Administration

A number of customers have mentioned that the content in the approval and notification emails contain too much detail and are, therefore, confusing to read. With this release, Concur has refined and clarified the email messaging.

Flight

Concur has been working with Travelport for many months in an ongoing effort to support branded fares for our Apollo/Galileo customers. While working to support Travelport’s approach to branded fares, Concur identified additional Travelport development requirements that are currently in-process with Travelport.

Concur has developed an interim solution. Concur is targeting delivery of this interim solution within the next several weeks. Please watch release notes for additional updates.

Train

During April 2017, Concur released SilverRail, a train aggregator that provides content for Spain, Sweden and soon for Italy.

During the early adopter programme, it has been noticed that the approval and on hold deadline is only 20–30 minutes for most routes and fares. Due to this reason, trips may be cancelled before the traveller has them completed within Concur Travel (example: the trip requires approval). Such a short approval deadline is not compatible with the current approval and on hold process. Due to this reason, SilverRail will become an instant purchase carrier – meaning that trip on hold will no longer be supported.

Miscellaneous

Concur offers a travel policy rule under the Travel Itinerary category called All Trips. The associated rule actions are Notify Manager, Require Approval or Require Passive Approval. When this rule is enabled, all trips made by users associated with that travel rule class will be sent to the manager/approver.

With this release, we have updated the way this is messaged to the manager/approver to no longer call out the rule violation.

UPDATE: Please note these dates:

- EU datacentre: Completed on Tuesday, 4 April 2017

- US datacentre: Completed on Wednesday, 12 July 2017

Several months ago, Concur announced 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.

This process has spanned several months and is now complete.

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.

Concur is dedicated to protecting our customers from potential security issues. One area that requires updates is self-registration. Targeted for September, Concur will remove the ability to allow users to set passwords at registration for the self-registration pages. In addition, going forward, Concur will always require approval for new self-registrations. By removing the ability to set passwords and by forcing approval, Concur will help protect customers and their data.

As announced last year, Concur plans to offer unique capabilities to our mutual customers using Compleat. The first step in this process is to identify the mutual Compleat and Concur Travel customers. When the PNR is populated with the configuration ID, Concur will be able to identify itineraries that will then be able to take advantage of new capabilities. The second phase will be to begin delivering the new capabilities.

Our first offering for mutual customers – targeted for August – will be Compleat SeatFinder.

Business Purpose: Travel arrangers booking SNCF trips for multiple passengers will be able to clearly identify the applicable fare name and fare rules for each traveller.

Currently, for SilverRail, you have the option to enable the provider in a Live environment only. Many TMCs and clients want to be able to test the functionality before requesting the setup. With live credentials, TMCs and clients have limited testing capabilities (train results and trip review page). For testing the full booking flow, a valid credit card needs to be used.

Business Purpose: Customers and TMCs will be able to enable SilverRail (Spain, Swedish and Italian Train content) in test mode. This will allow customers and TMCs to test the booking flow. TMCs will also be able to test passive segments and finish template formats without the restrictions of live bookings.

Both Renfe and Trenitalia have a wide range of fares available for each individual train trip. Currently we show all available fares in Concur.

In order to improve the performance and make sure travellers can see their fares faster in the UI, Concur will change the behaviour as follows:

• In the initial train results, travellers will see the lowest fare.
• When the traveller selects View More Fares, all applicable fares for the selected trains segments will be displayed.

Business Purpose: The shopping results performance will be significantly improved while travellers can still select any fare they desire.

Concur Travel currently provides rail content for US, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain and Sweden. Concur will add content for Italy (Trenitalia) to the portfolio of Concur Travel rail carriers via the existing SilverRail integration.

Trenitalia is the primary rail passenger carrier in Italy, formed in the year 2000. With Trenitalia services, users can travel almost anywhere in Italy. Trenitalia offers high-speed train services via classic intercity trains as well as regional trains.

For Renfe and Swedish Rail, Concur delivered the basic features and will continue to add additional functionality in order to meet all market requirements.

In the first release iteration, passive segments were not supported. To ensure that TMCs are able to view client rail bookings, Concur will start supporting passive segments for Sabre.

Business Purpose: SilverRail bookings will be visible for TMCs so they can provide reporting and duty of care. The passive segment format will be communicated with August release notes.

For Renfe and Swedish Rail, Concur delivered the basic features and will continue to add additional functionality in order to meet all market requirements.

In the first release iteration, passive segments were not supported. To ensure that TMCs are able to view client rail bookings, Concur will support passive segments starting with Amadeus, the primary GDS in Spain and Sweden.

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

Trainline started supporting a new Ticket Delivery type – mTickets – which allows users to download the ticket directly on their Trainline mobile app.

mTickets can be downloaded on iOS (9.0 operating system and newer) and Android (4.1 operating system and newer). The Trainline mTickets are currently accepted by Virgin Trains West Coast, Virgin Trains East Coast, CrossCountry Trains, Greater Anglia, Northern Rail, First TransPennine Express, Heathrow Express and Great Western Railways.

For the current list of accepted routes, please visit: http://ehelp.thetrainline.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4208

During 2016, Concur improved the user experience for SNCF multi-passenger bookings. The Companion page, which is displayed before the search, gives travel arrangers the opportunity to specify the companion information for the selected trips, including any discount cards that may be applicable for those travellers. This process results in having a multi-passenger booking that may include different fare types for each passenger, depending on their discount cards.

In a future release, we will improve the display to ensure that the exact fare name and fare rule information is easily identifiable for each passenger.

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.

XML Profile Sync is being retired. After June 2017, Concur will no longer developmentally support XML Sync as all of our resources will be focused on Travel Profile API 2.0 as our designated profile synchronisation process. As per API Lifecycle & Deprecation Policy, only critical issues will be addressed between January 2017 and June 2017. After June 2017, Concur will ensure that the service is available, but will not address any bugs discovered in the service.

The Quick Tips section of the Concur home page will be removed. We are targeting this change for the August service release.

MasterCard is expanding its BIN range to including new first 6-digit range 222100-272099. The Concur BIN restriction feature will begin accepting these new numbers with the August release.

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.

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 is targeted for everyone with the August release.

Client Notifications

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

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