Concur Invoice Professional Edition Administration Help

July 2020 Invoice Professional Edition Admin Summary

Initial Post

Release Note Summaries

The items in this section are summaries of the release notes for this month. The Professional Edition release notes are accessible from What's New - Professional Edition.

Concur Invoice

Download as Excel From All My Invoices and Deleted Invoices List Views on My Invoices Page (2 Jul)

Clients can now export data by clicking the Download as Excel link in the following list views on the My Invoices page:

  • All My Invoices

  • My Deleted Invoices

There is a limit to the number of invoices that can be exported from the All My Invoices list view. The other list views do not have this limit, but the export process might take some time if there are many items to be exported.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature provides clients with flexibility in how they work with invoice data.

Authentication

**Ongoing** Deprecation of Director SAML Service and Migration to SAML v2

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

Support for the Director SAML service is being deprecated. Travel Management Companies (TMCs) and SAP Concur personnel will soon begin assisting customers who currently use Director SAML to migrate to SAP Concur SAML v2 SSO (SAML v2).

Clients currently using Director SAML are encouraged to migrate to SAML V2 as soon as possible.

Deprecation of support for the Director SAML service is dependent on the following requirements:

  • SAP Concur technicians and TMCs assist existing SAP Concur clients to migrate from the Director SAML service to SAML V2.

  • All clients that currently rely on the Director SAML service have migrated from Director SAML to SAML V2.

Migration from Director SAML to SAML V2 requires the following general steps:

  • The client identifies an admin to act as the SSO admin and assigns the proper permission/role.

  • The SSO admin coordinates with their SAP Concur technician to obtain the SAP Concur SP metadata.

  • The SSO admin configures the SSO settings at the IdP based on information from SP metadata.

  • The SSO admin retrieves IdP metadata from the IdP and delivers the metadata to the SAP Concur technician.

  • The SSO admin adds a few testing users and tests the new SSO connection.

  • With successful testing, the company rolls out SSO to their SAP Concur users.

For more detailed information about migrating to SAML v2, refer to the SSO Service: Overview Guide (English Only) and the Shared: SSO Management Setup Guide (English Only).

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

**Ongoing** Deprecation of HMAC Initiates Migration to SSO Self-Service

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

SAP Concur support for Hash-Based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) is being deprecated. Travel Management Companies (TMCs) and SAP Concur personnel are currently assisting customers who use HMAC to migrate to SAP Concur SAML v2 SSO (SAML v2).

In Q3 of 2020, SAP Concur plans to provide a self-service tool that will enable client admins to set up their SAML v2 connections without involving an SAP Concur support representative.

The HMAC deprecation includes two phases:

PHASE I:

  • Clients must have an identity provider (IdP) or a custom SAML 2.0 compliant solution.

  • Clients begin testing authentication using SAML v2.

  • TMCs prepare to onboard new SAP Concur clients to SAML v2.

  • Once the SSO self-service 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 to SAML v2.

  • Existing clients using HMAC must migrate to SAML v2.

PHASE II:

  • TMCs have migrated all existing SAP Concur clients from the HMAC service to SAML v2.

  • The HMAC service is deprecated. Phase II is targeted to end mid-year in 2021.

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

File Transfer Updates

**Ongoing** SAP Concur Legacy File Move Migration

This Release Note is intended for the technical staff responsible for file transmissions with SAP Concur. For our clients 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.

List Import

Start Date and End Date in List Import Will No Longer Be Stored

Beginning with the July release, Start Date and End Date information that is included in the concur-standard.xml or concur-standard-71.xml import definition files is no longer stored by SAP Concur solutions.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The Start Date and End Date information is not referenced or used by SAP Concur solutions and does not need to be stored.

Image Handling

Imaging XML API Error Updates

SAP is updating the Concur Imaging XML API to clarify two error codes. The service currently returns an HTTP 200 code even when the API returns an error 500 in the XML response. This update corrects the HTTP error code, returning HTTP 500 if the API response includes the 500 error code. Additionally, the Imaging response error code 503 (Storage Unavailable) will be changed to error code 122, to reduce confusion with the HTTP 503 error code.

The Imaging XML API is separate from the Imaging v1.0 or v3.0 APIs, and very few clients are using it. SAP has reached out individually to those clients in order to coordinate this change.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This update supports better monitoring of the Imaging XML API.

Miscellaneous

SAMLv2 SSO Certificate Expired (25 Jun)

The certificate provided by the SAP Concur SAMLv2 service, which is used to establish a Single-Sign On (SSO) connection with an IdP, expired on 25 June, 2020. A new certificate is available for renewal. Users might be prevented from successfully signing in to SAP Concur products if the expired certificate is not renewed.

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.

Updated: Some TLSv1.2 Ciphers No Longer Supported (22 June)

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.

Planned Change Summaries

The items in this section are summaries of the changes targeted for future releases. SAP Concur reserves the right to postpone implementation of – or completely remove – any enhancement/change mentioned here.

IMPORTANT: These Planned Changes might not list all of the upcoming enhancements and modifications that affect this SAP Concur product or service. The Planned Changes that apply to multiple SAP Concur products and/or services are listed in a consolidated document. Please review the additional Planned Changes admin summaries available in the July 2020 Shared Planned Changes Professional Edition Admin Summary.

Concur Invoice

**Planned Changes** Supplier Portal Deprecation

Targeted for the October 2020 release, the Supplier Portal feature will be retired, and suppliers will no longer be able to use this functionality. The Supplier Portal enables suppliers to perform self-serve tasks without needing to interact with their buyer (Concur Invoice client), such as checking the status of an invoice, searching for their buyers and viewing the buyer contact information if direct contact is required.

After the retirement of the Supplier Portal, suppliers who sign in to the Supplier Portal will receive a message about the retirement. Clients who try to send the invitation link out to suppliers will also receive a message about the retirement. Clients who are using the Supplier Portal are encouraged to reach out to any suppliers who are actively using it with alternate instructions on how to interact with their buyers.

As Concur Invoice moves forward, we are committed to identifying the best solution to deliver on our clients' business needs.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature is being deprecated due to low usage.

**Planned Changes** Download as Excel From All Sent to Purchasing List View on My Invoices Page

In a future release, clients will be able to export data by clicking the Download as Excel link in the All Sent to Purchasing list view on the My Invoices page:

There is no maximum number of items that can be exported, but the export process might take some time if there are many items to be exported.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature provides clients with flexibility in how they work with invoice data.

**Planned Changes** Import Now Feature Supports Email Notification -

In a future release and based on role and setting, clients who have performed an import by using the Import Now feature will receive an email notification with information about the success of the import.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This enhancement helps clients keep track of successful Import Now email notifications.

Client Notifications

The items in this section provide reference material for all clients.

SAP Concur Non-Affiliated Subprocessors

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

Monthly Browser Certifications

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