Web Fares

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 this release, we are happy to announce that we will support AMEX BTA / I-BTA for Eurowings via Travelfusion in a first step. With our first iteration, we allow the booking of all Travelfusion carriers with an AMEX BT ghost card without a mandatory CVV. 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.

Meetings

Groupize has been certified as a Third-Party Meeting Registration partner. Meeting planners may now select Groupize when planning a third-party meeting.

Profile

As announced last year, Concur plans to offer unique capabilities to our mutual customers using Compleat. With the October release, we announced support of the Automatic Profile Updater.

What is Automatic Profile Updater? Traveller Self Service (TSS) is a component of Compleat that allows TMCs to communicate directly with travellers in order to update PNRs with missing data such as credit card or TSA information. TSS is designed to reduce travel agent interactions.

Miscellaneous

The 2018 release calendar is available. The release calendar shows all of the monthly releases for 2018, as well as the release note schedule, Travel client presentations and tradeshows.

Access the calendar here: Client Release Calendar (English Only)

For quite some time, In-Product Messaging (IPM) within Concur products has been available for US customers.

In mid-November, IPM will be enabled for all EU customers, using Concur's In-Product Messaging System. Also, since the new system provides a better all-around IPM experience, US customers will soon see IPM using the new system.

Just like today for US users – the content, timing, location and frequency of a message are all defined by each message campaign and by the characteristics of each company and each user.

In the November release, Concur will change the following terms in its products.

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 is dedicated to protecting our customers from potential security issues. One area that requires updates is self-registration. Concur will remove the ability to allow users to set passwords at registration for the self-registration pages. In addition, going forward, Concur will always require approval for new self-registrations. By removing the ability to set passwords and by forcing approval, Concur will help protect customers and their data.

As announced last year, Concur plans to offer unique capabilities to our mutual customers using Compleat. The first step in this process is to identify the mutual Compleat and Concur Travel customers. When the PNR is populated with the configuration ID, Concur will be able to identify itineraries that will then be able to take advantage of new capabilities. The second phase will be to begin delivering the new capabilities. For more information, refer to this month's release notes.

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, and is targeting delivery by the end of the calendar year.

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

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

Concur will discontinue Concur Meeting on 1 January 2018.

Recently, we stated that the accessibility feature will no longer be optional and that the feature will be defaulted to ON for all Concur sites.

This change has been delayed. Additional details will be provided later.

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 15th 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