August 2024 - Release Notes

Here are the most recent enhancements to Spotnana’s Travel-as-a-Service Platform. The features are grouped by functional category (Content, Self-service, etc.).

Content

Rail: New European rail content

We now have rail content for Iryo, the second largest rail carrier in Spain, live on the Spotnana platform. This is in addition to the Renfe (Spain's national state-owned railway company) content already supported on our platform. Travelers can book either standard or first class tickets, and also have the ability to cancel their reservation. 

Travel experience

Air: Split payment for ancillaries

Spotnana’s new split payments feature allows the cost of a booking and various ancillary services to be ‘split’ across two forms of payment. This allows travelers to pay for ancillaries such as seat upgrades, additional baggage, and Southwest’s EarlyBird Check-In on their own credit card while the main ticket fare is still paid for using a company payment method. For example, a traveler can book a flight on Spotnana using their company-provided payment method and then use their personal card to pay for an upgrade to a preferred seat. 

Company administrators first designate which ancillaries may be paid for using company payment methods. That is is set by doing the following: 

1. Select Policies from the Program menu (the Default policy page will be displayed). 

2. Select the Default Policy under Employee or Non-employee (on the left).

3. Expand the Flight section and scroll down to the Add-ons section. 

4. Then, use the menu to select the approved add-ons. 

For any ancillaries not included in the policy, travelers will be prompted to select a personal for of payment when adding these to their booking. For more details, see Pay for ancillaries with your personal card (Air) and View split payment details in itinerary (Air).

Air: Seat selection enhancements

We have introduced the following seat selection improvements to provide clearer communication to travelers:

• Pre-ticketing seat selection: When seat selection prior to tickets being issued is not allowed for a specific airline, we will now display a notification explaining that seat selection is only possible after ticketing. Once tickets have been issued, travelers can reserve seats from their Trips page.

• Basic Economy/Saver Fares: Certain fare types (e.g., Basic Economy or Saver Fare) do not allow seat selection. The platform now clearly indicates when this restriction is due to the fare type.

Booking ID reference for all bookings

In an effort to provide clarity and consistency across the platform, travelers will now see a Booking ID prominently displayed on all Spotnana emails, trips, and invoices. Having the Booking ID available to travelers will streamline any conversations they may have with agents or travel suppliers.This is in addition to the Trip ID which is shown at the trip level. 

Travel management

Group Trips: Multi-passenger air booking (one PNR per passenger)

Spotnana now allows company administrators and travel arrangers to book flights for multiple travelers simultaneously, as opposed to making air bookings for each traveler in the group individually. Multi-passenger air bookings can be made for up to six travelers at a time. Some additional details about multi-passenger bookings are:

• The travelers in the group you are booking for must all be employees with a profile in Spotnana (not guests). 

• The primary traveler on the booking determines which travel policies and payment methods are available. Whether approvals will be required for the booking is determined by the travel policies of the primary traveler. 

• When searching for flights, prices will be displayed for a single passenger. When you select and expand a specific flight option, the total cost for all passengers will be displayed.

• Once the booking has been made, each traveler in the group will have a trip added to their Trips page. These can be modified independently.

• The administrator or arranger who made the group booking will have a group trip added to their Group Trips page. This trip will contain all bookings for the travelers associated with the trip. 

• Each passenger in the group will have a unique PNR that can be used to track any changes to their booking.

For more details, see Multiple traveler air bookings. 

Configuring carbon cost

Company administrators now have the ability to define a fixed cost for the emissions caused by travel. To configure this, select Company from the Program menu. The General page will be displayed. Locate the Company info section where you are able to input the Carbon cost. This value designates how the cost of carbon emissions generated by travel bookings is calculated. The calculated value is then displayed to travelers at the time of checkout.

New email approval framework

To help reduce the number of emails travelers and approvers receive from Spotnana, we have released an improved set of criteria that determines when emails are sent and who receives them. In addition, we’ve added new email templates that provide context-specific text (more relevant to each scenario). As a result of these changes, we’ve reduced the approval-related emails sent to:

• A maximum of 1 email for passive approvals

• A maximum of 2 emails for soft approvals

• A maximum of 3 emails for hard approvals

Additionally, emails sent to approvers will now show the traveler’s preferred name, rather than their official name as shown in their passport.

Site messaging enhancements

Site messaging provides company administrators with the ability to efficiently display messages to company employees within Spotnana’s desktop Online Booking Tool, mobile app, and traveler emails. The following enhancements have been made:

• When entering the Message text, you are now able to choose the font color and background color. 

• If you’ve added a URL link (e.g., for travelers to learn more), that link will now open in a new tab when travelers click on it.  

For more details on site messaging, see Configure site messaging.

SFTP self-service set-up and email notifications

We allow clients to upload their HR data to our platform using a variety of methods. Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) is one of those methods, commonly used to send us data from an HR feed. This method allows customers to configure and schedule the updating of their HR feed data within our platform. With this release, customers are now able to set-up their SFTP integration on their own (without needing to contact Spotnana). For customers with an existing SFTP integration, we now offer the ability to receive email notifications when uploads are successful or encounter errors.

To configure your SFTP integration, select Company from the Program menu. Then, select Integrations from the Configuration section in the side navigation. The Integrations page will be displayed. To set-up your SFTP integration, click Manage. For more details, see SFTP Setup instructions.

SFTP self service is not available to customers who use PGP encryption or multiple SSH keys. 

Reporting filters and accessibility enhancements

Spotnana’s Analytics allows company administrators to review meaningful metrics, apply powerful filters, control sorting options, and download data for further analysis. We have made the following enhancements to the Company reports page (under the Analytics menu) to allow easier filtering and accessibility:

• Pre-defined date range filters: You can now select standard pre-defined date ranges when applying filters to reports. For instance, if you want to look at the last 6 months of data, you can simply select Last 6 months from the menu. 

• Multi-select: Depending on your organizational configuration and permission settings, you can now view aggregated data from multiple entities (organizations or legal entities) in a single report. 

• Accessibility: To ensure the Company reports page is accessible on different browsers and screen types, the layout and size of our top-level filters have been adjusted. In addition, we’ve made our sidebar responsive to screen sizes. 

For more details on analytics and the available reports, see Analytic reports.

Events

Enhancements to Spotnana Events

Spotnana Events provides simplified travel management for groups traveling to the same destination, empowering employees and guests to book and manage their travel for meetings and events. 

The following enhancements have been made to the event travel management experience:

• Guest traveler bulk upload - To make it easier to invite multiple guests to an event, we have enabled bulk upload.This allows event coordinators to upload a CSV file containing the emails of all attendees. For guests (non-employees), first and last names will be required in addition to emails.

• Redesigned list of invited travelers - The invited list of attendees now includes the invitation status, booking status, and travel dates. The event coordinator can also set how many attendees will be displayed per page (10/25/50). Additionally, the exact time an invite was sent to each attendee can be seen by hovering over the invitation status.

• Restricted removal of booked travelers - If an attendee has already booked travel for the associated event, the event coordinator will not be able to remove that traveler from the event until all their event-related bookings have been canceled. The system will display a message to the event coordinator explaining that that traveler’s booking must first be canceled before the attendee can be removed from the event.

• New filters on the Events page - You can now search for events by name on the Events page, as well as filter by event date or status (draft or published). 

The following Events enhancements have been made to the traveler experience:

• Search parameters are remembered - The system remembers what parameters the traveler entered when booking travel for the event. This avoids them having to re-enter information when comparing different dates or airports.

• Pre-filled dates - Travel dates are automatically filled in based on other bookings the traveler has already made for the event. This ensures that dates align for all booking types, and limits the number of repetitive selections.

• Booking window enhancements - Events dates are clearly marked in the calendar selection view, making it easier for travelers to choose the best travel dates to suit their needs.

• Event emails format - Images and/or icons within the event email sent to invitees will remain constant and no longer expire. This maintains a consistent email format when travelers revisit past emails.

• Email link for guest - When a guest is invited to an event, the link included in the email invite will direct them to a page where they can immediately book travel for the trip (rather than the Spotnana homepage).

The following Events enhancements have been made to the agent experience:

• Manual bookings and shell PNR - Event trips now support manual bookings made outside the OBT using shell PNRs for all booking types supported by that event.

• Searchable Event trips - Event trips without PNRs are now searchable by agents and company administrators, making it easy to find trips for travelers when bookings haven’t yet been made.

Payments

Identification of payment method owner

We’ve made the following enhancements to better identify whether a form of payment is a personal card, corporate card, or central card:

• When travelers add a new form of payment, they are now asked to specify whether the card type is personal or corporate.

• All cards added by company administrators for central (shared) usage will now be marked “central” by default. This includes central credit cards, virtual cards, UATP travel cards, and United Airlines PassPlus.  

• The card ownership indicator is now visible within the traveler's profile, at the time of checkout, and within the Trips API. 

These changes are only applicable to newly added cards. Existing cards and payment methods will not have this new label, nor have the ability to add a label. 

This feature is not automatically enabled for all clients. Please contact your client support organization if you want this feature enabled.

Direct billing enhancements for car rentals

The following enhancements have been made to how direct billing is configured for car payments:

• Company administrators can now set-up direct billing within the Payment section. This was previously done in the Supplier section (under Supplier programs). 

• Company administrators can now set restrictions on who can use the payment method based on user role (“Everyone” OR “Admins and agents only”) and traveler type (“All travelers”, “Employee”, “Company guest”, “Personal guest”). They can also configure the countries, legal entities, departments, or cost centers permitted to use it.

• Corporate discount codes can now be added at a TMC, company, or legal entity level (and are no longer attached directly to the direct billing number). Direct billing numbers will still function normally without a discount code.

To configure direct billing, select Company from the Program menu. Then, select Payment methods from the Payment section in the side navigation. 

This feature is not automatically enabled for all clients. Please contact your client support organization if you want this feature enabled.

Virtual payment for car rentals

Company administrators can now configure virtual payment methods for car rental bookings. 

When adding a virtual payment method, administrators can:

• Set restrictions on who can use the card based on:

  • User role (“Everyone” OR “Admins and agents only”)

  • Traveler type (“All travelers”, “Employee”, “Company guest”, “Personal guest”) or 

  • Legal entity.

• Make the virtual card mandatory for any booking type (e.g., car or hotels).

• Designate the car rental company or companies that the card can be used with. 

• Specify whether payment only covers just the base cost of fare, taxes, and fees. They can optionally allow virtual payment methods to also cover extras for any ancillary services purchased directly from the car rental company.

Company administrators can also set up corporate discount codes for each car rental company at the TMC, company, or legal entity level. Additionally, within each car rental company, corporate discount codes can be configured separately for virtual payment (as well as other payment methods).

In addition, when travelers are searching for a car rental, we now have a new filter, Show virtual payment only. When using this filter, they will only be shown car rental booking options that accept virtual payments. 

If the traveler needs to present the card number to the car rental company at the time of pickup, that number will appear in the traveler’s Trips page (within the confirmation) 24 hours before the car pickup time. 

This feature is not automatically enabled for all clients. Please contact your client support organization if you want this feature enabled.

TMC Infrastructure

Supplier PCC configuration

A pseudo city code (PCC) forms a critical part of any TMC's infrastructure. It represents a log-in “instance” that allows a TMC to access supplier content in various geographies, currencies and points of sale. To expedite the process of setting up PCCs, we have made it self-service for TMC administrators to add a new PCC on Spotnana’s platform. This means that once a PCC has been created, credentials have been provisioned, and access has been provided by the supplier, the PCC can be added to Spotnana’s platform. As a result, a TMC administrator can now add Sabre, NDC, Farelogix NDC, Travelfusion, and Trainline credentials to the Spotnana platform using a new form. The form is customized to the requirements of the supplier. 

This form is only available to TMC administrators. To view it, select TMC Settings from the Program menu. Then, select Suppliers from the side navigation. The Suppliers page will be displayed. To add a new PCC, select the desired supplier from the dropdown menu and then click Add. 

The Suppliers table on the page has also been updated to include the following fields:

• PCC Code: The 4 letter code of the PCC

• Label: Any customizable label the TMC administrator chooses

• IATA Number: The registered IATA number of the agency that owns the PCC

• Currency: The currency the PCC is denominated in

• Country: The country the PCC is registered in

• Agency name: The name of the owning Agency

• Applicable for: Indicator denoting which travel modes the PCC supports

Agent experience

Rail: Finalize

When a reservation is booked outside of the Spotnana Online Booking Tool via Manual Form or Shell PNR, the agent is able to click the Finalize button. Clicking this button will then trigger a policy evaluation of the reservation. The agent will also be prompted to enter answers for any relevant custom fields and/or out of policy reasons codes. In addition, the traveler will be sent a confirmation email. The Finalize button functionality was already available for air, hotel, and car bookings, but is now also enabled for rail manual form bookings.