Concur Outage - Why can't the site display a message to show end users it is not working

[jocelynfleur]

Concur had another site wide outage yesterday.

[AshleyB]

Hi @jocelynfleur,

This is an excellent suggestion! The current communications are set up through https://open.concur.com/ where you can find up-to-the-minute service availability and performance information. Once on Concur Open you can click "Subscribe to Updates" for email notifications to be sent directly to you.   

[jocelynfleur]

Hi Ashley,

I am our Concur administrator and of course I receive these notifications.

I am referring to end users who waste time on the site trying to connect but the site is down.

Wouldn't it be a better user experience to get an immediate pop up notification that the site is down.

This will eliminate a lot of user frustration.

In addition why are there so many outages. Monday's outage means that many of our employees will not get paid this week.

[AshleyB]

Jocelyn-

I think this would be an excellent suggestion for our Solution Suggestions process. This is clearly a widely desired feature and it could be popular. As an SAP Concur Admin, if you do decide to formally make the suggestion, you could post the case number within the Solution Suggestion thread in the User Admin Group in pursuit of up-votes. I understand that this is not an immediate solution, but it is the formalized process for these sorts of improvements.
We understand the frustration that these outages cause, and we are continually striving to make the necessary improvements to lessen these impacts. Thank you for your feedback.

[AmberLee]

This is a great suggestion and hopefully you can find another Solution Suggestion similar that you can add to and post here because it will already have several points so you wouldn't be starting from zero. I will definitely vote for it once you post it here.

What do you think about adding a part about being able to contact your Concur users via email or text as well? Most companies add new users and deactivate termed users on a frequent basis and trying to keep up with an email distribution list manually is near impossible. If your SS is aimed at informing employees (which I agree the banner is the best option for system outages), we could combine the two. Unless you think mine should be its own stand alone SS? Either way, great idea!

[SandraA]

Amber 

I think those suggestions would be seperate.   You should be able to quickly run a list of Active employees out of Concur.    You could even set that up to run daily or weekly and grab the most recent one in an outage situation.

We have so many employees that we never email all of them.    We often email our current corporate cardholders.  

[AmberLee]

I have yet to see Concur produce any type of email distribution list. I can run employee reports and get anything I want but I can't email them all without adding them individually. 

[JessicaL]

I agree that this is odd and would think there was a simple report that could be made for this. Alas, it is not a high priority at the moment, but I agree with you (as usual). 

[AmberLee]

You mean instead of kicking the user out halfway through booking travel or not letting them add receipts or submit reports, there would be a banner at the top alerting them to an issue and to try back in an hour?

[SandraA]

I was thinking the same thing for this latest outage.   Often the employee can't get into the site at all.  But in a  case like this where many were able to get to the main screen it would have been VERY helpful for Concur to post a headline and direct them to Concur Open.

Would save us many hours of answering emails.

I was finally able to post a Company Note.  But our notes are hard to see.  

The even better solution? - Let US post banner headlines to our users.   For us -That would be the best improvement Concur could make to the site.