Admin

In the November 2019 release notes, the Connected List Data Type Now Available for Expense Attendee Form release note was accidentally published before the official release of this new functionality, which is currently targeted for a future release.

The Connected List data type functionality is part of the planned future direction of the product that is currently on our longer-range roadmap. More information will be published about this functionality when the entire feature is ready to be officially released.

This connected list functionality will not be universally supported for attendee records, and will only be available for very specific use cases for employee attendees (SYSEMP).

Authentication

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

SAP Concur will soon begin the deprecation process of removing Hash-Based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) as an SSO option. The replacement service for HMAC is SAML SSO, a self-service method of setup whereby client admins have access within SAP Concur to complete their SAML connections.

Clients currently using HMAC are encouraged to migrate to the SSO self-service tool as soon as it is released (targeted for Q1 2020). The new SSO self-service tool allows multiple portals (Identity Providers) to be added.

The HMAC deprecation includes two phases:

Phase I:

• Clients need to have an Identity Provider (IdP) or a custom SAML 2.0 solution.

• Clients begin testing the new SSO self-service tool.

• Clients prepare for onboarding new clients using the new SSO self-service tool, which is targeted for release in Q1 2020.

• Once the SSO 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 using the new SSO self-service tool.

• Existing clients using HMAC need to be migrated using the new SSO self-service tool.

PHASE II:

• Clients continue migrating existing HMAC clients to the new SSO self-service tool.

• Shut down the HMAC service after everyone has migrated from HMAC to the new SSO self-service tool. Phase II is targeted to end mid-year 2020.

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

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

In October 2019, the SAP Concur Sign In page will be updated, providing a new login experience for both direct SAP Concur username/password users and Single Sign-On (SSO) users. SSO users will start the SP-initiated SSO login process at www.concursolutions.com.This change was made on 31 October, 2019 (not in the scheduled monthly release). Initially, the new Sign In page is visible to only a small percentage of users. Availability will gradually increase throughout November 2019, until all SAP Concur users have the option to use the new Sign In page.

The new SAP Concur Sign In page features a two-step login process that provides enhanced security, meets current industry standards and provides a better login success rate.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature provides better security and a faster, convenient experience for users logging in to SAP Concur products and services.

Central Reconciliation

In December, SAP Concur will deprecate the following policy setting:

• Show Central Reconciliation Invoices in Expense

The checkbox will be removed from the Concur Expense policy configuration options and the corresponding feature will no longer be supported.

The feature will not be implemented in the NextGen Expense UI.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The deprecation of this functionality will allow SAP Concur to focus on features that are used by a greater number of clients.

E-Receipts

E-receipt technology is evolving quickly. Today, the receipt handling rules are hardcoded to accept e-receipts to meet image requirements. Moving forward, as e-receipts become more common, and legislation about them becomes more complex, this is not a valid assumption for all countries and circumstances.

Clients who want to maintain their current system behaviour, that is to continue to accept e-receipts to meet image requirements, will need to configure a custom receipt rule.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change allows clients who use e-receipts to continue to comply with regulatory and contractual requirements for documentation to substantiate an expense.

Expense Pay – Global

SAP Concur has made the following changes on the Funding Account page:

• The Account Currency field has been renamed Reimbursement Currency.

• The Funding Type drop-down has been removed from the screen.

• The Payment-Processing Partner field has been added to a new section of the page Payment-Processing Partner Details. The field displays available payment processing partners. If only one payment processing partner is available for the selected reimbursement currency, the partner is defaulted.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: These changes maintain readability and accuracy of the information displayed.

File Transfer Updates

This release note is intended for technical staff responsible for file transmissions with SAP Concur. For our customers and suppliers participating in data exchange through various secure file transfer protocols, SAP Concur is making changes that provide greater security for those file transfers.

SAP Concur will change the IP address for st-eu.concursolutions.com from 84.14.175.233 to 46.243.56.11 on 23 November, 2019 during the maintenance window in the region Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Clients whose file transfers protocols use the SAP Concur DNS endpoint (st-eu.concursolutions.com) to connect are not impacted by this change.

Clients who connect via IP address will need to connect to the SAP Concur DNS endpoint (st-eu.concursolutions.com) or the new IP address as of 23 November, 2019.

SAP Concur recommends connecting to DNS endpoint st-eu.concursolutions.com to avoid connection issues if the SAP Concur IP address changes.

This announcement pertains to the following file transfer DNS endpoint:

• st-eu.concursolutions.com

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change provides greater security for file transfers.

This release note is intended for technical staff responsible for file transmissions with SAP Concur. For our customers and suppliers participating in data exchange through various secure file transfer protocols, SAP Concur made changes that provide greater security for those file transfers.

As of 8 AM PDT, 14 October, 2019, SAP Concur no longer supports the following unsecure SSH protocol algorithms/ciphers:

• (key exchange) diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1

• (encryption) aes128-cbc

• (encryption) aes192-cbc

• (encryption) aes256-cbc

• (message authentication code) hmac-md5

• (message authentication code) hmac-sha1-96

• (message authentication code) hmac-md5-96

This announcement pertains to the following file transfer DNS endpoints:

• st.concursolutions.com

• st-eu.concursolutions.com

• st-cge.concursolutions.com

• st-cge-dr.concursolutions.com

• vs.concursolutions.com

• vs.concurcdc.cn

If assistance is required, please contact SAP Concur support.

For more information, refer to the Shared: File Transfer for Customers and Vendors User Guide (English Only).

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: These changes provide greater security for file transfers.

Next Generation (NextGen) Expense

Update: In order to respond to and take advantage of feedback from customers, and to align with SAP Concur’s commitment to ensure a smooth and successful transition, we are working on a revised deployment strategy for Next Generation Expense.

SAP Concur is dedicated to the consistent improvement of our products, not only the features they provide, but also the experience of using those features. How users interact with technology changes over time, along with needs and expectations. We are constantly listening to our customers and soliciting feedback on how we can improve the user experience.

NextGen Expense is the continued evolution of the SAP Concur user experience. It was built from extensive user research and data analytics that include 680 1:1 conversations, 58 usability studies, 3,000+ survey responses and 1.3B monthly user actions.

Customers will have the ability to preview and then opt in to NextGen Expense before the mandatory cutover.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The result is the next generation of the Expense user interface designed to provide a modern, consistent and streamlined user experience. This technology not only provides an enhanced UI, but also allows SAP Concur to react more quickly to customer requests to meet changing needs as they happen.

Profile

With this release, the Personal Credit Cards page in Profile settings is renamed Expense Credit Cards. The Personal Credit Cards link under Expense Settings in Profile settings is also renamed Expense Credit Cards.

This update is only a visible change and does not change any functionality. This update occurs for new and existing users.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change provides clarity for users when they are connecting company-issued credit cards that are not available in the normal corporate feed.

Quick Expense

Effective 31 March, 2020, the Quick Expense v3 API will be retired. We encourage all current users to migrate to Quick Expense v4 as soon as possible. Please note that after the API is in a retired state the API will be decommissioned in a future release.

Please refer to the deprecation policy for definitions and additional information.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This update will remove an outdated API.

Authentication

This feature is no longer targeted for October 2019 and is not targeted for the current release. This Release Note has been moved to the Shared Planned Changes Release Notes (English only).

Company Cards

SAP Concur will soon offer an American Express (Amex) business card connection. The Amex Business Card direct connect feature will allow customers to connect Amex business credit cards while in Concur Expense.

The Amex Business Card feature provides the following functionality:

• Provides an automatic daily refresh of transactions from Amex to SAP Concur (Concur Expense users do not need to sign into Amex to refresh transactions)

• Offers compatibility with SAP Concur Expense Assistant

• Allows the primary card holder to manage transactions without having to view all supplemental card transactions

• Supports Delegate and Proxy capabilities on transactions

• Provides transaction currency handling for foreign transactions

• Includes viewing available transactions

• Includes Concur Analytics for Standard reporting (including unsubmitted transactions)

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature provides SAP Concur customers with a business card connector.

File Transfer Updates

This feature is no longer targeted for October 2019 and is not targeted for the current release. This Release Note has been moved to the Shared Planned Changes Release Notes (English only).

Miscellaneous

Users often combine two expense-related items, such as a card transaction with a manually created expense entry. During the merge process, most fields are either copied or ignored based on precedence rules, to ensure that the most important information persists.

Currently – for custom fields – this process may cause unexpected results if the two items (in this case, card transaction and expense) use different expense entry forms. The result might be that the custom field data on the manually created expense entry is deleted, when the desired result would be for it to persist.

Targeted for the January release, this process will change. Data in custom fields will persist:

• Regardless of whether the combining items use the same expense entry forms

• If the data types (list, text, etc.) are the same

Initially, this change will apply only to custom fields that are of the List or Text data type. Over time, other data types will be included.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change will save time for users who may have to re-enter data in custom fields.

Currently, Concur Expense sends workflow emails (for example, about status changes) to all users, including inactive users.

Targeted for the December release, Concur Expense will no longer send workflow emails to inactive users.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: Inactive users cannot access Concur Expense so it is likely that receiving Expense workflow emails is not necessary.