Attendees

These changes are also part of the NextGen UI experience. The production deployment of this change will be conducted in phases over the next few weeks. Individual customers will start seeing this change between 15 January and 30 January. Production deployment to the EMEA datacentre has already been completed. The production deployment to the US and China datacentres is still planned.

Beginning with the January 2021 release, users searching for employees to add as attendees to an expense now have additional filter options that can be used to narrow search results, helping make the identification of employees accurate and efficient.

Searching for employee attendees has proven difficult as there may have been no fields available to search by other than first name and last name.

With this update, the default advanced search view for employee attendees automatically includes the addition of email addresses and country filters.

This feature update includes the following benefits:

• Accurate identification of employees, particularly for those with the same first and last name

• Improved efficiency for employee searches by providing filters that help narrow relevant search results

• Simplified employee attendee management, eliminating the need to use an attendee import to update attendee data for the SYSEMP attendee type

• Optional inclusion of inactive employees in attendee searches

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This update helps make searching for employee attendees more efficient and also simplifies the management of employee attendees by removing the need to use an attendee import to update the attendee data of the SYSEMP attendee type.

Authentication

These changes are part of the SAP Concur continued commitment to maintaining secure authentication.

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.

Deprecation of support for the Director SAML service is dependent on the following requirements:

• SAP Concur technicians and TMCs assist existing SAP Concur clients to migrate from the Director SAML service to SAML V2.

• All clients that currently rely on the Director SAML service have migrated from Director SAML to SAML V2.

Migration from Director SAML to SAML V2 requires the following general steps:

• The client identifies an admin to act as the SSO admin and assigns the proper permission/role.

• The SSO admin coordinates with their SAP Concur technician to obtain the SAP Concur SP metadata.

• The SSO admin configures the SSO settings at the IdP based on information from SP metadata.

• The SSO admin retrieves IdP metadata from the IdP and delivers the metadata to the SAP Concur technician.

• The SSO admin adds a few testing users and tests the new SSO connection.

• With successful testing, the company rolls out SSO to their SAP Concur users.

For more information about the Single Sign-On self-service option, refer to the Shared: Single Sign-On Overview (English Only) and the Shared: Single Sign-On Setup Guide (English Only).

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change provides better security and improved support for users logging in to SAP Concur products and services.

These changes are part of the SAP Concur continued commitment to maintaining secure authentication.

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).

SAP Concur provides 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.

For more information about the Single Sign-On self-service option, refer to the Shared: Single Sign-On Overview (English Only) and the Shared: Single Sign-On Setup Guide (English Only).

The HMAC deprecation includes two phases:

PHASE I:

• Clients must have an identity provider (IdP) or a custom SAML 2.0 compliant solution.

• Clients begin testing authentication using SAML v2.

• TMCs prepare to onboard new SAP Concur clients to SAML v2.

• Customers will be notified via release notes about the official deprecation date of HMAC. As of the official deprecation date, no new clients can be onboarded using HMAC; new clients must be onboarded to SAML v2.

• Existing clients using HMAC must migrate to SAML v2.

PHASE II:

• TMCs have migrated all existing SAP Concur clients from the HMAC service to SAML v2.

• The HMAC service is deprecated. Phase II is targeted to end mid-year in 2021.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change provides better security and improved support for users logging in to SAP Concur products and services.

Authorised Support Contacts

SAP Concur has added an option to the SAP Concur support portal that enables Authorised Support Contacts (ASCs) to designate whether they should be contacted regarding a security or data protection topic.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This enhancement gives clients more control over who in their company is contacted regarding security or data protection topics, and provides greater control over which notifications an ASC receives.

Cards

With the January 2021 release, the Account Number field on the Modify Card Account page was updated to allow configuration of account numbers with as few as 12 digits. Previously, the Account Number field would only allow configuration for account numbers with at least 14 digits.

This change occurred because AirPlus will begin to change the length of their lodge and virtual card account numbers from 16 digits to 12 digits in March 2021.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change ensures that lodge accounts with account numbers as few as 12 digits can be configured. This change also helps ensure that AirPlus account numbers can be updated in Concur Expense and that there is no disruption in the processing of card transactions for AirPlus clients.

File Transfer Updates

This Release Note is intended for the technical staff responsible for file transmissions with SAP Concur. For our customers and suppliers participating in data exchange, SAP Concur is maintaining our file transfer subsystem to provide greater security for those file transfers.

SAP Concur is in the process of 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 31 July 2021. After they are migrated to the more efficient process, clients will see the following improvement:

• With the legacy process, clients had to wait for the file move schedule to run at a specified time. With the more efficient and secure API-based process, extracts and other outbound files from SAP Concur will be available within the existing overnight processing period shortly after the files are created.

This announcement pertains to the following file transfer DNS endpoints:

• st.concursolutions.com

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: These changes provide greater security and efficiency for file transfers.

Files transferred to SAP Concur solutions must be encrypted with the SAP Concur public PGP key, concursolutionsrotate.asc.

concursolutionsrotate.asc

• Key file is available in client’s root folder

• Key ID 40AC5D35

• RSA 4096-bit signing and encryption subkey

• Key expires every 2 years

• Client is responsible for replacing the key before it expires

• • Next expiry date: 4 September 2022

  • SAP Concur plans to replace the current rotating public PGP key in the client’s root folder 90 days before the expiration date

The SAP Concur legacy PGP key (key ID D4D727C0) remains supported for existing clients but will be deprecated in the future.

SAP Concur strongly recommends that clients use the more secure rotating public PGP key for file transfers. To facilitate the use of the more secure rotating public PGP key for file transfers, SAP Concur added the key to existing client’s home folders on Friday 15 January 2021.

This announcement pertains to the following file transfer DNS endpoints:

• st.concursolutions.com

• mft-us.concursolutions.com

• vs.concursolutions.com

• st-eu.concursolutions.com

• mft-eu.concursolutions.com

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The rotating public PGP key provides greater security for file transfers.

NextGen UI

The continued evolution of the Concur Expense solution user interface experience is the result of thoughtful design and research that provides a modern, intuitive and streamlined experience for creating and submitting expense claims.

Concur Expense customers have the ability to preview and then opt in to the NextGen UI before the mandatory move.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The result is the next generation of the Concur Expense user interface designed to provide a modern, consistent and streamlined user experience. This technology not only provides an enhanced user interface, but also allows us to react more quickly to customer requests to meet changing needs as they happen.

Receipts

As of 27 January, 2021, the ability to capture and upload fapiao into Concur Expense is available. The Fapiao Receipt Integration feature provides the ability to capture and upload fapiao to an expense according to Chinese regulatory or government authorities.

A fapiao is a legal receipt required for business transactions, employee reimbursement and VAT deduction. A fapiao is issued by the State Taxation Administration of the People's Republic of China, but provided by the merchant.

The feature is available to new and existing clients based in China and deployed to the China datacentre. Other data centres are not included at this time.

The Fapiao Receipt Integration feature includes:

• Offering a fapiao solution in compliance with State Taxation Administration of the People's Republic of China and as provided by the merchant

• Providing reimbursement and VAT reporting process efficiency, reducing time to perform these tasks

• Capturing of VAT fapiao and non-VAT fapiao documents via the SAP Concur mini app in the WeChat™ app

  • Supported fapiao and documents include:

    • General VAT fapiao in paper form

    • Special VAT fapiao in paper form

    • General VAT fapiao in electronic form as stored in WeChat wallet

    • Official China Rail tickets

    • Official airline tickets issued by China Aviation

    • Official taxi fapiao

• Uploading of fapiao and documents to Concur Expense:

  • For VAT fapiao, a validation is performed against State Taxation Administration of the People's Republic of China prior to the fapiao upload

  • For VAT fapiao, a duplication check is performed prior to the fapiao upload

  • Additional documents, such as itemised receipts, can also be uploaded with each fapiao submission

• Improving efficiency when capturing and merging multiple documents into one e-receipt transaction

• Displaying fapiao information in custom fields in Concur Expense with assistance from an SAP implementation coach

For more information, refer to the State Taxation Administration of the People's Republic of China (English Only).

Unsupported fapiao or documents for the initial feature release include:

• Electronic VAT fapiao in OFD format, including both general and special VAT

• Fixed amount fapiao

• Vehicle sales fapiao

• Freight Special fapiao

• Traffic fee fapiao

• Second hand vehicle fapiao

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature provides a paperless receipt option that adheres to requirements and regulations for China for paper into electronic tax receipt processing and compliance.

Release Notes

SAP Concur Technical Publications no longer publish the preview release notes. This change was made to streamline our client communication. With this change, only two sets of release notes are published for each monthly release cycle: draft release notes and final release notes.

The 2021 Release Calendar (English Only) has been updated to reflect this change.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change simplifies the release notes communications.

For more information about the publishing dates for the draft and final release notes, refer to the 2021 Release Calendar (English Only).

Cards

SAP Concur is currently in the process of re-evaluating this change. With the next release, this information will be removed. If this change is considered again, information will appear in the release notes document.