Request

In an effort to ensure the ongoing security of our products and services, SAP Concur has issued a new concursolutions.com SSL certificate. The current certificate will expire on 16 March 2019.

Any customer who has pinned this expiring certificate will need to update to the new certificate prior to 16 March 2019. If the pinned certificate is not updated prior to 16 March 2019, your organisation and users will experience disruption to SAP Concur products and services.

Customers who have not pinned the certificate do not need to take any action as the new certificate is updated automatically. Most customers do not pin the certificate.

Please be aware: As an enhancement to our Security and Compliance programme, this certificate will be updated on an annual basis.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This update provides ongoing security for our products and services.

SAP Concur is transitioning to a new email infrastructure for outbound email from our services to SAP Concur users. Because of this, companies who filter inbound email based on the sending IP address must add new IP addresses to their Safe Sender list to ensure that their users receive email from SAP Concur.

Initially, the issue described here affected only companies that use Concur Expense. Starting in January, email from other SAP Concur services (such as Travel and Concur Pay) will move to the new email infrastructure.

We will continue to add other services throughout the first quarter of 2019. Please monitor the release notes for more information about the timing of the additional changes.

SAP Concur has provided a release note about the updated email notifications for several months. Be aware that we will discontinue this release note in two months.

IMPORTANT

Note the following:

• Be aware that the email content has not changed – just the look and feel has been updated.
• The changes will appear over time. Each product team (Expense, Invoice, Travel, etc.) decides when to use the new format. Timing will be based on resource availability and the priority of other scheduled enhancements.
• Do not expect that all product emails will change at the same time. For example, perhaps Expense approval email will be first, and then other Expense notifications will follow.
• There is no assigned end date to the project. Expect that the changes may take longer than a year.

All companies must take all reasonable steps to protect the personal and sensitive information of their employees. As per recommended security-related best practices, remember that custom fields should not contain personal and sensitive data.

NEXT STEPS

If your company is currently using custom fields to store personal or sensitive data (for example, Social Security numbers, family member names or any other personally identifying information), you should plan to remove this information from your existing fields within the service and modify your current configuration.

For additional information, refer to the FAQ (English Only).

SAP Concur Support Portal

Prior to 2017, Authorised Support Contacts (ASCs) using the SAP Concur support portal were required to answer security questions prior to interacting with support. This feature was retired while it was being redesigned.

As of 3 January, the feature is again available.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: Customers appreciate this feature because it provides another layer of security – it prevents someone from impersonating:

• An ASC and then requesting an improper or unexpected configuration change

  – or –

• An end user and then accessing their confidential data

Request

SAP Concur is planning to add a new Sign In page, providing an updated login experience for users who log in with a user name and password credentials. Current Single Sign-On (SSO) users will log in without having to enter additional credentials. This feature is planned for 2019.

The new Sign In page feature includes the following:

• Two-step login: provides enhanced security, meets current industry standards and provides a better login success rate
• Multi-account login: allows administrators to log in with multiple accounts
• Password hint removal: provides better security for users and SAP Concur
• User avatar: enhances the user experience (planned for a future release)

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature provides better security and a faster, convenient experience for users logging in to SAP Concur products and services.

To simplify the Training Administration page, the functionality and content will be changing.

In addition to content changes, access to the Training Administration page will move from Company Admin to Tools.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: These changes will make the Training Administration feature easier to find and use.

SAP Concur is retiring the functionality in the Test User Admin feature that removes the transactions of test users from Concur Expense, Concur Invoice, Concur Travel and Concur Request.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change will allow SAP Concur to devote more resources to development and maintenance of features that are used by many or most of our clients.

Single Sign-On allows users to access multiple applications using one set of login credentials. Currently, SAP Concur has two methods for signing in: with a user name and password or using SSO with identity provider (IdP) credentials, such as a user's login credentials for their organisation.

SAP Concur is planning to add a Manage Single Sign-On (SSO) feature to Concur that provides Concur clients with a self-service option for setting up SSO for their organisation. SSO is currently supported for Concur Expense, Invoice, Request and Travel.

Other SAP Concur products and services are outside the scope of this initial release.

The new Manage Single Sign-On (SSO) feature will be accessible from the Administration > Company > Company Admin page.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature provides Concur clients with a self-service option for setting up SSO.

Budget

In a future release, workflows will be available for Budget. Workflows define how the system routes invoices, expense claims and requests through approval and processing steps. The flexible workflow feature for Budget that SAP Concur offers allows companies to design workflows specifically tailored to their unique needs.

Without budget review, budgets may become fully consumed well before the end of a period or year leaving an organisation with limited options and budget owners with, for example, exceeded budgets. In addition, early spending means that more important (to the organisation) spending will be declined because lesser important spending consumed the budget early on.

Combining budget review in the workflow adds value. Audit rules and workflow step rules can help organisations to add in controls when it makes sense to fine tune to an organisation's specific needs.

Equally important is the determination when a spending item is regarded as committed toward a budget. In most organisations, the commit is when a spending item is paid; it went through most if not all approval steps. In other organisations, the commit occurs much earlier. As soon as a purchase request or an authorisation request is approved, it is regarded as "promised".

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature will provide clients with control over the budget spend to, for example, avoid exceeded budgets too early in a budget period or budget year.

Budget Insight

Budget Insight is a budget management tool that is being retired on 30 June 2019. Clients who want to use budget functionality are recommended to purchase the new Budget product that SAP Concur released earlier this year. The new Budget feature offers greater functionality, an improved UI and additional integrations with SAP Concur products. Most notably is the inclusion of additional expense data from Concur Expense, Concur Invoice, Concur Travel and Concur Request (previously only data from Concur Expense and Concur Request were available).

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The retirement of Budget Insight will provide clients with the opportunity to purchase the new Budget product, which gives greater value to clients by making budgets visible, actionable and near real-time.

General

This information will no longer appear in the release notes.

For more information about deactivated users, refer to the General Information: Archiving Deactivated User Data Fact Sheet.