Administration

Virtual Payment Administration Permission

In anticipation of the Virtual Payment feature (targeted for this coming summer), Concur created a unique permission to allow Virtual Payments to be managed outside of other administration pages/tasks. Not all customers will want to use Virtual Payments or grant access to other administrators. This permission will grant the user access to the new Virtual Payment Admin page, when that page becomes available.

Customer Benefit: Creating a unique permission will allow customers to grant access to users outside of User Admin or Company Admin. A user can have this permission and is only able to manage Virtual Payments – and nothing else.

Flight

Sabre - Remove Invalid Seat Selection, Finish Booking – United Airlines (UA) and/or American Airlines (AA)

Starting with the January release, if a user is assigned to a premium seat but does not qualify for a premium seat, the seat will be cancelled and the reservations (PNR) will be created without the seat assignment. The user will see a message on the itinerary: We were unable to confirm a seat assignment. Click on "Selected Seat" to view the seat map and manually select your seat.

User/Customer Benefit: Bookings will no longer fail and customers will now be able to secure the booking and desired fare without a delay.

Sabre - Support for Flex Fares in the Intra-New Zealand Market

Historically, Concur has supported the branded fares in the Australian and TransTasman markets, through the Flex Faring functionality, but we have not been able to support the intra-New Zealand market due to some technical limitations with how fares are filed in that market. With a recent change by Air New Zealand (NZ) in how some branded fares are filed, Concur will now be able to support those fares through our Flex Faring functionality.

User/Customer Benefit: This change provides additional traveller options.

Apollo/Galileo – Support British Airways Hand Baggage Only (HBO) Fares

British Airways offers less expensive “hand baggage only” fares on many routes where they operate. Concur is happy to announce support for these fares for our Apollo/Galileo customers.

User/Customer Benefit: These fares are less expensive than fares that include checked baggage; business travelers who need to make a day trip for business purposes can take advantage of these reduced fares, driving savings back to their companies.

Apollo/Galileo - Branded Fares Support

Concur is pleased to announce support for branded fares for our Apollo and Galileo customers for a specific group of airlines: Delta Air Lines (DL), Virgin America (VX), Germanwings (4U), Eurowings (EW), Vueling Airlines (VY), Binter Canarias (NT), Cathay Pacific (CX), Singapore Airlines (SQ) and United Airlines (UA) (United’s fares may not be available immediately, but Concur Travel should automatically start displaying them as soon as they are made available in Apollo or Galileo.)

User/Customer Benefit: With multiple fare options in each booking class, travellers will be able to enjoy more options when booking their flights. The new fares will reflect fixed services included in the price as well as different rebooking and refund conditions. Passengers can thus always choose the exact fare that best meets their needs and pay only for the services they actually want to use.

Amadeus - Change Seat Handling for Porter Airlines

Concur has received reports from our Amadeus customers that Concur Travel is confirming seat requests for Porter Airlines’ Firm fares, which do not include a pre-assigned seat. Concur has stopped this practice.

User/Customer Benefit: This change provides a better user experience for travellers.

Web Fares

Travelfusion – Add "Tour Code" for Avianca Brazil

With the October 2016 release, we announced the availability of Avianca Brazil in Concur via Travelfusion as a B2B carrier. In order to support corporate discounts and promotional fares, Avianca requires the additional Tour Code parameter. With this release, we support the required parameter.

User/Customer Benefit: Adding a Tour Code to the B2B section allows access to discounted promotional or corporate fares.

Southwest Migration to New Reservation System and the Booking Impact

Southwest Airlines is migrating their reservation system from their existing Sabre-based platform to an Amadeus Altéa platform. Southwest has announced that the final cutover date will be 08 May 2017. Neither Southwest nor Concur can manage one PNR in two different backend reservation systems.

Train

**COMING SOON** Renfe and Swedish Rail Available via Concur Travel

Concur Travel currently provides rail content for US, Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Concur will add content for Spain (Renfe) and Sweden to the portfolio of Concur Travel rail carriers. We are targeting end of the first calendar quarter of 2017 to have the content available.

User/Customer Benefit: Travellers can book rail content for Spain and Sweden in Concur Travel – a single, intuitive, web-based interface with effortless user experience.

Profile

XML Profile Sync Moves to Deprecated State 01 January 2017

Starting in October 2016, XML Profile Sync moved into a deprecated state. Moving to a deprecated state means that Concur will address only mission-critical issues between January and June 2017. After June 2017, Concur will no longer support XML Profile Sync as a way to synchronise profile data with Concur.

User/Customer Benefit: Using the Travel Profile API 2.0 provides a better experience.

Emerald Club – National / Enterprise Now Superchain

Enterprise Holdings has requested that a superchain be created in order to consolidate both Enterprise and National brands under a new umbrella called Emerald Club – National/Enterprise.

User/Customer Benefit: Emerald Club will allow loyalty benefits for both National and Enterprise, which provides a better user experience for travellers.

Meetings

**COMING SOON** Concur Meeting Discontinued as of 01 January 2018

Concur will discontinue Concur Meeting on 01 January 2018. Therefore, we are recommending that all Concur Meeting Management clients transition to a third-party meeting management solution that integrates with Concur as soon as possible. These partners and partner integrations are available for our customers today.

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: Concur customers can realise significantly value from working with Concur’s third-party meeting planning partners.

Concur Meeting Date Picker Changes for Discontinuation

As previously announced, Concur will discontinue Concur Meeting on 01 January 2018. In order to prevent meetings from being scheduled after the discontinuation date, Meeting Admins will be blocked from saving meetings that extend beyond 31 December 2017.

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change prevents meeting planners from accidentally scheduling a meeting in Concur Meeting that they will not be able to access after the discontinuation date.

Miscellaneous

Clarification about Currency Conversion

As noted in the September 2016 release notes, the user/arranger can use the currency list in the upper-right corner to convert fares/rates to a different currency. One thing to note: Concur uses the OANDA rate service when calculating the conversion from one currency to another. The supplier (in this case, Hertz) may use a different rate service. So, after the user selects (in this case) a car and the actual fare/rate appears on the Review and Reserve page, there may be a slight difference in the fare/rate due to the difference in conversion rates.

**REMINDER** Change in the Monthly Release Schedule

As shown on the 2017 release calendar, starting in March, Travel releases will occur on Saturday instead of Thursday. So, instead of seeing release-related changes on Friday of release week, they will appear to users on Monday (or over the weekend, if users sign in to Concur). The release calendar is available here: http://www.concurtraining.com/customers/tech_pubs/ReleaseCalendar/_ReleaseCalendar_client.htm (English Only)

**COMING SOON** New Payment Option in Concur Travel: Virtual Payment

Targeted for the Summer of 2017, Concur Travel will partner 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.

**COMING SOON** Support for TLS v 1.0 Encryption Protocol to End March of 2017

Concur announces 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. Note that, since less than 1% of Concur users are logging in to Concur Solutions using browsers or phones limited to version 1.0, a very small number of users are affected by this support discontinuation.