How You Set Up Prerequisites for Travel Partner Integration
A travel partner is an online booking provider or a travel agency that provides travel services to your employees. Before you can set up a travel partner and booking sites in Oracle Fusion Expenses, your company must perform the following prerequisite steps:
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Select a travel partner.
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Configure booking sites.
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Configure travel policies and policy violations.
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Determine employee access methods.
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Set up employees.
Select a Travel Partner
Your company selects a travel partner based on the travel needs of your employees and the travel booking support provided by the travel partner in countries where your employees are located. If you choose, you can also use the services of a travel partner for specific countries only.
Expenses supports integration with the GetThere travel partner. In addition, integration with other travel partners is supported using REST services. Expenses provides you the flexibility to integrate with multiple travel partners to meet the requirements of your organization. Here are some scenarios that you can set up in Expenses:
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Integrate with GetThere for employees in the US and with another travel partner for employees in Asia-Pacific region.
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Integrate with a third-party travel partner for the Middle East region and with another travel partner for rest of the world.
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Integrate with GetThere for US, and with different travel partners for the Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions respectively.
Here are a few points you must keep in mind when you integrate with multiple travel partners:
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You can't have more than one GetThere integration for your organization.
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There must be no overlap of countries or employment assignments among the travel partner integrations. Therefore, an employee must have only one booking site applicable to them.
Configure Booking Sites
A booking site is an instance of your travel partner's booking tool that's configured for a group of employees. Your company may require one or more booking sites, which are configured in the travel partner's system. Your company may require multiple booking sites depending on your operations.
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Your company operates in multiple countries or regions.
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Your company's travel policies vary based on employee job roles.
For example, employees in the management level of executive vice president and over are eligible to stay in luxury hotels, while employees in the management level of vice president and under aren't eligible. Similarly, employees in the management level of executive vice president and over are eligible to fly first class, while employees in the management level of vice president and under are only eligible for business class.
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Your company wants booking sites displayed in the language of each country or region.
Your travel partner configures your booking site instances in its system and provides you with the site names that represent those instances, as well as the sign in credentials for administrative access.
Configure Travel Policies and Policy Violations
You create travel policies in the travel partner's system to enforce your company's travel policies. For each booking site that you set up, you must configure travel policies and policy violations. When you set up your travel partner in Expenses, the travel policy violations and justifications are downloaded to Expenses with the itineraries.
Determine Employee Access Methods
Your company must decide how your employees will access and sign in to the booking sites. Your company can enable sign in access in one of the two following ways.
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Single sign-on (SSO)
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Authentication by travel partner
If your company already has a system that centrally manages all user accounts and passwords, known as Federated authentication with an identity provider, and sign in to all systems are routed through this central system, you can use the same capability for accessing your booking sites. When you enable SSO, employee passwords aren't stored in your travel partner's system. You can enable SSO for all or for specific booking sites.
An alternative way to enable sign in access is authentication by your travel partner. In this scenario, you associate your employees with booking sites in your travel partner's system, along with their user names and passwords. When employees access the booking sites, they enter their user names and passwords and the booking sites validate the sign in credentials. For this access alternative, user names don't have to match that of any other system.
Set Up Employees
After your travel partner configures your booking site instances in its system, you can set up your employees and their sign in credentials in your travel partner's system. If your travel policies vary by job roles or other criteria, you must set up the relevant information for each employee in the travel partner's system. This information also determines your employees' access to relevant booking sites.