Flight

As of 17 April, 2020, SAP Concur has changed the queuing logic for user-abandoned or orphaned PNRs containing passive segments for reservations through the Cleartrip API. Such PNRs are now put into the refund request queue.

Prior to this change, user-abandoned or orphaned PNRs with Cleartrip segments that were not finished by the user during the correction time window were moved to the TMCs ticketing queue. This is in keeping with SAP Concur solutions’ standard logic for instant ticketing direct connect flight bookings, since the ticket is already issued and payment processed.

Bringing awareness to TMCs of bookings that require manual intervention by placing them in the refund request queue helps them to follow up with travellers on unfinished bookings. TMCs can work with them to determine whether the booking should be cancelled and refunded (if possible) or finished manually to enable processing by mid-office routines. It also better supports TMCs in their efforts to reconcile Cleartrip charges against their account with invoices to their customer.

Hotel

SAP Concur solutions mobile app users will have the ability to shop, book and cancel content from Hotel Service V2.

Travellers expect to be able to book travel on any device. After 31 March, travellers will be able to search, book and cancel Hotel Service V2-sourced hotels from within the SAP Concur solutions mobile app.

In compliance with Sabre’s requirement to migrate from Sabre’s legacy hotel APIs, Concur Travel will be migrating to Sabre’s new Content Services for Accommodation APIs (CSL) as of 1 May, 2020.

These new services, while very similar, are not backward compatible with the legacy hotel services. For end-users, the transition will not affect the booking experience or their ability to confirm hotel reservations. For TMCs, Concur Travel has done everything it can to minimise any impact to current mid-office processes using cryptic host commands (i.e. HOT, HOD, HRD, HOX and XI. – See Sabre SAN-15891) by using CSL to consume hotel content, while booking live hotel segments in the same structure as the legacy APIs. Concur Travel partners reserving offline full CSL hotel bookings through Sabre Red 360 can expect those reservations to appear on the user’s travel itinerary, however, Concur Travel will not have the ability to modify or cancel these bookings; they will be in a “read only” state.

Users should see no difference when shopping and confirming a hotel reservation. They should also see no difference when attempting to change or cancel an existing reservation if it was originally booked in Concur Travel. If a hotel reservation is booked and confirmed outside of Concur Travel, a user’s ability to change or cancel that reservation may be limited.

After Marriott International bought Starwood Hotels in 2016, they retired Starwood’s loyalty programme, Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG), and converted affected travellers to Marriott’s own loyalty programme, now called BonVoy. However, old SPG numbers are still present in user profiles in Concur and continue to be added by some TMCs during the XML profile sync processes. This has the effect of creating errors in some scenarios when a user tries to book with Marriott.

Beginning in May 2020, SAP Concur solutions will remove old SPG loyalty numbers from users’ profiles and will no longer write new SPG loyalty numbers to user’s profiles. Any such numbers coming via the XML profile sync will be ignored and will not be returned via the Travel Profile 2.0 API.

Users will no longer get SPG-related errors when booking with Marriott.

Miscellaneous

The description of the Manage Holds & Purge Users data retention feature that appears on the Administration > Company > Data Retention page has been updated.

This update provides more accurate information about where a user with the Data Retention Administrator role can find the Hold User, Remove Hold and Purge User buttons.

When a user signs into SAP Concur solutions, if some products or services are unavailable while other products and services are up and running, a modified version of the user’s Home page appears, providing access to the products and services that are up and running.

Prior to implementing this improvement, if a user attempted to sign in to SAP Concur solutions when one or more products or services was not available, a 503 (service unavailable) message appeared, the user’s Home page could not be accessed, and the user had to wait until all services and products were available before signing in to SAP Concur solutions.

This enhancement enables users to complete tasks that rely on the products and services that are up and running even when other products and services might be unavailable.

On 31 October, 2019, SAP Concur solutions introduced a new experience for users signing into SAP Concur.

Since introducing the new sign-in experience, users have been able to choose between signing in through the new Sign In page or reverting to the old sign-in experience. Beginning with the May release, the old sign-in experience is no longer available.

The new sign-in experience provides better security and is faster and more convenient for users logging in to SAP Concur products and services. This change makes the sign-in experience uniform for all users.

SAP Concur solutions will soon begin the deprecation process of removing Hash-Based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) as an SSO option. The replacement service for HMAC is SAML SSO, a self-service method of setup whereby client admins have access within SAP Concur solutions to complete their SAML connections.

Clients currently using HMAC are encouraged to migrate to the SSO self-service tool as soon as it is released (targeted for Q2 2020). The new SSO self-service tool allows multiple portals (Identity Providers) to be added.

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

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

SAP Concur solutions will begin 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.

SAP Concur solutions continually reviews our products and services for compliance with security best practices. As part of a security improvement to our authentication infrastructure, the decision has been made to retire notifications for Profile, Form of Payment and Itinerary for a user or a company because of their handling of OAuth tokens.

The decision to remove these notifications rather than refactor them to handle authentication differently was driven by both extremely low usage and a high error rate (unsuccessful delivery).

The notifications for Profile and FOP changes were disabled earlier in 2020. The notifications for Itinerary changes will be disabled in May or June 2020.

This change improves security for all clients.

This change enables users to configure the SAP Concur solutions UI text to display in Thai.

This language must be enabled in order to appear on the list. If the language is enabled, when a user opens the SAP Concur solutions Sign In page and then clicks to view the available languages list, Thai appears in the list.

Beginning in May, users who connect to the US Data Centre through www.concursolutions.com will be redirected to us1.concursolutions.com.

This change makes the format of the URL for SAP Concur data centres consistent from one data centre to another. For example, users connecting to the EMEA data centre are redirected to eu1.concursolutions.com.

Travel Operations / Technical Essentials

Southwest Airlines is now a full participant for Apollo and Worldspan GDS. Flight schedules and fare content will be made available to US-based agencies who have obtained authorisation from Southwest Airlines.

Historically, Concur Travel has offered post-ticket change capabilities for Sabre (via Sabre Automated Exchanges), Worldspan (via Rapid Reprice) and Apollo (via Worldspan cross-GDS Rapid Reprice).

With the March 2020 release, SAP Concur teams are pleased to announce support for exchange capabilities for Amadeus via Amadeus Ticket Changer (ATC) for Professional edition. ATC will be made available for Standard edition with the April 2020 release.

Amadeus customers will be able to make changes to their ticketed reservations online, eliminating the need to call their agency.

To retire legacy connectivity with Travelport, Concur Travel is migrating from the XML Select connectivity platform to the Galileo Web Services connectivity platform. This change benefits SAP Concur customers as follows:

• Allows better scalability and stability of Concur Travel’s Apollo/Galileo services

• Enables SAP Concur teams to remove legacy code used for connectivity to Apollo/Galileo, which simplifies internal operations

• May improve performance, since a more simplified connectivity approach will be used

• May improve stability

In 2017, SAP Concur solutions announced limited support for branded fares for all Apollo, Galileo and Worldspan customers.

SAP Concur solutions has been in development, in partnership with Travelport, to deliver true branded fares support for all Travelport customers. Specifically, this development changes the way Concur Travel stores fares in GDS PNRs; fare stores will include brand modifier(s) for branded fare airlines. This new fare store functionality was made available via pilot starting the evening of 24 February.

Administration

The Profile User permission is used in Concur Travel for two purposes. First, in a setup using only Concur Travel, Concur Travel integrated with Concur Expense or Concur Travel integrated with Concur Request and a Book then Approve workflow, it allows customers to assign this permission to users that should not have access to the Travel Wizard to book travel (yet), but should already have access to all travel-related fields in their user profile to fill in (for example, preferences for seats and meals, frequent traveller numbers, etc.).

Also, this permission can be used with a setup where Concur Travel is integrated with Concur Request and an Approve then Book workflow. It can be used in this context to restrict user access to the Travel Wizard to book travel prior to receiving Request approval, while still enabling travel booking from an approved request.

This change provides a clearer separation between users who are not able to book travel under any circumstance (the Profile User permission) and users who are only allowed to book travel from an approved request (the Approve then Book permission).

The legacy Credit Card Feed is used by fewer than five Concur Travel clients to import credit card information. However, this method of transferring sensitive information does not reflect SAP Concur’s security best practices. Due to the small number of clients still using this feature, and given that there are more secure alternatives, we are deprecating the Credit Card Feed. Targeted for 1 July 2020, existing credit card feeds will no longer be operable.

Reducing the number of supported mechanisms for exchanging data allows SAP Concur solutions to focus on providing better security and ease-of-use for our clients.

The legacy HR Feed Editor is an outdated method for importing user information into Concur Travel and is used by less than five Travel-only clients. Due to the very small number of clients still using this feature, and given that there are superior alternatives, we are deprecating the HR Feed Editor. Targeted for 1 July 2020, feeds coming via the HR Feed Editor will no longer be operable. If you think you will be affected, please contact SAP Concur support or your TMC to identify a solution that’s best for you.

Reducing the number of supported mechanisms for exchanging data allows SAP Concur solutions to focus on providing better security and ease-of-use for our clients.

The Legacy Travel Assistant Feed is an outdated method for importing user information into Concur Travel and is used by fewer than five Travel-only clients. Due to the very small number of clients still using this feature, we are deprecating the Travel Assistant Feed. Targeted for 1 July, 2020, data coming via the Travel Assistant Feed will not be imported. If you think you are affected, please work with Support or your TMC to identify a solution that is best for you.

Reducing the number of supported mechanisms for exchanging data allows SAP Concur solutions to provide better security and improve ease-of-use for our customers.

Travel Operations / Technical Essentials

As part of its standardisation effort, SAP Concur solutions will be updating the standard hotel passive format for all GDS.

Once SAP Concur solutions has migrated all hotel partners to the new hotel platform (HS2), agency fulfilment partners can programme mid-office routines around one format for all non-GDS hotel content in Concur Travel.