Profile v2 API. As a result, data provided or updated via the API is often nonsensical and potentially exposes personal information in those fields (e.g. user’s loginID in the prefix field.) Even though the user interface provides drop-down values for users that ensures that user-entered values are valid, the Travel Profile v2 API does not.

SAP Concur will start enforcing canonical values for these three fields, in two phases:

  1. Targeted for April 2021, existing values that are not on the list of canonical values for these three fields will be returned to callers of the Travel Profile v2 API GET requests as empty strings.
  2. Targeted for May 2021, any updates to these three fields that don’t conform to the lists of canonical values will be set as an empty string in the user’s profile, and the Travel Profile v2 API will return an error.

Reduction of risk in sharing personal data in unintended ways. More consistent user data will result in better stability and fewer escalations.

**Planned Changes** Removing User Profile Picture Functionality

SAP Concur will remove the user profile picture functionality, including the ability to update and display the user’s picture in the My Profile - Personal Information page.

Profile picture functionality is utilized by very few SAP Concur users. Ongoing maintenance requirements have made the cost of maintaining this feature infeasible, relative to its value provided to users.

**Planned Changes** Set HasNoPassport Field via Travel Profile v2 API

Previously, the HasNoPassport field was set automatically by Concur Travel.

  • If a user had a passport in their profile, the HasNoPassport field was set to FALSE.
  • If a user checked the I do not have a passport checkbox in the Profile page, the HasNoPassport field was set to TRUE.

There was no way to set it directly via the Travel Profile v2 API.

With this change, Concur Travel will allow TMCs or partners, who are permitted to read and write to the Passport Visa information scope, PASSV, to set this field directly when calling the Travel Profile v2 API.

Users who have had their passport information provided by a system (for example, their employer’s Human Resources or TMC) via the Travel Profile v2 API will have the HasNoPassport flag correctly set and correctly displayed in the User Profile UI.

**Planned Changes** XML Profile Sync No Longer Available as of December 31, 2021

The XML Profile Sync, which is used to synchronize Concur Travel user profile data with TMC partners, will no longer be available, targeted for the end of 2021. We advise all partners to engage with SAP Concur representatives to adopt the Travel Profile v2 API for managing Travel User profiles.

The XML Profile Sync was officially decommissioned in 2016 due to instability and other issues. The Travel Profile v2 API was built to replace this legacy synchronization process. It has now reached a level of stability and maturity that there is no longer any reason to maintain multiple profile sync options.

Client Notifications

The items in this section provide reference material for all clients.

SAP Concur Non-Affiliated Subprocessors

The list of non-affiliated subprocessors is available here: SAP Concur list of Subprocessors (English Only)

Monthly Browser Certifications

Monthly browser certifications, both current and planned, are available with the other SAP Concur monthly release notes, accessible from What's New - Standard Edition