Car

With this update, we have modified the Car matrix on the Concur Travel pages to include the total cost with taxes. This update will help users understand and compare options more easily when booking a car.

Train

Currently, individual or ghost cards are supported for SilverRail bookings, with SilverRail being the merchant of record. In order to provide the option for the TMC to be the merchant of record, 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.

With this release, Concur Travel is providing the "On Account" payment feature. The client can use the invoice payment type between themselves and the TMC, which eliminates credit card payment for SilverRail bookings within Concur Travel. TMCs can use existing distribution licences they may have with a carrier.

Profile

Over the past months, several pieces of personally identifiable information were masked in Profile. In some cases, this created an inconvenience for users. SAP Concur is evaluating the situation and will unmask some of those fields. With this release, SAP Concur will unmask loyalty numbers and advantage membership numbers.

Miscellaneous

SAP Concur evaluated all reports that are available from within Concur Travel. The goal of the evaluation was to balance the need to meet strict data security requirements, customer usage of these reports, the availability of travel data elsewhere and the resources required to maintain the reports.

SAP Concur has identified Travel Reports that will be retired with this release. Refer to the release notes for additional information and a complete list of reports.

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.

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 whitelist new IP addresses to ensure that their users receive email from SAP Concur.

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 whitelists for IP addresses are updated so that your users continue to receive SAP Concur emails without interruptions.

With this release, the system will automatically email all users who have the Data Retention Administrator role or permission whenever changes are made to the data retention policy. Prior to this change, only the admin who made the change received the 72-hour confirmation email.

Concur has retired the Trip Approval API. This API provided third parties with the ability to manage Concur Travel trip approvals (as required by Concur Travel rules and policy) in systems outside of Concur Travel. This API is inactive and is no longer supported. All trip approval functions within Concur Travel and Concur Request will continue to function as usual. Only the external API endpoint is being retired.

Clients should contact the group responsible for their web services, which may be inside their company, or a third-party developer, to inform them of the upcoming changes.

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.

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

Express Checkout is a new checkout experience that will reduce the checkout process from five pages to two: Review and Book and Confirmed. 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.

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.

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.

In a future release, we will update the SAP Concur Travel wait pages to our new theme. In that update, we will lighten our branding to accommodate all customer requirements and to alleviate confusion between SAP Concur and the TMC that will fulfil the traveller bookings.

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.

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