Earlier this year, SAP Concur announced the release of two new webservice APIs, which significantly enhance Concur’ s ability to update user data for Travel, Expense, and Request without the need for passing flat files. These new APIs, known as Identity Management (Identity v4) and User Provisioning Services (UPSv4), aim to provide our customers with everything they need to bring their interfaces with Concur’ s into the modern era.

As a long-time Technical Consultant at SAP Concur, I have always enjoyed assisting our largest customers in integrating their employee information. Until now, flat file interfaces have been the preferred method due to their security and extended functionality. However, times are changing.

In this post, I will introduce you to Identity and UPS at Concur. I will give you a list of reasons why you might want to use them, provide an overview of the existing functionality already supported, and bring you up to speed on future plans. Subsequent posts by myself and other technical consultants will delve deeper into the functionality that SAP Concur offers, helping you maximize the benefits of your webservice investment.

So, why should you consider using Identity v4 and UPS v4 at SAP Concur?

1. It is free for existing webservices customers. There are no additional fees or changes to your contract required.  The User Provisioning and Identity API services are part of the core Web Services product and do not have a separate SKU.
2. You may be able to eliminate the use of flat files for integrating your users with Concur. The most frequently used record types in an employee import are already supported and support is being added for additional record types soon.  See below for additional details.
3. You should be able to eliminate the risk of unnecessary errors related to timing. API calls for user-related updates can be enabled in near real-time without the need of waiting for your next overnight processing window to execute.
4. Identity v4 and UPSv4 are based on the SCIM standard which should allow for faster development and implementation. Both use the SCIM standard’s field naming conventions and protocols for maintaining user related information.   This should allow for reuse by customers whose identity management systems already conform to these standards.
5. Identity and UPS prioritize security. Both utilize the latest OAuth2 authentication method to connect to our systems.
6. You can have confidence in your technology investment. UPS already offers some functionality that is not supported by flat files, and ongoing investments will continue to enhance these services over flat files going forward.

If you are an IT professional supporting Concur, it is likely that you are already familiar with Concur’ s employee import feature and the various record types it offers. If you are not, then you can refer to the “Employee Import Specification” link provided in the references section of this post for a comprehensive listing of these record types and their corresponding fields. During the development of our new API calls, our R&D team focused on the record types that are most frequently used by our customers and made those available first.
Below is complete listing of the record types that now have parity through our new API calls:

– 300 Employee Import
– 305 Employee Import (Enhanced)
– 310 User Primary Field Addendum
– 320 Update ID Information Import
– 350 File type Travel Addendum
– 370 Statement Employee Import
– 400 Role Import
– 500 Delegate Import
– 550 Enhanced Delegate Import

In addition, the team is currently working on providing support for the following record types.   You can expect to see an update on them sometime soon.

– 360 File type Invoice Employee
– 700 Authorized Approver Import
– 710 Cost Object Approver Import
– 720 Authorized Approver
– 750 Delete Authorized Approver
– 760 Delete Cost Object Approver

If you don’t see a specific employee record type mentioned above then it may be a little while before it becomes available.

Finally, I’ll close this first post by highlighting that these new APIs will work with our Travel, Expense, Budget, Request, Reporting and Invoice products.  The record types mentioned above are currently supported on both Standard and Professional Concur systems which run on both our US or EMEA datacenters.  The China and Public Sector data centers are planned for the future.

Ok, this wraps up the first of six posts that are being planned to bring you up to speed on our latest API enhancements related to users.

Upcoming posts in this series will cover:

• Data structure: Identity vs Spend and Travel
• Synchronous vs Asynchronous calls with UPS and how they work together.
• Spend Role Codes and entitlements.
• V1, Bulk V3 retirement and transition to V4 API
• Best Practice and Debugging tips for using UPS.

References:

Link to most recent employee import specification:  http://www.concurtraining.com/customers/tech_pubs/Docs/_Current/SPC/Spc_Shr/Shr_SPEC_Emp_Imp.doc

Link to mapping guides for converting flat file record types to corresponding APIS fields:

https://developer.concur.com/api-guides/user-provisioning/user-provisioning.html#mapping-guides-between-flat-file-types-and-apis