Administration

Amadeus – Address Fields in Profile Templates

Amadeus is in the process of moving away from the unstructured Line Address fields in Amadeus profiles (lines 100-129 in the Concur Travel Amadeus Profile Template). Concur has seen some unexpected behaviour with these lines as a result.

For this reason, Concur is strongly recommending that agencies use the Structured Address lines in Amadeus profiles. Refer to the release notes for the applicable technical information.

**COMING SOON** "Invite Users" Welcome Emails

Soon, each customer will be able to create a "welcome" email template that can be sent when a new login is created, whether manually created or via the Travel import. We are targeting Summer 2017 for release and will keep you updated on progress!

Business Purpose: Customers can create the messaging specific to their company – for its own new Concur users as well as an alternate message for non-employees, as the content is often different.

Flight

**COMING SOON** Air Canada Fare Realignment

Air Canada (AC) will enhance their fare structure in May 2017. With this change, Tango and Flex fare families may share a common booking class. This may affect the way fares are presented in Concur Travel, depending on how customer sites are configured to obtain Air Canada content.

**COMING SOON** Sabre - Refundable Exchanges

Concur will enable a new enhancement for our Sabre Automated Exchange customers: the ability to exchange a refundable ticket for another refundable ticket.

All Concur Travel customers on Sabre who have the post-ticket-change functionality enabled will now be able to change a refundable flight to another refundable flight. Note that when booking a round trip or a multi-segment trip on a single ticket, the most restrictive fare applies at the time of the change.

Sabre - Increase "Maximum Air Contracts/Prefs to Combine in a Search"

On the travel configuration page, the Maximum air contracts/prefs to combine in a search setting controls the number of BFM shops that should be made per carrier contract and non-contract preferred carriers. Until now, this setting had three options – with a maximum of three carrier contracts/preferred carriers per shop (least scans), two carrier contracts/preferred carriers per shop (best), and even a single contract/preferred carriers per shop (most scans).

With this release, the options in that setting have increased to 25.

Update Flex Faring Airline – Jet Airways (9W)

Concur has updated the fare mapping for Jet Airways (9W) to align with recent changes made by the airline.

Support Flex Faring Airline – Air Alsie (6I)

Concur is pleased to announce flex faring support for airline Air Alsie (6I). Air Alsie offers service to select destinations in Denmark. For more information on Air Alsie, please visit the airline’s website here.

Worldspan - Branded Fares Support

Concur is pleased to announce support for branded fares for our Worldspan customers for a specific group of airlines: Delta Air Lines (DL), Virgin America (VX), United Airlines (UA), Germanwings (4U), Eurowings (EW), Vueling Airlines (VY), Binter Canarias (NT), Cathay Pacific (CX) and Singapore Airlines (SQ)

Business Purpose: With multiple fare options in each booking class, travellers can enjoy more options when booking their flights. The new fares will reflect fixed services included in the price as well as different rebooking and refund conditions. Passengers can then always choose the exact fare that best meets their needs and they pay only for the services they actually want to use.

Web Fares

Air Asia Corporate via Travelfusion

With the December 2016 release, we announced the availability of Air Asia in Concur via Travelfusion. With this release, we now support Air Asia Corporate. With Air Asia Corporate, customers now have access to the corporate fares of the largest, low-cost carrier network in Asia via Concur.

**COMING 9 May** Southwest Migration to New Reservation System and the Booking Impact

Southwest Airlines is migrating their reservation system from their existing Sabre-based platform to an Amadeus Altea platform. Concur has worked diligently with Southwest for the last 6 months on migration testing in an effort to keep the level of disruptions for clients to a minimum.

The migration will impact the direct connection to Concur Travel for any bookings that traverse the migration cutover date. Southwest has announced that the final cutover date will be 9 May 2017. Refer to the release notes for more information about trip start/end dates that span the 9 May date.

Cleartrip – Improve User Experience for Roundtrip Fares

Some low-cost carriers in India provide special return fares that cannot be combined with one-way fares of the same or a different airline. If the user selects a round-trip fare for the outbound leg, then the user must select the "allowed" return fare for the return leg as well.

To avoid errors and confusion in the booking process, we have improved the user experience in our Cleartrip integration. With this release, we prevent the user from selecting fares for the return leg that cannot be combined with the outbound leg.

Business Purpose: This change improves the user experience by providing better guidance about the allowable combination of fares as defined by Cleartrip.

Train

SNCF – Upgrade SNCF to RIVA28

With this release, Concur upgrades the RIVA Interface version for SNCF from v26 to v28. There are no functional changes introduced with this upgrade.

Business Purpose: This upgrade provides support for Digitalised Bon Voyage within the next release.

**COMING SOON** SNCF Support of Digitalised Bon Voyage

With the evolution of the rules for punctuality guarantees, SNCF wants to digitalise the "Bon Voyage" compensation given to the clients. "Bon Voyage" is used by SNCF to provide financial compensation – currently, in the form of paper vouchers – to a customer when a train is delayed, for example. These vouchers can be used only one time on station channels and travel agency channels.

Business Purpose: With this feature, we provide travellers with the ability to use the Digitalised Bon Voyage code to deduct the voucher amount from the total booking cost.

**COMING SOON** Renfe and Swedish Rail Available via Concur Travel

Concur Travel currently provides rail content for US, Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Concur will add content for Spain (Renfe) and Sweden to the portfolio of Concur Travel rail carriers. We are targeting the end of the first calendar quarter of 2017 to have the content available.

Business Purpose: Travellers can book rail content for Spain and Sweden in Concur Travel – a single, intuitive, web-based interface with effortless user experience.

Meetings

**COMING January 2018** Concur Meeting Discontinued as of 1 January 2018

Starting 01 January 2018, Concur Meeting will not be available to meeting planners or to meeting attendees. Concur advises clients to enable Concur's Third Party Meetings feature.

Miscellaneous

Import TripIt Meetings to Concur Travel

Concur Travel now imports meetings created in TripIt.

Business Purpose: Users now see their TripIt business meeting imported to Concur Travel and merged into their corresponding travel within their itinerary.

**REMINDER** Change in the Monthly Release Schedule

As shown on the 2017 release calendar, starting in March, Travel releases will occur on Saturday instead of Thursday. So, instead of seeing release-related changes on Friday of release week, they will appear to users on Monday (or over the weekend, if users sign in to Concur).

The release calendar is available here.

Support for TLS v 1.0 Encryption Protocol to End

Concur announces an End of Support cycle for version 1.0 of the TLS encryption protocol, continuing support for the more secure 1.1 and 1.2 versions of TLS. As background, the TLS protocol allows secure back and forth communications between a phone or computer and a cloud-based service.

**COMING SOON** Sunset Gogo Smartphone All Day Pass

Gogo will soon discontinue offering the Gogo Wi-Fi Smartphone All Day Pass. When they do, Concur will remove it from Travel and the documentation.

Gogo Wi-Fi All Day Pass option will continue to be available.

**COMING August 2017** Microsoft IE v.10 Browser Support Ends 18 August 2017

Support for Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) version 10 browsers under Concur products will end on 18 August 2017. Concur strongly advises clients using IE v.10 to update to the latest IE browser version before that date, or to install and work with another supported browser.

**COMING August 2017** New Payment Option in Concur Travel: Virtual Payment

In 2017, Concur Travel will be partnering with Conferma, a technology provider that works with banks and travel suppliers, to issue virtual cards for use with their network of travel suppliers across 184 countries.

The first phase of the integration will apply to GDS hotels. Additional travel services (flight, train, etc.) will follow soon after.

TMCs will have one month’s early access, beginning in July. The feature will become available for everyone with the August release.

Business Purpose: Concur Travel will generate a one-time credit card number for a specified amount (including a CVV number, if necessary) and will pass that card number to the hotel supplier. In addition, the hotel will be faxed with the card information, thus securing a direct bill for that hotel reservation.