Administration

Companies who are onboarding TripLink as a tool to realise total spend have provided feedback that there is no way to turn on TripLink rules without informing the traveller. In order to closer align with how rule actions work in the online booking tool (Concur Travel), starting in the February release, Concur will no longer email the traveller when a TripLink rule is configured with Log for Reports as the rule action.

Flight

What is SeatFinder? Often travellers are not able to obtain their preferred seating upon initial booking. There is nothing worse than being stuck in a middle seat for a four-hour flight! With SeatFinder integration, when this situation occurs, the traveller can indicate – at the time of booking – that they would like SeatFinder to monitor seat availability and switch seats automatically, if a more preferential seat becomes available.

Along with the release of Compleat SeatFinder, we made a few adjustments to the Seat Assignment section on the Review and Reserve and itinerary pages that apply to everyone.

• This will be available for customers in the EMEA datacentre on 12 February.

• This will be available for customers in the US datacentre on 19 February.

These UI updates make the seat assignment process clearer and make room for the Compleat SeatFinder settings for those customers that enable it. The itinerary now elevates the user's seat selection to a more visible location. Users can now quickly confirm they received the seat they requested, ensuring that users can easily find the information they need in order to make changes.

Web Fares

With the February release, we are happy to announce that we allow the booking of all Travelfusion carriers with an AMEX BT ghost card without a mandatory CVV. In our first iteration, no descriptive billing information, such as employee ID or cost centre, will be supported. In a later iteration, we will support descriptive billing data for Eurowings. Other airlines will follow in a later iteration.

Meetings

Previously, all data for Concur Meeting and Third-Party Meetings was kept forever. We have found that clients very rarely refer to events that occurred more than two years ago. In addition, data retention best practices require that Concur not retain information longer than necessary. Therefore, Concur will begin anonymising data for Concur Meeting and Third-Party Meetings that concluded more than two years ago.

The series of required tasks will occur over time so there might occasionally be access to data older than two years ago. When all tasks are completed, no data over two years old will be available.

Miscellaneous

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 – user fields and trip fields – should not contain personal and sensitive data.

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.

Planned Innovations/Changes

The items in this section are targeted for future releases. Concur reserves the right to postpone implementation of – or completely remove – any enhancement/change mentioned here.

Concur has delivered support for branded fares on Amadeus using Airline Fare Families as of the June 2017 release. Concur is currently in development to extend this support to flex faring.

Concur delivered a new UI for branded fares in 2016 and further enhanced in 2017, both in UI and with expanded branded fares coverage. With an upcoming release, we will move to utilise our new branded fare data store to populate all branded fare information. These changes apply to search by price and flex faring views.

In addition, we will provide more brand detail in the Fare Details section, such as: Wi-Fi availability, food and drink, changes, mileage, standby and priority.

The support of AMEX BTA / I-BTA via Travelfusion has been a requirement from many of our clients. The American Express Business Travel Account (BTA) is a centralised billing product that consolidates employee business travel expenses into a single account. AMEX I-BTA (Invoice Business Travel Account) is a special version of BTA that allows VAT reclaim.

With an upcoming release, we will support AMEX BTA / I-BTA for Eurowings via Travelfusion in a first step. In our first iteration, descriptive billing information (such as employee ID or cost centre) will be supported for Eurowings only. Other airlines will follow in a later iteration.

Concur is happy to announce support for Airbnb.com as a new Hotel Service supplier. Airbnb is the world’s largest community accommodation marketplace with over 3,000,000 listings in 65,000 cities and 191 countries.

For more details, go to: www.airbnb.com (English Only)

Concur has upgraded its hotel connectivity technology to offer a new API service known as HotelService 2.0 or HS2. The new API is designed as a standard solution for all hotel suppliers connected to Concur Travel. Throughout the next months, we are planning to migrate all hotel direct connect partner APIs from the existing legacy APIs (HotelService 1.0, HRS and Hotel.de) to our new microservice-based HotelService API 2.0. The first hotel supplier we plan to migrate to our new API is HRS in the month of March.

Concur Travel currently provides rail content for US, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain and Sweden. Concur will add content for Italy (Trenitalia) to the portfolio of Concur Travel rail carriers via the existing SilverRail integration.

Trenitalia is the primary rail passenger carrier in Italy, formed in the year 2000. With Trenitalia services, users can travel almost anywhere in Italy. Trenitalia offers high-speed train services via classic intercity trains as well as regional trains.

Currently individual or ghost cards are supported for SilverRail bookings, with SilverRail being the merchant of records. In order to provide the option for the TMC to be the merchant of records, Concur will implement the "On Account" payment feature within Concur Travel. It allows TMCs to extend credit agreements with customers that enjoy this arrangement with other modes of transport.

Trainline started supporting a new Ticket Delivery type – mTickets – which allows users to download the ticket directly on their Trainline mobile app.

mTickets can be downloaded on iOS (9.0 operating system and newer) and Android (4.1 operation system and newer). The Trainline mTickets are currently accepted by Virgin Trains West Coast, Virgin Trains East Coast, CrossCountry Trains, Greater Anglia, Northern Rail, First TransPennine Express, Heathrow Express and Great Western Railways.

For the current list of accepted routes, please visit: http://ehelp.thetrainline.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4208 (English Only)

Currently, certain personal information like birthdate, medical data and passport number can be masked in order to prevent the display of such information in Profile. These options can be changed in Company Settings (for Professional Travel) or module properties (for Professional or Standard Travel, with the assistance of Concur).

For the March release, due to increased concerns around user privacy, Concur will start masking the birthdate, medical data, passport number and visa number fields automatically in Profile. These fields cannot be unmasked. In addition, frequent flyer numbers, advantage membership numbers, redress numbers and TSA precheck numbers fields will be automatically masked (and cannot be unmasked).

E-Receipts require active opt-in by the end user. In an upcoming release, Concur will add the ability for users who have opted into e-receipts to opt themselves out of the e-receipt programme.

With the October 2018 release, XML Profile Sync will no longer be available. Concur recommends that all customers using XML Profile Sync move to Travel Profile API 2.0 at their earliest convenience. Version 2.0 functionality has been in production since May 2015 and affords better security and data validation that will support TMCs in meeting the needs of their travellers.

If TMCs need assistance in identifying their customers who are still using XML Profile Sync, Concur will assist with the identification of those customers.

The Working for Others Quick Help contains important information and should be available to everyone. Currently, it is available only by clicking the "?" icon with a mouse. With the March release, the Working for Others Quick Help will become accessible via the keyboard.

Screen readers are a type of assistive technology that audibly reads each screen element (instructional text, fields, options, etc.) to the user. Proper coding (in this case, known as alternative text or alt text) is required to ensure the reader "reads" the proper information to the user.

The current issue is that the logo on the Sign In page does not currently have the proper code to read the logo description to the user. In the March release, this issue will be resolved.

ConcurAccessible is a feature that provides certain accessibility features. However, with the many accessibility enhancements we have been making, ConcurAccessible has become obsolete and is no longer used. In addition, it can create inconsistent UI behaviour for users. Given that, with the March release, all ConcurAccessible components will be removed from Concur.

For customers who currently display the Privacy Agreement page to users, be aware that on 14 April, 2018, Concur will eliminate that page. That means the privacy agreement will no longer display under any circumstances. In addition, the options to customise the privacy agreement text and to apply policy (for example, to require that a user accept the privacy agreement) will be removed. In a separate release, Concur will provide a standard privacy statement, which can be accessed via a link in the page footer.

The new Data Retention feature will allow clients to control how long Concur stores their data based on who, when and where criteria. This feature gives clients the ability to meet their specific compliance needs regarding data retention.

Last year, when in-product messaging was introduced in Europe, the feature included the ability for users to opt out of messaging. Targeted for the March release, Concur will provide customers in the United States the ability to opt out.

The Travel Logins report – in the Operations Centre section of the Travel Reports page – is almost identical to the Users by Browser report. To reduce redundancy, starting after the March release, when a Report User clicks Reporting > Travel Reports and then Travel Logins (in the Operations Centre section of the left menu), the user will be redirected to the Users by Browser report.

Concur is announcing the End of Support for plain text FTP as a means to transfer data to and from Concur. Plain text FTP is not a secured protocol and has inherent security vulnerabilities. On 15 May, 2018, Concur Operations will apply a security update to our File Transfer infrastructure, restricting the use of plain text FTP as a part of our ongoing commitment to securing our customers’ data and meeting the audited security requirements of the "Concur Trust Platform".

Client Notifications

The list of non-affiliated subprocessors is available here: Concur Non-Affiliated Subprocessors (English Only)

Monthly browser certifications, both current and planned, are available with the other Concur monthly release notes, accessible from What's New - Professional Edition