June 2019 Travel Professional Edition Admin Summary

Initial Post

Release Note Summaries

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

Administration

SAP Concur Product Access Changes

Customers will need to access SAP Concur products and services via the following domains:

*.concursolutions.com
*.concurcdc.cn

SAP Concur recommends clients migrate to one of the domains at their earliest convenience, if they are not already using one of them.

Please contact appsec@sap.com for any questions regarding this change.

Flight

Flex Faring Update (Repeat from May)

SAP Concur Travel has supported a special airfare shopping view, called flex faring, for several years. With the flex faring view, travellers can compare differences between fares and brands available on a given flight, combine fares with varying restrictions and evaluate prices from multiple airlines all on one screen.

The flex faring view requires SAP Concur to maintain a special database to store fare information for each supported airline – to include brand structure, fare details and cabin assignments – using booking codes (RBD) to define each “bucket” in the Flex Faring view.

Mixed Brand Itineraries - Sabre Low Fare Results

In most cases, roundtrip fare options are within the same brand (example: Southwest = Business Select + Business Select), commonly referred to as brand parity. However, some airlines may allow for the combination of different brands to create a mixed brand itinerary (example: American = Main Cabin Flexible + Main Cabin). A mixed brand offering can result in a lower fare than a brand parity offering.

SAP Concur has seen a recent increase in mixed brand offerings in Sabre. In consideration, we removed the brand parity limitation for Sabre and now display mixed brand results. This update ensures the lowest possible fares are returned to Sabre customers, regardless of a search by price or schedule. We already provide mixed brand results with the other GDSs.

“Complex” Branded Fares – Virgin Atlantic

In the July 2017 release, SAP Concur announced support for an interim solution to provide branded fare content in Apollo and Galileo for the more “complex” branding schemes.

This interim solution requires SAP Concur to sell and store branded fares by fare basis code, since using the common method of selling and storing by booking class/RBD could result in lower, more restrictive fares being booked when the user has specified otherwise. In many cases, the lowest brand offered by an airline does not include a checked bag or a pre-assigned seat and may not allow cancellations or changes.

Updates for Flex Faring Airline – Air New Zealand (NZ)

SAP Concur has updated the flex faring information for Air New Zealand.

SAP Concur’s flex faring feature relies on booking codes to map fares to their appropriate buckets. This means the feature is limited to fares that are unique across booking codes. For Air New Zealand, this means Tasman Seat and Bag Fares (AU-NZ), Tasman Works Deluxe Fares (AU-NZ) and Tasman Works Deluxe Fares (NZ-AU) cannot be supported in flex faring view, as these brands reuse booking codes. Customers that need this content should consider disabling flex faring; these brands are supported via the branded fares standard view (shop by price).

Support for Delayed LLF in Dual Fare Display (Sabre Only)

The Dual Fare Display feature, released in April, was warmly received by TMCs and end users alike. Like all Concur Travel user interface updates, the Dual Fare Display must work hand in hand with SAP Concur’s many complex features. With this release, we now support Delayed LFF in conjunction with Dual Fare Display.

Miscellaneous

Require Approval Email Update

With this update, SAP Concur has updated the messaging displayed on the Require Approval email communication:

One of your employees has submitted a request for travel that requires approval. Please review the trip details, then approve or reject the request following the instructions below.

User Survey Confirmation Screen

With this update, SAP Concur has changed the user experience for the survey confirmation which has been causing confusion when translated.

**Ongoing** Email Infrastructure Change - Add IP Addresses to Safe Sender List

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.

Travel Operations / Technical Essentials

Southwest (WN) Passive Segment Update for Worldspan GDS

Worldspan now accepts normal passive air segments for passive Southwest (WN) bookings. For this reason, SAP Concur was planning to update its systems to stop writing TVL segments for passive Southwest bookings, we have since learned that this change will cause operational issues for several customers.

As a result, SAP Concur has updated the existing TVL segment to include arrival date information.

Add Column for Sabre Web Services Pseudo City

Concur Travel has enhanced the View Travel Agencies page by adding a new column. It contains the TMC’s Sabre Web Services PCC mapped to the agency’s Concur Agent PCC, which is mapped to the Sign-On credentials.

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.

Flight

**Planned Innovations/Changes** Air Canada Direct Connect Retirement

Air Canada is migrating their current API to a new platform in November 2019. Based on this, the Air Canada direct connect (AC2U) will be retired with the November release.

The introduction of the Air Canada PSS migration has created an opportunity for SAP Concur to provide an enhanced, scalable and stable user experience leveraging the latest technology with Travelfusion. As a result, the Canadian market will have the same consistent, high-quality direct connect experience already available to SAP Concur customers across the globe who use Travelfusion today.

Customers that source their Air Canada content from the GDS will experience no change. Customers that currently source Air Canada (AC) content from the AC direct connect will have the option to source from the GDS or enable AC content from Travelfusion. The Travelfusion option will include support of Air Canada’s Flight Pass.

FTP Updates

**Planned Innovations/Changes** Mandatory SFTP with SSH Key Authentication

Non-SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) protocols and password authentication will eventually be deprecated.

For new customers, new file transfer accounts must use SFTP with Secure Shell (SSH) Key Authentication.

For existing customers, existing non-SFTP file transfer accounts need to switch to SFTP with SSH Key Authentication.

**Planned Innovations/Changes** Source IP Checking (EMEA)

SAP Concur will implement source Internet Protocol (IP) checking for all Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) file transfer accounts beginning on 15 July 2019.

For new customers, the IP addresses for new customers will be added by SAP Concur during new customer implementation to the SAP Concur access control list (ACL).

For existing customers, please contact SAP Concur support by 1 July 2019 to have your source IP addresses added to the SAP Concur access control list (ACL).

HRS Payment Solutions

**Planned Innovations/Changes** Support of HRS Payment Solutions via HotelService API v2.0

As part of our ongoing innovations of the hotel direct connect portfolio in Concur Travel, SAP Concur and HRS have developed the support HRS Payment Solutions. HRS Payment Solutions allows HRS Direct Connect customers to use:

Global Payment
Paperless Travel
Central Billing

Meetings

**Planned Innovations/Changes** Authentication Changes for Third-Party Meeting Registration

In a future release, as part of SAP Concur’s ongoing commitment to keeping customer data secure, meeting attendees arriving from third-party registration tools will be required to authenticate before booking their travel to the event.

Miscellaneous

**Planned Innovations/Changes** Change in IP Restrictions

These changes are part of the SAP Concur continued commitment to maintaining secure authentication.

When a user signs in to SAP Concur, one of the validation processes includes checking for and adhering to any IP Restrictions (IPRs). IPRs are specific IPs or IP ranges that are defined by a company to restrict the IPs from which their users can sign in to SAP Concur. An IPR can be a string that contains a list of acceptable IP addresses and/or IP address patterns, for example: "170.242.6.43;170.243.70.42;170.243.70.43;171.159.*.*".

**Planned Innovation/Changes** New Look for Air E-Receipts

As part of our ongoing commitment to e-receipts and the effortless expense claim, air e-receipts generated by SAP Concur based on ticket and coupon data from GDS and some TripLink transactions will be getting a new look.

The new e-receipt format will be released in stages, targeting the July/August timeframe.

**Planned Innovations/Changes** New Express Checkout Onboarding Experience

Based on continued enablement of Express Checkout by our customers and positive feedback received from end users, SAP Concur will make the new checkout experience available by default to all qualified users.

**Planned Innovations/Changes** Single Sign-On (SSO) Self-Service Option Coming to SAP Concur (Q3 2019)

These changes are part of the SAP Concur continued commitment to maintaining secure authentication. This feature is targeted for Q3 2019. (Last updated: 8 June)

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 SAP Concur products that provides clients with a self-service option for setting up SSO for their organisation. SSO is currently supported for Concur Expense, Invoice, Request and Travel.

The new Manage Single Sign-On (SSO) feature is a replacement tool for clients using existing SSO configuration and a new tool for clients that now want to implement SSO at their organisation. Existing SSO configuration and the new SSO Self-Service tool will both be available until everyone has migrated to the new SSO Self-Service tool.

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

This feature is targeted for Q3 2019.

**Planned Innovations/Changes** New SAP Concur Sign In Page

These changes are part of the SAP Concur continued commitment to maintaining secure authentication. (Last Updated: 8 June)

In a future release, the SAP Concur Sign In page will be updated, providing a new login experience for both direct SAP Concur username/password users and Single Sign-On (SSO) users. SSO users will be able to start the SP-initiated SSO login process at www.concursolutions.com.

The new Sign In page feature will include a two-step login process that will provide enhanced security, meet current industry standards and provide a better login success rate. This feature is planned for 2019.

Travel Operations / Technical Essentials

**Planned Innovations/Changes** Worldspan Fare Store Changes

Over several years, SAP Concur has supported several options around fare storing for Worldspan. This has presented a high level of complexity for Worldspan PNR support. Recently, SAP Concur has seen that some of the legacy options are not well suited to work with newer industry faring, such as the Exclude Unbundled Economy Fares option (FXD modifier).

To reduce support costs and to ensure SAP Concur is using the most up-to-date pricing methods for our Worldspan customers, SAP Concur will be making several changes over the coming months.

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 - Professional Edition