Administration

Concur announced support of virtual payment with our September 2017 release. With the January release, we will enhance the admin experience to include historical tracking for modifications (add, edit and delete).

All additions, edits and deletions are logged and visible. This ensures that the administrator is able to see changes – when they were made and by whom – to avoid having to open a support ticket.

Concur is dedicated to protecting our customers from potential security issues. One area that requires updates is self-registration. With this release, 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.

Flight

Until now, airport data was generally updated manually in Concur Travel. With the January release, Concur Travel will launch a new, automated airport data updating process using OAG as data source.

End users will see more accurate and up-to-date airport names, locations and IATA codes.

Meeting

Concur Meeting was discontinued as of this month.

Profile

The E-Receipts feature requires active opt-in by each end user. Currently, admins can opt out users. With this release, we will remove that ability. Also, in the February 2018 release, Concur will add the ability for users to opt themselves out.

Miscellaneous

In January – on the release date or shortly after – the SAP Concur logo will appear in all Concur products.

The new logo will be displayed in the upper-left corner of each page.

Both the SAP and Concur logos appear in the footer.

If a TMC has rebranded in the footer, in addition to the TMC logo, the SAP logo will appear.

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.

In a future release, we will offer Compleat SeatFinder!

What is SeatFinder? 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.

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.

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. With our first iteration, we will 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.

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

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.

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