Flight

In the July 2017 release, Concur announced support for an interim solution to provide branded fare content in Apollo and Galileo for the more "complex" branding schemes. With this release, Concur now supports Alitalia’s branded fares using this method.

Train

In order to meet the needs of our European customers, Concur will provide more rules specifically for train. With this release, we will introduce the first in the series of updates – train duration, which will evaluate the duration of a trip in days. The rule functions just like the version within the Flight rules section.

Profile

E-Receipts require active opt-in by the end user. With this release, Concur is updating the text that users agree to when opting in.

E-Receipts require active opt-in by the end user. With this release, Concur is adding the ability for users who have opted in to be able to opt themselves out of the E-Receipt programme

Be aware that masking – as described here – will be an ongoing effort across all SAP Concur products. The first step is to implement masking on the profile page. The next step – targeted for April – will be to mask data in the booking path and when viewing itineraries. Also note that Travel reports and logging will remain unmasked for administrators.

With this release, certain personal information – like birthdate, medical data, passport number, etc. – can be masked in order to prevent the display of such information in Profile. These options can be changed in Company Settings (for Professional Travel) or module properties (for Professional or Standard Travel, with the assistance of Concur).

Miscellaneous

The Users by Browser report has been updated to include more information – all in one place. It now lists all users as well as their browsers and login count. The admin no longer has to generate a report for each browser; all users are listed on one report.

All companies must take all reasonable steps to protect the personal and sensitive information of their employees. As per recommended security-related best practices, remember that custom fields – user fields and trip fields – should not contain personal and sensitive data.

If your company is currently using custom fields to store personal or sensitive data (for example, Social Security numbers, family member names or any other personally identifying information), you should plan to remove this information from your existing fields within the service and modify your current configuration.

The Working for Others Quick Help contains important information and should be available to everyone. Currently, it is available only by clicking the “?” icon with a mouse. With this release, the Working for Others Quick Help becomes accessible via the keyboard.

Screen readers are a type of assistive technology that audibly reads each screen element (instructional text, fields, options, etc.) to the user. Proper coding (in this case, known as alternative text or alt text) is required to ensure the reader “reads” the proper information to the user.

The issue is that the logo on the Sign In page does not currently have the proper code to read the logo description to the user. In this release, this issue will be resolved.

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 has delivered support for branded fares on Amadeus using Airline Fare Families as of the June 2017 release. Concur is currently in development to extend this support to flex faring.

Concur delivered a new UI for branded fares in 2016 and further enhanced in 2017, both in UI and with expanded branded fares coverage. With an upcoming release, we will move to utilise our new branded fare data store to populate all branded fare information. These changes apply to search by price and flex faring views.

In addition, we will provide more brand detail in the Fare Details section, such as: Wi-Fi availability, food and drink, changes, mileage, standby and priority.

The support of AMEX BTA / I-BTA via Travelfusion has been a requirement from many of our clients. The American Express Business Travel Account (BTA) is a centralised billing product that consolidates employee business travel expenses into a single account. AMEX I-BTA (Invoice Business Travel Account) is a special version of BTA that allows VAT reclaim.

With an upcoming release, we will support AMEX BTA / I-BTA for Eurowings via Travelfusion in a first step. In our first iteration, descriptive billing information (such as employee ID or cost centre) will be supported for Eurowings only. Other airlines will follow in a later iteration.

Concur is happy to announce support for Airbnb.com as a new Hotel Service supplier. Airbnb is the world’s largest community accommodation marketplace with over 3,000,000 listings in 65,000 cities and 191 countries.

For more details, go to: www.airbnb.com (English Only)

Concur has upgraded its hotel connectivity technology to offer a new API service known as HotelService 2.0 or HS2. The new API is designed as a standard solution for all hotel suppliers connected to Concur Travel. Throughout the next months, we are planning to migrate all hotel direct connect partner APIs from the existing legacy APIs (HotelService 1.0, HRS and Hotel.de) to our new microservice-based HotelService API 2.0. The first hotel supplier we plan to migrate to our new API is HRS in the month of March.

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.

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 operation 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 (English Only)

With the October 2018 release, XML Profile Sync will no longer be available. 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, Concur will assist with the identification of those customers.

For customers who currently display the Privacy Agreement page to users, be aware that on 14 April, 2018, Concur will eliminate that page. That means the privacy agreement will no longer display under any circumstances. In addition, the options to customise the privacy agreement text and to apply policy (for example, to require that a user accept the privacy agreement) will be removed. In a separate release, Concur will provide a standard privacy statement, which can be accessed via a link in the page footer.

The new Data Retention feature will allow clients to control how long Concur stores their data based on who, when and where criteria. This feature gives clients the ability to meet their specific compliance needs regarding data retention.

Last year, when in-product messaging was introduced in Europe, the feature included the ability for users to opt out of messaging. In a future release, Concur will provide customers in the United States the ability to opt out.

Concur is announcing the End of Support for plain text FTP as a means to transfer data to and from Concur. Plain text FTP is not a secured protocol and has inherent security vulnerabilities. On 15 May 2018, Concur Operations will apply a security update to our File Transfer infrastructure, restricting the use of plain text FTP as a part of our ongoing commitment to securing our customers’ data and meeting the audited security requirements of the "Concur Trust Platform".

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