Our Green Credentials

The impact that businesses have on the environment is a issue that’s close to many people’s hearts.

We’ve all see news stories of how we as consumers can make changes to reduce our carbon footprint. Many responsible businesses also take steps to monitor and reduce their carbon footprints too.

Here at MIDAS, we’re committed do the same!

MIDAS’ Carbon Footprint

We’re pleased to report that since 2021, we’ve reduced the carbon footprint of MIDAS by 5%.

Back in 2021, we first discovered the Website Carbon Calculator. This innovative website analyzes five key metrics to estimate the carbon emissions of any website. These factors include the volume of data being transferred when a web page is viewed, the type and amount of energy used at the data center serving the web page, as well as the volume of traffic to the site.

When we analyzed our website using the Carbon Calculator in 2021, it reported that MIDAS was cleaner than 86% of all web pages tested.

Now in 2025, we’re now greener than 91% of all web pages globally.

MIDAS is cleaner than 91% of all web pages globally
MIDAS is cleaner than 91% of all web pages globally

Reducing Carbon Dioxide Production

The Website Carbon Calculator further estimates that only 0.10g of Carbon Dioxide is generated when someone visits our website. This is down from 0.19g in 2021.

Only 0.1g of CO2 is produced per page on our website
Only 0.1g of CO2 is produced per page on our website

Backed by Green Sustainable Energy

Additionally, the Green Web Foundation provides a “Green Web Check” tool, which can provide an indication as to whether a web site (or service) is backed by green sustainable energy.

The Green Web Check affirms that our website/network (including our cloud hosted customer’s booking systems) is backed by green energy.

MIDAS runs on green sustainable energy
MIDAS runs on green sustainable energy

Choosing greener online businesses

MIDAS produces 60 times less carbon than some of our competitors

When focusing on reducing carbon footprints, many businesses look to do this in “visible” ways. One common approach is to replace tungsten bulbs with more efficient low energy LED light bulbs.

But how many consider the software their business uses when looking at ways to reduce their carbon footprint? It’s a less obvious and certainly a less “visible” action.

But when you consider that significant differences that do exist today between different software vendor’s carbon production, choosing a software vendor with a low carbon footprint makes sense! Not only does it help with your own business’ green credentials, but it also – more importantly – it helps our planet.

So for a room booking and resource scheduling system committed to being green, be sure to consider MIDAS.


Are Fax numbers still relevant in 2025?

In a previous article, we talked about the various default input fields included in MIDAS as standard. One of the standard input fields available is for a client’s “Facsimile” number (more commonly know as their Fax number).

We’ve included Fax as a “standard” client field since we first started MIDAS nearly 20 years ago. But our previous article got us thinking…. are fax machines still a thing in 2025?

We’ll admit, here at MIDAS HQ, we can’t remember the last time we received a fax. In fact, we can’t recall ever having sent one either!

What is a Fax Machine?

Now, it occurs to us that some reading this article may never have come across a fax machine! (Yes, we’re showing our age!)

So, if you’re not familiar, a fax machine – short for “facsimile machine” – is a technology used for transmitting documents over a traditional telecommunication (phone) network. It allows the near-instantaneous reproduction of text and images (all be it at low resolution) at a distant location.

A Fax Machine
A Fax Machine

The History Of The Fax Machine

Early Conceptualization (19th Century):

The concept of transmitting images over long distances actually dates back to the 19th century. In 1843, Scottish inventor Alexander Bain received a patent for his idea of a “Copying Telegraph” that could transmit images using a series of synchronized pendulums.

Pantelegraph (1865):

In 1865, Italian inventor Giovanni Caselli developed the “Pantelegraph,” which was the first practical fax machine. It used a rotating stylus to scan and transmit handwritten messages and images over telegraph lines.

Facsimile Transmission (1920s):

During the 1920s, advancements in radio technology led to the development of early versions of fax machines that utilized radio waves for transmission. These machines were primarily used for newspaper photo transmission.

Telephotography (1930s):

In the 1930s, “telephotography” systems emerged, allowing photographs to be sent over telephone networks. However, these systems were expensive and not widely adopted.

Xerox LDX (1964):

The first commercialized fax machine was the Xerox LDX (Long Distance Xerography), introduced in 1964. It used the then-common electrostatic printing technology to transmit documents over long distances.

ITU Standardization (1980s):

In the 1980s, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) developed standardized protocols for fax transmission, which facilitated interoperability between different fax machines and networks.

Thermal Transfer Fax Machines (1980s-1990s):

In the 1980s and 1990s, thermal transfer fax machines gained popularity due to their lower cost and improved printing quality.

Internet Faxing (1990s):

With the rise of the internet, fax technology evolved to include internet faxing or “fax over IP,” which enabled faxes to be sent and received through email and online fax services.

Decline and Legacy (2000s-2010s):

As digital technologies like email and document scanning became more prevalent, the use of traditional fax machines declined. However, fax technology continues to be used in some industries, especially in areas where secure document transmission is essential.

Modern Fax Services (Present Day):

Today, faxing has largely transitioned to digital platforms and online fax services. These services use internet protocols to send and receive faxes electronically, eliminating the need for physical fax machines and allowing for more efficient and secure document transmission.

Though the traditional standalone fax machine’s popularity has waned, the concept of faxing lives on in digital form, offering a reliable means of transmitting documents in various professional settings.

Do people still use fax machines?

The number of people using fax machines has declined due to the increasing adoption of digital communication methods like email, cloud-based document sharing, and secure messaging platforms. As a result, faxing has become less common in many regions, especially in developed countries.

While some specific industries and regions might still rely on fax machines for certain purposes, it’s safe to say that the number of people using traditional fax machines globally has significantly decreased. Online fax services and digital communication in general provides a more efficient and convenient way to send and receive documents these days. The traditional fax machine has become far less relevant.

You Got A Fax

Getting The Facts on Fax!

As MIDAS includes a field to enter a Fax number for each client record, we were keen to understand how – and indeed if – our customers use this field.

In August 2023, we took an anonymized random sample of 190 of our cloud hosted customer’s MIDAS systems. Between them, this sample of MIDAS systems contained a total of 213,887 individual client records. Here’s what we discovered…

90% of MIDAS systems have the “Fax” field enabled

We were quite surprised that this was figure so high! However, it should be noted that the Fax field is actually enabled by default in all fresh installations of MIDAS. Therefore, only 10% of customers have taken action and disabled this field.

Of the 90% of MIDAS systems where the “Fax” field is enabled, not a single system has been configured to mark this as a “Required” field.

Only 0.44% of clients have a fax number

We found that only 0.44% of client records within our anonymized sample of cloud-hosted MIDAS systems we host, contained an entry in the “fax” field. It’s also possible that some customers actually use the “Fax” field to record other client data – like an additional cell/mobile number. Therefore, it’s reasonable to assume that less than 0.44% of clients have an actual fax number.

Facing The Facts on Fax!

So what are our key takeaways from these facts? How can we use this information moving forward?

Despite 90% of MIDAS systems having the Fax field enabled in 2023, this field was utilized by less than half a percent of clients.

It’s fair to say that the “Fax” client field wasn’t really used! For all intents and purposes, it was obsolete.

Our first takeaway from this was that the “Fax” field probably shouldn’t be enabled by default. By initially “hiding” this field, it would simplify the editing of client records.

We took this one step further in MIDAS v4.35 by actually removing “Fax” as a standard MIDAS client field all together. Instead, if customers do wish to capture client fax numbers, they could easily create a custom client field for this purpose instead.

Customers using the previous standard “Fax” client field need not worry! We ensured that the software update process to v4.35 automatically migrated fax data over to a custom client field with the same name.


MIDAS v4.38 Out Now!

We have a new update available to our MIDAS booking software. This update includes improvements to custom fields, booking requests, printing, privacy, and more.

Here’s what new and improved in v4.38…

Authenticator App Support

Authenticator app support
New 2FA Options in MIDAS v4.38

Since 2015, all MIDAS room booking systems have included optional two-factor authentication (2FA). If enabled, this adds an additional layer of account security to our software.

With Two-Factor Authentication enabled, each time a user logins in, a code is sent to their email inbox. The user must then enter this code into MIDAS in order to complete their log in.

MIDAS v4.38 now additionally supports TOTP authenticator apps – including Google Authenticator and Microsoft Authenticator – as an alternative 2FA login option – Read more…

2FA Per User Account

In addition to supporting authenticator apps, we’ve also made two-factor authentication a ‘per user’ setting, rather than a ‘global’ setting.

This allows administrators to set 2FA methods for each individual user account.

Per-User Two Factor Authentication Login Settings
Per-User Two Factor Authentication Login Settings

Reinstall Current Version

For self-hosted customers, we’ve improved the MIDAS installer to allow re-installing your current software version without affecting your existing data/settings.

So if you accidentally delete a core file within your MIDAS installation on your web server, you can re-install MIDAS without loosing any data!

Improved Security Audit

All MIDAS systems come with a built in ‘Security Audit’ tool to assess the security of your booking system. This tool may either be run on-demand or regularly scheduled.

For MIDAS v4.38 we’ve included a new check as part of these ‘Security Audits’. This new check will alert you if there are any ‘obsolete’ user accounts within your MIDAS system. An ‘obsolete’ user account is considered to be any user account which has not been logged into for at least 6 months.

Improved Booking Grid performance

The ‘Booking Grid’ is the main area where your bookings are visually presented within MIDAS.

We’ve made some improvements to the performance of the booking grid in v4.38 by reducing the amount of data that’s initially loaded when viewing bookings for any given date.

For busy organizations with hundreds of bookings across their venues in any given day, the amount of data being loaded in the booking grid was significant, and could lead to sluggish loading.

We’ve significantly improved this for v4.38, meaning that large quantities of bookings now load and display faster than ever!

Other Improvements

This latest version of MIDAS also includes stability and performance improvements and fixes for several issues that have been detected or reported since the previous release (v4.37) – View the complete v4.38 changelog….

How To Get MIDAS v4.38…

New to MIDAS?

You can try MIDAS v4.38 for FREE with no obligation to buy!

There’s both a functional online public demo, and you can also try MIDAS free for 30 days.

We offer a choice of both cloud and self hosted solutions. So if you’re ready to get MIDAS working for your organization, purchase or subscribe today via our secure website.

“Self Hosted” Customers:

Self-Hosted customers with active Support Subscriptions can update to v4.38, and it only takes a couple of clicks.

Simply log in to your MIDAS system and go to MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Update.

“Cloud Hosted” Customers:

All our active Cloud-Hosted customers MIDAS systems have previously been update to v4.38.

We seamlessly apply software updates for our cloud hosted customers. So you’ll always have access to the latest features, and never need to worry about running outdated software.


Consistently Delivering Exceptional Customer Support

Customer Service

There’s nothing more frustrating than emailing a business for help and then having to wait ages for a real person to reply, right? Sometimes it can take days for any sort of human response from a business. And if it’s out-of-hours, a weekend or public holiday, this can further add to the annoyance in awaiting their response.

We do things differently!

We know that one of the key factors that sets our room booking software solutions miles apart from our competitors is our exceptional customer support. Not only are our support staff professional, friendly, and knowledgeable – they provide a fast response to queries too!

How do we know this? – Because our customers tell us!

“As someone who also works in the technical support industry, I am thoroughly impressed not only by the speed of satisfactory resolution but also from the fact that it was outside normal working hours!!!

I fully expected this to be picked up the next day and take a few days to fix.”

That’s recent feedback from a customer who emailed us with an issue at 5.40pm one Thursday evening. Within 90 minutes, we’d been able to diagnose and replicate the cause of his issue, update the customer, and seamlessly push an update out to his cloud-hosted MIDAS system to address it.

To ensure that we continue to maintain these high levels of service 365 days a year, one of the metrics we continually monitor is the speed of response to each Priority Support query.

In fact, we’re so proud of our responsiveness that we’re totally transparent about how our support team are performing. We even publish real-time live data over on our dedicated Service Status site.

As 2025 gets underway, we’ve also taken a few moments to review our support performance over the past several years. Here is how we’ve performed in recent times:

 Priority Support Emails…201920202021202220232024
Answered within 15 minutes64.24%65.86%55.16%56.81%53.31%50.38%
Answered within 30 minutes81.68%82.32%77.00%73.09%70.53%72.14%
Answered within 1 hour90.73%93.22%91.31%88.70%86.09%86.26%
Answered within 2 hours97.13%98.55%96.24%93.69%94.70%97.33%
Answered within 3 hours98.68%99.03%97.42%96.68%98.01%98.09%
Answered within 4 hours98.68%99.52%98.12%97.34%99.67%99.24%
Answered within 5 hours99.34%99.76%99.30%98.34%100%100%
Answered within 6 hours100%100%99.77%98.67%100%100%
Answered within 7 hours100%100%100%99.67%100%100%
Answered within 8 hours100%100%100%100%100%100%
Percentage of Priority Support Email response times

We also looked at the “average” response time across the same period:

Priority Support Emails…201920202021202220232024
Average Response Time23
minutes
20
minutes
27
minutes
34
minutes
30
minutes
28
minutes
Average Response Times for Priority Support Emails between 2019 and 2024

Key Takeaways

  • Over the past 6 years, our Priority Support service has achieved consistent response times.
  • More than half of all Priority Support emails are responded to by a human within 15 minutes of receipt.
  • In 2024, the average response time to a Priority Support email was just 28 minutes.
  • Over the past 2 years, all Priority Support emails were responded to by a human within 5 hours of receipt, regardless of the day of week or time of day.
  • Even during a global pandemic, our support continued to be robust and responsive.

Our rock solid uptime and unrivalled support are just a couple of the reasons our customers choose – and indeed stick with – MIDAS for their business needs year on year.

So if you’re considering a new room booking system in 2025, and have been frustrated by your existing provider’s lacklustre response times previous, look no further!

We think you’ll be hard pushed to find a product back-up by 365 days a year support as efficient as MIDAS!

But if you’re still not convinced, check out some more of our Customer Testimonials about our booking solution, and the outstanding levels support we consistently provide year on year!

Oh, and we’re also rated ‘Excellent’ on TrustPilot where you can read more reviews.

Have questions and not sure whether MIDAS is right for you? Why not reach out to our sales team (who are just as friendly as our support team!)