Administration

With this release, SAP Concur will consolidate the shared Planned Changes release notes into one document, instead of having the Planned Changes information repeated in several sets of release notes.

This consolidated Planned Change information is provided in addition to the product-specific Planned Changes release notes. For example, if a planned change applies only to Travel, it will only be available in the Travel release notes. So, users are encouraged to read the product-specific release notes as well as the Shared Planned Changes.

This change allows users to find shared Planned Changes release notes in one place. It also makes it easier for clients to keep track of updates to the Planned Changes release notes.

For customers/TMCs that have enabled the Southwest Airlines direct connect, we offer a feature called Override Email Address. To date, if you enter an email address here, all email communications from Southwest go to this centralised email address - for example, the fulfilment TMC - and not the actual user/traveller.

If the Override Email Address checkbox is selected, fulfilment emails such as billing confirmations/receipts will be sent to the override email. Traveller notifications such as schedule changes, flight delays and cancellations will be sent to the Traveller email only, not to the TMC. If unchecked, ALL emails will be delivered to the Traveller email.

Prior to this, if this field is populated and emails were sent to a central email box, it was expected that a second step was performed by the customer or TMC to then forward the email to the user/arranger. With this release, this will no longer be necessary.

Flight

In the July 2017 release, SAP Concur announced support for an interim solution to provide branded fare content in Apollo and Galileo for the more complex branding schemes.

This interim solution requires SAP Concur to sell and store branded fares by fare basis code, since using the common method of selling and storing by booking class/RBD could result in lower, more restrictive fares being booked when the user has specified otherwise. In many cases, the lowest brand offered by an airline does not include a checked bag or a pre-assigned seat and may not allow cancellations or changes.

While storing a branded fare using its fare basis code works well in Concur Travel, it requires some operational changes for fulfilment travel agencies. Specifically, automation routines will require updates, and travel consultants will require training to ensure they can service these reservations properly. For this reason, SAP Concur has made this interim solution optional. This will allow fulfilment travel agencies to work with customers to provide complex branded fares capabilities on Apollo/Galileo using the interim solution as needed for each customer.

American Airlines AirPass is a feature offering last-seat availability and flexibility and is tied to a traveller's AAdvantage membership number. SAP Concur plans to work with American Airlines to migrate Concur Travel's connection from a legacy platform to a new platform. Until the new platform is available, we will suspend technical support in Concur Travel for AirPass-related requests.

Based on client feedback, SAP Concur has updated the flex faring information for Air Vistara.

SAP Concur’s flex faring feature relies on booking codes to map fares to their appropriate buckets. This means the feature is limited to fares that are unique across booking codes. For Air Vistara, the ECO Flexi, PEY Standard, PEY Flexi, CCL Standard and CCL Flexi fares cannot be supported in flex faring view, as these brands reuse booking codes. Customers that need this content should consider disabling flex faring; these brands are supported via the branded fares standard view (shop by price).

Based on continued enablement of Express Checkout by our customers and positive feedback received from end users, SAP Concur will make the new checkout experience available by default to all qualified users.

This change simplifies the entry for a qualified user into the Express Checkout experience. When Express Checkout is enabled and the trip qualifies, the user is taken directly into the new Review and Book page without being prompted.

In this release, to provide eligible Express Checkout users with the option to hold their trip, the new module property “Enable ExC Hold Trip Popup” must be turned on. Once enabled, the user will see a dialogue that asks if they are planning to hold their trip.

If the user clicks Yes, the original checkout experience displays and gives them the option to hold their trip.

If the user clicks No, the Express Checkout with the new popup dialogue displays, for the first time and only time.

In recent months, Air France made significant changes to their Abonnement programme fares, causing the Abonnement feature in SAP Concur to stop working as expected. The nature of the change requires that SAP Concur rebuild the entire feature and introduce new custom functionality.

Much of the GDS behaviour with the Abonnement programme is undocumented. For this reason, SAP Concur is taking an iterative approach to restoring this functionality, and may include additional items based on customer feedback.

Car

Concur Travel allows travellers to book rental cars from numerous third-party vendors all over the world. The booking process allows the traveller to specify the category of the requested vehicle and the vendor replies with information about available vehicles. However, it is an inherent part of the booking process that the offered vehicle is only an approximation – the vendor reserves the right to provide an alternative vehicle at the point of sale. The vehicle booked can differ in many details, including the number of seats or available baggage space.

For this reason, we are adding a disclaimer to our car search result page, specifically explaining that the information of vehicle capacity is not guaranteed by the vendor, and that the traveller may want to contact the vendor in advance to confirm the actual vehicle capacity.

Ground

Due to service and stability issues with the Curb Ground Direct Connect system, SAP Concur will no longer support the Curb Ground Direct Connect. We will retire this connection immediately and encourage clients to speak with their Concur Travel Account Manager or TMC to discuss alternatives for ground transportation through SAP Concur.

We support several global and regional suppliers, offering many of the same connections to discounted ground transportation. You can read about and connect with all our ground transportation suppliers in the SAP Concur App Centre.

Hotel

As part of our ongoing innovations of the hotel direct connect portfolio in Concur Travel, SAP Concur and HRS have developed the support HRS Payment Solutions. HRS Payment Solutions allows HRS Direct Connect customers to use:

• Global Payment

• Paperless Travel

• Central Billing

With HRS Payment Solutions support, SAP Concur clients can use the HRS payment options offered to our common clients for bookings via HRS Direct Connect.

Profile

In the Form of ID section of a user’s profile, the information in the National ID Number field will now be masked on screen and displayed with asterisks.

The National ID Number fields can be used to collect various national IDs, stored in Concur Travel and passed to the TMC via profile sync options.

Miscellaneous

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, which will be a self-service method of setup whereby Company Admins will 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. The new SSO self-service tool will be offered as a free feature to all clients. The new SSO self-service tool allows multiple portals (Identity Providers) to be added.

This change provides better security and improved support for users logging in to SAP Concur products and services.

Over the next several weeks, users will see several enhancements to Concur Open and Personalised Concur Open.

The email sent to subscribers has been rebranded and styled to match the SAP experience while displaying an easier-to-read content layout. The content of the subscriber email has not changed, but the look-and-feel and the headings have been updated.

Just as before, the link in the lower-left corner of the Personalised Concur Open Service Status Dashboard page provides access to the Service Status History Dashboard page. On that page:

• The current column heading of Detailed RCA has been changed to Root Cause Analysis.

• A link to view the Root Cause Analysis report for each P1 will appear in the Root Cause Analysis column.

With this update, SAP Concur has changed the user experience for the survey confirmation which has caused confusion when translated.

By changing the text to be easily translatable and understood, global users can feel confident and appreciated after submitting their feedback.

SAP Concur is transitioning to a new email infrastructure for outbound email from our services to SAP Concur users. Because of this, companies who filter inbound email based on the sending IP address must add new IP addresses to their Safe Sender list to ensure that their users receive email from SAP Concur.

Initially, the issue described here affected only companies that use Concur Expense. Starting in January, email from other SAP Concur services (such as Concur Travel and Concur Pay) will move to the new email infrastructure.

We will continue to add other services. Please monitor the release notes for more information about the timing of the additional changes.

SAP Concur will no longer support the following unsecured 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.concurcdc.cn

If assistance is required, please contact SAP Concur support.

These changes provide greater security for file transfers.

SAP Concur support is implementing the Co-browse feature, a screen-share application that is available to all Authorised Support Contacts (ASCs).

Screen sharing often makes a problem easier to describe, easier to understand and quicker to resolve – saving time for ASCs and SAP Concur support.