February 2022 Shared Changes Professional Edition Admin Summary
Initial Post
Release Note Summaries
This document contains shared release note and planned changes summaries. Shared release notes and planned changes apply site-wide or to multiple products. For features and changes that apply to a single product, refer to the product-specific admin summary.
File Transfer Updates
**Ongoing** Rotating PGP Key for File TransfersApplies to: Travel, Expense, Invoice, Request, Intelligence | Professional & Standard
Files transferred to SAP Concur products must be encrypted with the SAP Concur public PGP key, concursolutionsrotate.asc.
concursolutionsrotate.asc
Key file is available in client’s root folder
Key ID 40AC5D35
RSA 4096-bit signing and encryption subkey
Key expires every 2 years
Client is responsible for replacing the key before it expires
Next expiry date: 4 September 2022
SAP Concur plans to replace the current rotating public PGP key in the client’s root folder 90 days before the expiration date
The SAP Concur legacy PGP key (key ID D4D727C0) will be decommissioned on 11 October 2022. You must switch to using the rotating PGP key before that date. Files encrypted with the legacy PGP key will not be processed after 10 October 2022.
This announcement pertains to the following file transfer DNS endpoints:
st.concursolutions.com
mft-us.concursolutions.com
vs.concursolutions.com
st-eu.concursolutions.com
mft-eu.concursolutions.com
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The rotating public PGP key provides greater security for file transfers.
Invoice Capture and Expense Receipt Handling
CFDi Version 4.0 Now Supported (Mexico)Applies to: Expense, Invoice | Professional & Standard
With the 22 January 2022 release, Concur Invoice and Concur Expense support the new Comprobante Fiscal Digital por Internet (CFDi) version 4.0 format provided by Mexican tax authorities. This format will be the mandatory format beginning 1 May 2022. Regulations in Mexico require that a CFDi document in XML format be attached to every submitted invoice and reimbursable expense.
Clients have the option to send tax documentation using either CFDi version 3.3 or 4.0 until 30 April 2022, when version 3.3 will be deprecated.
With the availability of the new CFDi format, users reporting to Mexican tax authorities and submitting invoices and reimbursable expenses with CFDi attachments will be in compliance with current Mexican tax regulations.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This update supports users reporting to Mexican tax authorities who need their invoice or receipt and attached CFDi tax document submitted as a single invoice in Concur Invoice or reimbursable expense in Concur Expense.
Miscellaneous
**Ongoing ** SAP Concur Homepage ChangesApplies to: Travel, Expense, Invoice, Request | Professional & Standard
In Q4, 2021, SAP Concur began redirecting clients to a new homepage. The appearance of the new homepage is identical to the previous SAP Concur homepage. The new homepage has enhanced functionality when services become temporarily unavailable.
The roll out of the new homepage is phased:
Phase 1: At the beginning of Q4, SAP Concur began redirecting Concur Expense, Concur Invoice and Concur Request clients in the US Datacentre to the new homepage.
Phase 2: In December 2021, SAP Concur will begin redirecting Concur Expense, Concur Invoice and Concur Request clients in the EU Datacentre to the new homepage.
Phase 3: In Q2 of 2022, SAP Concur will begin redirecting the remaining clients in the US and EU datacentres to the new homepage. The remaining clients include those with Concur Travel standalone or Concur Travel with Expense, Invoice and/or Request.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change ensures that the SAP Concur homepage is available even when some services are unavailable and improves the consistency of the sign-in experience.
**Ongoing** SAP Concur Migration to Cloud Platform in AWSApplies to: All Products | All Editions
SAP Concur plans to migrate from a pure private cloud operation, where all equipment is owned by SAP Concur, to a cloud platform. We plan to close our own private data centres in favour of a cloud platform implemented in Amazon Web Services (AWS). While this process started in 2017, we are focused on the final phase of the migration in 2022 for the North American and EMEA data centres.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change provides a stronger security posture, improved performance and stability, and faster innovation for our clients.
Product Settings
Product Settings Page EnhancementsApplies to: Expense, Invoice, Request | Standard
The Product Settings page in Concur Standard Edition has been enhanced.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: These changes improve the functionality of the Product Settings page.
Profile Settings
Removal of the Connected Apps PageApplies to: Travel, Expense, Invoice, Request | Professional & Standard
SAP Concur plans to remove the Connected Apps page in Profile Settings.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: Periodically, under-utilised features or pages are removed to improve usability. This is a rarely used page; it no longer meets its purpose of driving partner application usage.
SAP Fiori Themes
Profile Menu Functional Changes Under Fiori Light ThemeApplies to: Travel, Expense, Invoice, Request | Professional
With the January release, the Profile menu within the SAP Fiori theme has been updated. This update includes changes to the layout of the menu items and some changes in functionality.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: The Profile menu within the SAP Fiori theme is now functionally more efficient and easier to use.
SAP Concur User Assistance
Notice Regarding Stale DocumentationApplies to: All | Professional, Standard & CSBE
SAP Concur User Assistance will archive and eventually delete documents as needed to maintain accurate, relevant and concise information for all supported audiences including end users, client administrators, SAP Concur support and implementation colleagues.
Archiving activities performed by SAP Concur User Assistance will comply with data retention best practices and adhere to legal compliance requirements.
The initial exercising of this notice will apply to the archiving of stale (example) online help documents currently available on the concurtraining.com server. All current online help documents are now located on the SAP Help Portal.
For more information, refer to the Help Menu Directed to SAP Help Portal release note in the November 2021 product release notes.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This notice serves to expedite the appropriate archiving of stale documentation.
Security
Some TLSv1.2 Ciphers No Longer Supported (1 Feb 2022)Applies to: Travel, Expense, Invoice, Request | All Editions
Beginning on 1 February 2022, SAP Concur solutions will no longer support connections to *.concursolutions.com and *api.concursolutions.com that use the following TLSv1.2 ciphers:
Akamai/OpenSSL cipher name | IANA cipher name |
---|---|
AES256-GCM-SHA384 | TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 |
AES128-GCM-SHA256 | TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 |
ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384 | TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384 |
ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256 | TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 |
ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA | TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA |
ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA | TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA |
To ensure that connections to *.concursolutions.com and * api.concursolutions.com are not disrupted, clients and partners who connect to *.concursolutions.com and *api.concursolutions.com through an application that uses a retired cipher must update the application to a supported cipher before 1 February 2022.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This update provides ongoing security for our products and services.
Supported Configurations
Change in Support for Internet Explorer 11Applies to: Travel, Expense, Invoice, Request, Analysis/Intelligence | All Editions
On 1 January 2022, SAP Concur began transitioning away from support for Internet Explorer 11 (IE 11). This change is in line with other SAP solutions, industry best practices and Microsoft’s lifecycle policy for IE 11.
After 1 January 2022, SAP Concur development teams will not design new features, user interface enhancements or security or bug fixes with IE 11 in mind. Over time, new functionality and existing functionality might not work properly on IE 11.
SAP Concur users are not blocked from access when using IE 11. They can still sign in to their SAP Concur solutions. However, to ensure their users can continue to work successfully and securely with SAP Concur solutions, SAP recommends that clients move away from allowing the use of SAP Concur solutions on IE 11 and move to a more modern, supported browser.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change enables SAP to speed up adoption of the latest browser innovations and provide a stronger security posture.
Test Entities | Production Sandbox Environment
**Ongoing** Most Recently Used Lists Not MigratedApplies to: Expense, Invoice, Request | Professional
Some SAP Concur users use Production Sandbox Environment (PSE) entities to set up, test and train on new configurations prior to deploying them to their live production entity. SAP Concur plans to migrate PSEs as part of our move to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
For more information, refer to the SAP Concur Cloud Platform Strategy FAQ (English only).
Due to the architectural changes that SAP Concur must make to support this move, when PSEs are migrated to the new environment, some Most Recently Used (MRU) list items within the PSE will not be migrated.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: Once in AWS, PSEs benefit from the same stability, monitoring capabilities and level of performance as production entities.
**Ongoing** Production Sandbox Environment Login UpdatesApplies to: Expense, Invoice, Request | Professional
Some SAP Concur users use Production Sandbox Environment (PSE) entities to set up, test and train on new configurations prior to deploying them to their live production entity. SAP Concur plans to migrate PSEs as part of our move to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
For more information, refer to the SAP Concur Cloud Platform Strategy FAQ (English only).
Today, a user can maintain the same login ID for their test and production entities because they are in separate environments. With the plan to migrate both test and production entities to the same AWS production environment in the future, this will no longer be possible since each login ID must be unique.
While there is no action required for clients regarding this update, we want to ensure clients are aware of it because the change will be visible in certain areas of PSEs. To account for this change, SAP Concur will append all PSE login IDs with a ".uat” domain during both migration and user creation to ensure they are unique and do not conflict with any existing production login ID. For example, johnsmith@123.com will become johnsmith@123.com.uat.
User Creation: Additionally, clients can use the exact same employee import files as they would in production. The uat domain will also be applied to all aspects of user creation: FTP import, Excel import, entity restore and more.
Extracts: When generating accounting extracts or financial integration documents, SAP Concur will automatically remove the uat domain from login IDs that were appended during user creation. This will help to generate realistic extracts without requiring any action from the clients, such as removing the appended domain.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: Once in AWS, PSEs will benefit from the same stability, monitoring capabilities and level of performance as production entities.
**Ongoing** Unique Address Required for PSE Email VerificationApplies to: Expense, Invoice, Request | Professional
Some SAP Concur users use Production Sandbox Environment (PSE) entities to set up, test and train on new configurations prior to deploying them to their live production entity. SAP Concur plans to migrate PSEs as part of our move to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
For more information, refer to the SAP Concur Cloud Platform Strategy FAQ (English only).
When PSEs are migrated to the AWS production environment, verified emails from the existing PSE will not carry over to the new PSE. As a result, when users test verified email functionality in a future PSE, it is recommended that the employee uses an email that is different from the email configured in their production entity. This process is required as the email in the existing PSE was most likely already verified in production and, therefore, cannot be verified in another entity.
With respect to user email addresses, the Receipt Recognition service validates user email addresses and as such, only one instance of an email address can be associated with a user account. To test in production, clients will be required to utilise alternate email addresses that are not currently associated with any production user account. If a client attempts to set up a test account in production using an email address already associated with a corresponding user profile, it will fail the validation process.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: Once in AWS, PSEs will benefit from the same stability, monitoring capabilities and level of performance as production entities.
User Assistance for End Users
Countries Added to User Assistance ListApplies to: All | Professional & Standard
On 11 February 2022, SAP Concur added four new countries/regions to the list of countries/regions on the User Assistance page. The following countries/regions were added to the list:
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change enables clients to enable and disable user assistance for these additional countries/regions.
Web Services Administration
**Ongoing** Application Connector Username and Password Length Requirements UpdatedApplies to: Expense, Request, Web Services | Professional & Standard
These changes are part of the SAP Concur continued commitment to maintaining secure authentication.
To meet new security requirements, the length of the username and password associated with an application connector on the Application Connectors page must be at least 10 characters long and not more than 50 characters long.
Some clients currently have usernames and passwords configured that do not meet these parameters.
On 28 February 2022, the 10-character minimum and 50-character maximum will be enforced. If the usernames and passwords are not updated prior to this change, some aspects of SAP Concur solutions might stop working. For example, workflow steps will not complete if using notifications, LEU windows will not open and there will be no results in fields using fetch lists.
To avoid disruption of callouts through application connections and subsequent disruption of some end-user tasks, SAP recommends updating your application connector username(s) and password(s) as soon as possible.
Application connection usernames and passwords can be updated by an administrator with the Company Administrator or Web Services Administrator role.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: Enforcing password and username length restrictions improves the security standards for callouts made through the application connector.
Planned Change Summaries
The following shared features and changes apply site-wide or to multiple products and they are targeted for future releases. SAP Concur solutions reserves the right to postpone implementation of – or completely remove – any enhancement/change mentioned here. For product-specific planned changes, refer to the product-specific release admin summary.
Fax Feature
**Planned Changes** Fax Feature to be DecommissionedApplies to: Expense, Invoice | Professional & Standard
On 1 October 2022, the Concur Fax Feature will be decommissioned.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: Removal of the Fax feature improves the security, performance and scalability of SAP Concur solutions.
In addition, The Concur Fax Feature attaches files only at the header level of expenses and invoices. As a result, clients who use the Fax Feature cannot take advantage of recent innovations that apply only to images and attachments at the line-item level.
Help Menu
**Planned Changes** Consolidation of Resources Under Help MenuApplies to: All Products | All Editions
In May, SAP plans to update the Help menu in SAP Concur Solutions to consolidate access to help resources in a single location.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change will improve ease of use and simplify the SAP Concur user interface by providing a single point of access to help resources.
Product Settings
**Planned Changes** Advanced and Basic Views Added to Product SettingsApplies to: Expense, Invoice, Request | Standard
SAP Concur plans to add the ability to switch between basic and advanced views in Product Settings.
Prior to this change, changing the view between basic and advanced settings in Product Settings required the assistance of an SAP Concur internal administrator.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change enables client admins to view or hide their advanced settings as needed without assistance from SAP Concur personnel.
Profile Settings
**Planned Changes** Changes to My Profile, Home Page and Profile MenuApplies to: Travel, Expense, Invoice, Request, Mobile | Professional & Standard
SAP Concur plans to implement changes to several pages in the UI. The changes will be implemented over time beginning in Q2 of 2022.
These changes reflect SAP's commitment to supporting gender diversity by enabling gender non-binary users to enter consistent information when making travel arrangements and entering information in SAP Concur solutions. Changes include but are not limited to the following:
The greeting on the SAP Concur Home page will be removed.
The Nickname field on the My Profile – Personal Information page will be changed from Nickname to Preferred Name.
A new option, Mx, will be added to the Title list on the My Profile – Personal Information page.
If a user adds their preferred name on the My Profile – Personal Information page in Profile Settings, their preferred name and last name will be displayed in the SAP Concur Profile menu and in the menu in the mobile app.
New options will be added to enable users to select a non-binary gender in the TSA Secure Flight section of Travel Preferences.
The Nickname field in the Employee Travel Addendum Import 350 file will be changed from Nick Name to Preferred Name.
The Nickname field in the Employee Import file will be changed from Nickname to Preferred Name.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: These changes:
Enable users to enter information into SAP Concur solutions that is consistent with their identity.
Enable SAP Concur solutions to address a user by their preferred name.
Ensure that information in SAP Concur solutions matches a user's government-issued identification.
Ensure that travel documents such as aeroplane tickets purchased through SAP Concur solutions display information that is consistent with other required documents.
SAP Concur Support
**Planned Changes** Suggested Solutions MigrationApplies to: All Products & Services | Professional & Standard
Targeted for Q1 2022, the Solution Suggestions platform that SAP Concur provides will be migrated into the SAP Continuous Influence – Improvement Requests program.
This change will provide a better user experience and a single place for Authorised Support Contact (ASC) users to engage with all SAP Concur Customer Influence programs.
For more information, refer to SAP Continuous Influence Sessions (English Only).
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: In addition to offering a better tool with more functionality, SAP Concur is enhancing the process of how improvement requests will be reviewed, considered and prioritised.
SSO Management
**Planned Changes** Checkbox to Hide SSO Sign-In OptionApplies to: Travel, Expense, Invoice, Request | Professional & Standard
In a future release, SAP Concur plans to add a checkbox to the Add IdP Metadata dialogue. The checkbox will enable the SSO administrator to prevent the specified SSO sign-in method from appearing to users as a sign-in option on the concursolutions.com sign-in page.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: The addition of this checkbox gives the SSO administrator greater control over how end-users sign in to SAP Concur solutions.
**Planned Changes** Option to Provide URL to IdP Metadata to be RemovedApplies to: Travel, Expense, Invoice, Request | Professional & Standard
In a future release, SAP Concur plans to remove the Provide link to your IdP's metadata field from the Add IdP Metadata dialogue.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: In order to use the Provide link to your IdP's metadata field, clients must first open a support ticket to have the URL added to SAP Concur's allow list. These additional steps do not support the goal of making the SSO management process self-service for our clients.
User Assistance
**Planned Changes** Support for SAP Enable NowApplies to: Travel, Expense, Invoice, Request | Professional & Standard
In a future release, SAP plans to add support for SAP Enable Now with SAP Concur solutions.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change will enable clients to use SAP Enable Now to create user assistance content to improve user adoption and increase efficiency with SAP Concur solutions.
Client Notifications
Accessibility Updates
SAP implements changes to better meet current Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Information about accessibility-related changes made to SAP Concur solutions is published on a quarterly basis. You can review the quarterly updates on the Accessibility Updates (English only) page.
SAP Concur Non-Affiliated Subprocessors
The list of non-affiliated subprocessors is available here: SAP Concur list of Subprocessors (English Only)
Supported Browsers and Changes to Support
For information about supported browsers and planned changes to supported browsers, refer to the Concur Travel & Expense Supported Configurations (English Only) guide. When changes to browser support are planned, information about those changes will also appear in the Shared Changes Release Notes.