Authentication

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

SAP Concur will soon begin the deprecation process of removing Hash-Based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) as an SSO option. The replacement service for HMAC is SAML SSO, a self-service method of setup whereby client admins have access within SAP Concur to complete their SAML connections.

Clients currently using HMAC are encouraged to migrate to the SSO self-service tool as soon as it is released (targeted for Q2 2020). The new SSO self-service tool allows multiple portals (Identity Providers) to be added.

The HMAC deprecation includes two phases:

PHASE I:

• Clients must have an Identity Provider (IdP) or a custom SAML 2.0 solution.

• Clients begin testing the new SSO self-service tool.

• Travel Management Companies (TMCs) prepare for onboarding new SAP Concur clients using the new SSO self-service tool, which is targeted for release in Q2 2020.

• Once the SSO tool is available, 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 using the new SSO self-service tool.

• Existing clients using HMAC need to be migrated using the new SSO self-service tool.

PHASE II:

• Travel Management Companies (TMCs) continue migrating existing SAP Concur clients from the HMAC service to the new SSO self-service tool.

• Shut down the HMAC service after everyone has migrated from HMAC to the new SSO self-service tool. Phase II is targeted to end mid-year 2020.

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

Cards

The manual personal card import feature has been retired and is no longer available for activation on the Professional Edition of Concur Expense. Existing clients can still use the manual personal charge card import feature while they remain on the current UI. This option will not be supported on the NextGen UI.

The manual personal card import feature was used to pre-populate expense data for users who have personal cards with reimbursable expenses. As an alternative to the manual personal card import feature, clients can transition their users to the automated personal card import feature or use ExpenseIt and the SAP Concur mobile app.

Clients who want to activate the automated personal card import feature should open a support ticket with SAP Concur support. Once the automated personal card import feature is activated and configured, users can register their cards on the Expense Credit Cards page in Profile and have Concur Expense automatically capture and display their card transactions.

For more information, refer to the Manual Personal Card Import Feature Retirement FAQ (English Only).

Data Retention

As of 2 June 2020, when user data is removed in accordance with a data retention policy, the country code associated with removed users is obfuscated by setting the country code to XX (Inactive).

Previously, the country code for removed users was set to US by default.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This improves reporting by consistently setting the country code data for removed users to a code designated for that purpose.

Expense Pay - Global

The payment-processing partners' privacy statements are now available from the Concur Expense UI. Links are available from the Bank Information page and from the direct deposit opt-in pop-up.

The hyperlinks point to payment-processing partners' Web sites. The contents of the privacy statements are not part of Concur Expense.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change makes important information more readily accessible.

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 will begin 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 the end of 2020. 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.

Language Support

With the May release (16 May), SAP Concur added support for the following language:

• Thai

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change enables users to configure Thai as the default language for the UI text in SAP Concur solutions. Selecting Thai as the default language might also change some regional settings.

Miscellaneous

Beginning in May, users can connect to the US Data Centre through www.concursolutions.com or through a new URL, us1.concursolutions.com. In addition, targeted for Q3, users connecting to the US Data Centre through www.concursolutions.com will be redirected to us1.concursolutions.com.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The us1.concursolutions.com URL is consistent with the URL for other data centres. For example, users connecting to the EMEA data centre are redirected to eu1.concursolutions.com.

The certificate provided by the SAP Concur SAMLv2 service, which is used to establish a Single-Sign On (SSO) connection with an IdP, will expire on 25 June 2020. Unless the certificate is renewed before the 25 June 2020 expiration date, the certificate expiration might prevent users from being able to successfully sign in to SAP Concur products.

SAP Concur solutions offer SSO to help make the user sign-in process easier and more secure. SSO requires that trust be established between the Identity Provider (IdP) and the Service Provider (SP). This trust is established in part by cryptographic use of certificates provided by the service provider, in this case, SAP Concur solutions.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: To ensure that the SSO certificate adheres to the latest security standards and processes, the certificate is configured to expire and be renewed periodically.

On 22 June 2020, SAP Concur solutions removed support for connections to *.concursolutions.com and *api.concursolutions.com that use the following TLSv1.2 ciphers:

• AES256-GCM-SHA384

• AES128-GCM-SHA256

In response to the needs of our clients, support for these ciphers was restored on 25 June.

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.

Financial Integration

SAP Concur is updating the SAP Integration with Concur Solutions (ICS) to allow delta posting of previously posted expense claims. The initial feature set will allow end users to recall posted expense claims. For the initial release, the end user can modify only the custom fields on the expense claim (claim header, entry, itemisation and allocation level), then resubmit it. The resubmitted expense claim goes through the approval workflow again, and when approved it is reposted to the SAP ERP.

This functionality is available for clients using Concur Expense NextGen UI, with ICS for the following SAP ERPs:

• SAP ECC

• SAP S/4HANA

• SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature allows end users to submit expense claims with temporary cost object information and update them later without delaying reimbursement.