Flight

SAP Concur is happy to announce that Express Checkout is coming 10 December!

Express Checkout is a new checkout experience that will reduce the checkout process from five pages to two: Review and Book and the confirmation page. Travellers will no longer have to page through multiple screens to complete their Air booking. All the pertinent information required to complete the booking will be collected via the new Review and Book page.

With this release, the following logic will be used for Shop by Price, User Quote, View More Fares and Upsell.

• If there is no PEN warning type present, Concur Travel shows the fare as Refundable

• If there is a PEN warning type present, with “PENALTY APPLIES” text, Concur Travel shows the fare as Refundable

• If there is a PEN warning type present along with specific non-refundable keywords, Concur Travel shows the fare as Non-Refundable

Miscellaneous

SAP Concur is transitioning to a new email infrastructure for outbound emails from our products to SAP Concur users. Because of this, companies who filter inbound email based on the sending IP address must add the new IP addresses to their Safe Sender List to ensure that their users receive email from SAP Concur.

Be aware that – at this time – the issue described here affects only companies that use Concur Expense and filter incoming email based on IP addresses. (This includes all editions of Expense – whether the company uses Expense by itself or integrated with any other SAP Concur product or service.) Other SAP Concur services (such as Travel and Concur Pay) are not currently affected.

The new IP addresses are not published publicly but they are available by contacting SAP Concur support. Please work with your email server management team to ensure any required Safe Sender Lists for IP addresses are updated so that your users continue to receive SAP Concur emails without interruptions.

SAP Concur is in the process of updating the format of all email notifications. These changes will provide a fresher, consistent look and feel across all SAP Concur services. The change will be introduced gradually. Some users will see the updated format immediately; some will see it over the next few months. Be aware that the email content has not changed – just the look and feel.

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.

Targeted for March of 2019, XML Profile Sync will no longer be available. SAP 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, SAP Concur will assist with the identification of those customers.

SAP Concur is planning to increase the security of the Travel Profile Services by modifying the event notification sent to travel suppliers for the following changes: Form of Payment, User (Travel Profile) and Itinerary.

The new notifications will be modified to remove all tokens from the notification. The travel suppliers and TMCs who subscribe to these notifications will begin to get the updated notifications in a future release. SAP Concur will contact the affected travel suppliers and TMCs to help them migrate to the new notification format.

With this release, we have updated the SAP Concur Travel wait pages to our new theme. In this update, we have lightened our branding to accommodate all customer requirements and to alleviate confusion between SAP Concur and the TMC that will fulfil the traveller bookings.

SAP Concur is planning to update the authentication settings for clients using the File Transfer functionality to lock out user accounts after 5 failed authentication attempts. Some accounts are already using this setting, and this change will update all accounts to this setting. This authentication change does not impact the main SAP Concur application login, only the File Transfer process.

Clients who have locked themselves out of their accounts should contact SAP Concur support to unlock their accounts.

As SAP Concur continues to grow, steps must be taken to enhance and improve the performance of our system so that we can meet customer expectations and the needs of their business.

Our overall goal is to significantly improve the performance of SAP Concur services by reducing the amount of data that is stored in our Production datastore. By reducing the data in the Production system, we can use server memory much more efficiently, which reduces processing time for transactions.

For this reason, SAP Concur is developing an archive process for users who have been deactivated by their employers for at least three years. The archive process moves this "deactivated" user data from our Production datastore to a separate Reporting datastore.

Single Sign-On allows users to access multiple applications using one set of login credentials. Currently, SAP Concur has two methods for signing in: with a user name and password or using SSO with identity provider (IdP) credentials, such as a user's login credentials for their organisation.

SAP Concur is planning to add a Manage Single Sign-On (SSO) feature to Concur Travel that provides clients with a self-service option for setting up SSO for their organisation. SSO is currently supported for Concur Expense, Invoice, Request and Travel.

SAP Concur is planning to add a new Sign In page, providing an updated login experience for users who log in with a user name and password credentials. Current Single Sign-On (SSO) users will log in without having to enter additional credentials. This feature is planned for 2019. This feature provides better security and a faster, convenient experience for users logging in to SAP Concur products and services.

Client Notifications

The list of non-affiliated subprocessors is available here: SAP Concur list of Subprocessors (English Only)

Monthly browser certifications, both current and planned, are available with the other SAP Concur monthly release notes, accessible from What's New - Professional Edition