Authorised Support Contacts

SAP Concur Support has implemented an online scheduling feature that allows Authorised Support Contacts (ASCs) to schedule a meeting with a Support Engineer.

Online scheduling makes it easier for Authorised Support Contacts (ASCs) to schedule a meeting with an SAP Concur Support Engineer.

Hotel

With the November release, SAP Concur solutions will modify the template it uses to create passive segments in Amadeus for hotels. Consistent with existing practice, we will continue to create passive segments for hotels. However, after the November release, we will remove the Credit Card Guarantee field from the passive segments. By doing so, we will ensure that Form of Payment (credit card) information is not transmitted.

SAP Concur solutions is taking this step to avoid any possibility of compromising the security of PCI payment card information.

With this update, we have allowed Custom Hotel Sourcing Providers to override the sort order for rates for Desktop users. This feature is not available to Mobile users.

Customers will have the benefit of displaying rates in the order specified by the providers who are participating in the Custom Hotel Sourcing programme.

Profile

On 5 November, 2020, in support of the Canadian Passenger Protect Programme (PPP) mandate, Sabre is making enhancements to allow two DOCO/R SSRs per passenger, one for a U.S. Redress Number and one for a Canadian Travel Number. Prior to this date, only one DOCO/R SSR was retained per passenger. A Canadian Travel Number will begin with the letters “CAN”. Any DOCO/R that is entered with a document number starting with characters other than “CAN” will be assumed to be a U.S. Redress Number. At this time, no other countries use DOCO/R.

This enhancement allows CTE to support travellers using a Canadian Traveller Number.

Previously, when users added or updated their mobile phone numbers on the User Profile page, they may have seen different entry validations, depending on how their page was configured. In the Mobile Phone Number field of the Concur Mobile Devices section, they may have seen strict validation rules applied where only dashes, spaces and digits were allowed. In the Mobile Phone field of the Contact Information section, however, no validation rules were applied (any character was allowed). This sometimes resulted in duplicate entries and/or other data-related issues when an attempt was made to remove or edit the user’s mobile number.

This enhancement ensures consistent UI behaviour and fewer bugs associated with mobile phone numbers.

Miscellaneous

In early October, the SAP Concur networking team noted that their configuration of the Content Delivery System had been blocking insecure protocols for some time.

As such, the notice to customers that we would be making a change to our F5 Client SSL profile was superfluous, as those aspects of the existing profile were not actually available. SAP Concur made changes to the F5 Client SSL profile on 7 October as well, in the interest of maintaining a strong security profile. There was no new effect for customers.

This update provides ongoing security for our products and services.

Please refer to the Concur Travel November Release Notes for a list of potential malicious domains. This list is not exhaustive and is meant as an initial warning of the existence of possible fraudulent sites that use some false derivative of the SAP Concur solutions brand within the domain name.

Customers should avoid these domains in the context of working with SAP Concur solutions. While some domains may be registered, it is recommended to err on the side of caution.

This alert provides ongoing security for our products and services.

With the November release, SAP Concur is adding a Single Sign-On (SSO) self-service tool to SAP Concur products. This new tool enables clients to set up SSO for their organisation without assistance from SAP Concur support. SSO is currently supported for Concur Expense, Concur Invoice, Concur Request and Concur Travel.

This feature will provide new SAP Concur clients with a self-service option for setting up SSO. It will also provide an option for existing SSO clients who must eventually migrate to the new SAML v2 service to manage SSO for their users.

This release note is intended for technical staff responsible for file transmissions with SAP Concur solutions. For our customers and suppliers participating in data exchange through various secure file transfer protocols, we are making changes that provide greater security for those file transfers.

These changes provide greater security for file transfers.

Support for the Director SAML service is being deprecated. Travel Management Companies (TMCs) and SAP Concur personnel will soon begin assisting customers who currently use Director SAML to migrate to SAP Concur SAML v2 SSO (SAML v2).

Clients currently using Director SAML are encouraged to migrate to SAML V2 as soon as possible.

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

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).

With the November release, targeted for 14 November, SAP Concur will provide a Single Sign-On self-service option that enables client admins to set up 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.

This release note is intended for the technical staff responsible for file migrations 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. Clients whose entities are currently configured to use the legacy process will be migrated to the more efficient process sometime between now and the end of 2020.

These changes provide greater security and efficiency for file transfers.

Instances of Country or Countries on the user interface are being updated to Country/Region and Countries/Regions, respectively.

This change provides a better global user experience.

Flight

**Planned Changes** AirPlus A.I.D.A. Feature Retirement in Concur Travel

We are continually examining our solutions and portfolio to provide the most value to our customers. Due to low usage and changes coming to the programme, we are retiring the current AirPlus A.I.D.A. feature in Concur Travel.

Retirement of the AirPlus A.I.D.A. feature is currently targeted for the February 2021 release.

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

In February 2020, SAP Concur and CIBT launched a new integration method through the Concur App Centre, where the new CIBT app has been 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 to ease a little the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic may have had on some organisations, SAP Concur has decided to extend the transition period. The retirement is planned for the second half of 2021. More details will be provided closer to the retirement date.

For companies that participate in the American Airlines AirPass programme, Concur Travel will soon support American Airlines’ next generation AirPass programme. This programme allows travellers to purchase unrestricted airfares at a pre-paid fixed rate.

AirPass utilises full-fare inventory, offering last-seat availability and flexibility, and is tied to a traveller's AAdvantage membership number.

Profile

The current supported version of the Travel Profile API is version 2.0. However, there are still clients and partners who continue to call the Travel Profile 1.0 API/Profile endpoint to get user profiles. This old endpoint will be fully deprecated with the December 2020 release; users must switch to Travel Profile 2.0 API before this date.

By reducing the number of supported mechanisms for exchanging profile data, SAP Concur solutions is able to focus on providing better security, ease-of-use and additional functionality for those we support.

SAP Concur solutions is adding an optional parameter into the Travel Profile 2.0 (TP2.0) API / Get Summary endpoint that allows callers to retrieve users associated with one or more Travel Configurations.

Before this change, TP2.0 API callers would retrieve all users associated with their app. With this change, TP2.0 API callers will be able to optionally provide one or more TravelConfig IDs as a parameter in their GET call to filter the user profiles to those in the associated TravelConfigs.

This enhancement will enable Travel Profile 2.0 callers to filter the set of user profiles to a smaller set, potentially reducing the amount of time, bandwidth and resources needed to sync profiles with CTE.