Development Archives - MIDAS - Room Booking System

Category: Development

Introducing the MIDAS MCP Server: Manage Your Bookings With Any AI Assistant

6 minute read time · Updated July 8, 2026 · First published July 8, 2026

Booking and scheduling should be quick. Yet checking whether a room is free, adding a booking, or pulling up next week’s schedule still usually means logging in, clicking through menus, and filling in forms. What if you could simply ask?

We are pleased to announce the new MIDAS MCP Server add-on, which lets you connect your MIDAS room and resource booking system directly to the AI assistant of your choice, including Claude, ChatGPT, and Google Gemini. Once connected, you can check availability, add and amend bookings, look up clients, manage resources, and even raise invoices, all through natural conversation.

What is an MCP server?

MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. It is an open standard that lets AI assistants connect securely to other software and data sources. On its own, an AI assistant has no way to look things up in your systems or carry out actions in them. An MCP server bridges that gap. It exposes a defined set of “tools” that an AI assistant is allowed to use, so the assistant can read information from a connected system and, where permitted, make changes to it too.

Because MCP is an open standard, any AI platform that supports it can connect to a compatible MCP server. That means the MIDAS MCP Server is not tied to a single AI provider. You choose the assistant you already use and prefer, and connect it to MIDAS.

Book and manage rooms using plain English

Once the MIDAS MCP Server is enabled and connected to your AI assistant, everyday booking tasks become as simple as asking a question. For example, you could say:

“Is the Boardroom free tomorrow afternoon?”
“Book Studio 1 from 2pm to 4pm on Friday for a client meeting.”
“Show me all bookings for Meeting Room 3 next week.”
“Which rooms are available on Thursday morning for 20 people?”
“Generate an invoice for last month’s confirmed bookings for Acme Ltd.”
“Who is the client with the email address [email protected]?”

Your AI assistant translates each request into the appropriate action, sends it to MIDAS, and replies in plain English. There are no menus to navigate and no forms to complete for these routine tasks.

A booking and scheduling system that works with your AI agent

If you have been searching for a booking, scheduling, or calendar system that integrates with your chosen AI agent or platform, the MIDAS MCP Server is designed for exactly that. It turns MIDAS into a fully AI-accessible booking system, without locking you into any one AI provider.

This opens the door to more than just chat. Because any MCP-compatible AI assistant or agent can connect, you can build assistants and automations around your booking data. Think of a front-of-house assistant that answers availability enquiries, or an agent that drafts invoices from the week’s confirmed bookings. If a platform supports MCP, it can work with MIDAS.

Availability

The MIDAS MCP Server is an optional add-on available from MIDAS v4.43 (or later). It’s available for both cloud-hosted an self-hosted editions of our booking system.

Existing customers (running MIDAS v4.43 or later) can add the MCP Server add-on to their system via mid.as/upgrade.

New customers can obtain MIDAS with the optional MCP Server add-on via mid.as/pricing.

Which AI platforms are supported?

The MIDAS MCP Server works with any AI assistant or platform that supports the Model Context Protocol, including:

Claude (Anthropic), via both Claude Desktop and the Claude web and mobile apps.
ChatGPT (OpenAI), via its Connectors feature.
Google Gemini, via the Gemini CLI.
Other MCP-compatible platforms, including a growing range of AI-powered tools and agent platforms.

Support for MCP is expanding quickly across the AI industry, so the list of compatible platforms continues to grow.

Built with security and control in mind

Giving an AI assistant access to your booking system is a significant step, so our MIDAS MCP Server puts you firmly in control:

Read-only mode – Start by allowing enquiries and availability checks only. The AI can look things up but cannot change anything. Enable write access later, when you are ready.
Secure by default – Connections require HTTPS and are protected by a confidential MCP key that you generate and can revoke at any time.
IP restrictions – Optionally limit access to specific IP addresses.
Your existing rules still apply – Every action taken through the MCP server respects the same permissions and business rules that already govern your MIDAS system. You can even configure the MCP to inherit the permissions of a specific user account.
A clear activity trail – Actions taken through the MCP server can be recorded in your MIDAS Recent Activity log, so you can see what was done.

Everything you can do

The MIDAS MCP Server provides a comprehensive set of tools covering the full range of day-to-day booking and administration tasks, including:

Checking venue and resource availability
Adding, amending, deleting, and restoring bookings
Approving and rejecting pending booking requests
Looking up and managing clients
Managing venues, venue groups, and bookable resources
Checking consumable stock levels
Raising, amending, and generating invoices
Sending notifications and emailing clients

Some of the tools available in the MIDAS MCP Server (shown here in Claude Desktop)

Read-only tools retrieve information only, while write tools can create and change data. If you run the server in read-only mode, only the read-only tools will be available.

Getting started

Setting up the MIDAS MCP Server takes just a few minutes:

Get the MCP Server addon (mid.as/upgrade for existing customers, mid.as/pricing for new customers)
Enable the MCP Server addon and connect your AI assistant (here’s how)
Start asking your AI assistant about your bookings.

Full instructions for each supported platform, including Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, are available in our documentation.

Read the MIDAS MCP Server documentation and get started »

The future of booking is conversational

AI assistants are quickly becoming part of everyday working life. With the MIDAS MCP Server, your booking and scheduling system is ready to be part of that shift. Whether you want to check availability at a glance, speed up routine admin, or build richer automations around your booking data, the MIDAS MCP Server connects MIDAS to the AI tools you already use.

Existing MIDAS customers can find out more and get set up today on our MIDAS MCP Server pages. New to MIDAS? Discover why MIDAS is the flexible, affordable choice for room and resource booking, now with AI built in.

Tags: addons, AI, Anthropic, Claude, Gemini, MCP, OpenAI, v4.43

Just Say It: MIDAS Now Understands Voice Commands

4 minute read time · Updated July 8, 2026 · First published July 7, 2026

Managing bookings usually means clicking through calendars, forms, and menus. What if you could just say what you wanted instead?

MIDAS v4.43 introduces Voice Control – a hands-free way to navigate your booking system, manage reservations, and take care of everyday admin tasks, just by speaking naturally.

How it works

Click the microphone icon, say what you want, and MIDAS takes care of the rest. No rigid command syntax to memorise, no button hunting – just plain English.

Want to check what’s on today? Just say:

“What’s on today?”

Need to book the Guest Room for 11am tomorrow?

“Book the guest room tomorrow from 11am to 2pm”

Looking for an invoice?

“Show me invoice MIDAS0155”

That’s it. MIDAS listens, understands, and acts.

What you can do with your voice

Voice Control covers the tasks you reach for most:

Navigate your calendar – jump to any date, step forward or back by days, weeks or months, or say “show next Friday’s bookings”
Add bookings – specify a venue, date, time, and client all in one sentence
Modify, move, or copy bookings – reschedule a booking to a new time, duplicate it to another room, or move it to next week
Delete bookings – cancel with a single spoken command, with a confirmation step to prevent mistakes
Manage reminders and availability watches – add a reminder or a watch for any booking without leaving the calendar view
Generate and view invoices – create an invoice for a booking, or jump straight to an existing one by reference number
Search – find bookings, clients, or invoices matching a keyword
Check notifications – ask for your messages, reminders, or availability watches
Jump to admin settings – open any settings page by name, from user management to security options
Sign out, view statistics, check recent activity – and more

MIDAS is also flexible about how you phrase things. Say “cancel,” “delete,” or “remove” – they all work. Ask for a booking “in the guest room at 2pm” or “at 2pm in the guest room” – either order is understood. You can even say “please” or “could you” if that’s how you naturally talk; MIDAS will politely ignore the pleasantries and get straight to the task.

We’ve also put together a comprehensive Voice Command Reference guide for you to explore.

Two ways to talk to MIDAS

Voice Control supports two modes to suit how you like to work:

Momentary mode – press and speak a single command, then release. Ideal for quick, one-off actions.
Toggle (“Hey MIDAS”) mode – activate listening once and issue a stream of commands hands-free, prefixing each with “Hey MIDAS.” Great for busy front-desk environments where reaching for a mouse isn’t always convenient.

When MIDAS asks for confirmation – for example, before deleting a booking – you can simply respond “yes” or “cancel” without needing to repeat the wake phrase.

Built with the same permissions you already trust

Voice Control respects your existing MIDAS permission structure. If a user doesn’t have permission to delete bookings, manage users, or view invoices, voice commands for those actions are blocked in exactly the same way the standard interface already protects them. Nothing new to configure – it simply works within the access rules you’ve already set up.

Give it a try

Voice Control is available from MIDAS v4.43 (and later) for all users with the appropriate permissions.

You can also try it out right now in our FREE public demo.

Just look for the microphone icon in your MIDAS toolbar, click it, and start talking.

Whether you’re juggling a packed calendar or just want a faster way to get things done, Voice Control is designed to get out of your way – so you can focus on the booking, not the interface.

Tags: accessibility, v4.43, voice control

Security Enhancements in MIDAS v4.42

5 minute read time · Updated April 29, 2026 · First published April 29, 2026

MIDAS v4.42 brings several important security enhancements. Here’s what’s changed and why it matters.

Argon2id now the preferred method of password hashing

For many years MIDAS has utilized “bcrypt” to store password hashes. While “bcrypt” is still accepted industry practice, newer encryption methods like “Argon2id” offer improved protection.

“bcrypt” is computationally expensive. This means it takes a significant amount of processing time to compute each password hash. bcrypt also includes a configurable “work factor” controlling how “computationally expensive” each calculation is.

Back in 2017, a “work factor” of 10 was widely considered by security experts to be sufficient at the time, and this is the factor we used in MIDAS.

By 2020, computing power had evolved and so “best practice” was to upgrade to a “work factor” of 12, which we transparently rolled out to MIDAS for our v4.25 update that year.

Now in 2026, we’re firmly in the quantum computing and AI age. While bcrypt is still considered secure, it is only “computationally expensive” from a processing (CPU) perspective.

Newer methods, like “Argon2id”, are both processor-intensive and memory-intensive, and so offer an even greater line of defense against brute-forcing password hashes.

We’ve implemented Argon2id for MIDAS v4.42. End users won’t see any difference, but password hashes stored in each MIDAS system’s database are now more secure than ever, and will be automatically updated the first time a user signs in to v4.42.

Self-Hosted customers: You’ll need to install the Perl module “Crypt::Argon2” if you wish to take advantage of this security enhancement. If this module isn’t available on your server, MIDAS will fall back to using bcrypt.

Option to sign out a user everywhere when maximum number of failed sign-in attempts reached

One of the existing security features in MIDAS is the ability for the software to automatically ‘lock’ accounts after a configurable number of failed sign-in attempts. Account access can then be quickly restored by an administrative user, or via a link that MIDAS will email to you if your account becomes locked in this way.

An account becoming ‘locked’ due to a high number of failed sign-in attempts prevents further sign-in attempts being made on that account. Until now, any existing active sessions that the user may have were allowed to continue unaffected.

For MIDAS v4.42, we’ve introduced a new security setting (found under MIDAS Admin Options → Security) that, if enabled and a user account becomes automatically ‘locked’ due to a high number of failed sign-in attempts, all active sessions for that account will be automatically terminated as well.

Suspending a user account instantly expires all active sessions for the user

If an administrator manually suspends a user account, MIDAS will now also expire all active sessions for that user. Previously, if an account was manually suspended, it wouldn’t affect any currently active sessions — now it does.

Security Fixes

We’ve also addressed a handful of security and account-related bugs for v4.42 which were discovered by our team…

Fixed: Possible to bypass forced password expiry

One of the “legacy” settings in MIDAS is the ability for administrators to routinely force users to change their password. Enabling this option isn’t something that we recommend. Indeed, this is considered bad practice, as forcing users to regularly change their passwords actually harms rather than improves security.

Despite that, some organizations still insist on routine password change policies, and therefore, we’ve had to retain this option in MIDAS.

MIDAS v4.42 fixes a small issue related to this, whereby since v4.39, if a user is forced to change their password due to it having expired, the user could easily bypass this requirement by simply hitting reload/refresh in their browser when prompted to set a new password. We’ve resolved this for v4.42.

Fixed: Weak passwords were allowed when passwords were reset

MIDAS includes a visual strength indicator when entering a new password. Very Weak, Weak, and Common passwords are blocked and aren’t allowed. However, a small bug existed that could allow a weak password to be chosen during a password reset. This has been resolved for v4.42.

Fixed: Not possible to add new user accounts in suspended state

Administrators have extensive control over the permissions that can be assigned to each individual user account. Individual user accounts can also be quickly ‘Suspended’ by an administrator. Until now, however, a small bug prevented new user accounts from being added in an initial ‘suspended’ state. This has now been resolved for v4.42.

3rd Party Deprecations and Updates

MIDAS includes a small number of 3rd party components, and it’s important to us that we use the latest versions of these wherever possible.

To that end, for MIDAS v4.42 we’ve updated jQuery to v4.00 and jQuery-Autocomplete to v1.5.0.

We’ve also deprecated qTip2, as this is no longer maintained by the developer. qTip2 was used in MIDAS for dynamic tooltips, like those you see when you ‘hover’ over the name of a venue in the booking grid.

Instead, we’ve built our own dynamic tooltip system from the ground up for v4.42.

Tags: security, v4.42

User Interface Improvements in MIDAS v4.42

2 minute read time · Updated March 3, 2026 · First published March 2, 2026

MIDAS v4.42 introduces a range of user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) improvements designed to make our booking software even faster, clearer, and easier to use. In this post, we’ll highlight some of the UI and UX improvements introduced in MIDAS v4.42.

If you follow our blog, you’ll already know about some of the new and improved features in v4.42. One example is the expansion of administrative permissions.

Administrative Area Improvements

The old “Manage MIDAS” screen has been split into separate sections, each now controlled by its own dedicated permission and accompanied by a unique icon.

Redesigned administrative area icons in MIDAS v4.42

Changes have also been made within each administrative area. We’ve moved the previous “Save Changes” button from underneath the settings to being fixed in the top-right corner. This eliminates the need to scroll through lengthy settings pages to save changes.

We’ve also refined the way changes are saved within administrative screens.

Improved Save and Change Indicators

The addition of a new “Unsaved Changes” indicator alongside the new save button draws user’s attention to changes they’ve made to settings which have yet to be saved.

Unsaved Changes indicator in MIDAS administrative settings

In addition to the UI and UX improvements in the administrative area, we’ve also improved the “Quick Tour” in MIDAS v4.42.

Enhanced Quick Tour Experience

The “Quick Tour” is shown to new users by default upon their initial sign in. It provides a brief overview of the user interface and controls.

We have replaced outdated third-party code previously used to generate dynamic tooltips. In its place we’ve written new code for generating these tooltips. This has allowed us to make improvements, one of which is better highlighting of elements in the “Quick Tour”.

These updates reflect our ongoing commitment to making MIDAS both powerful and easy to use. By continually refining the interface and enhancing usability, we help administrators and end users work more efficiently every day.

If you’re new to MIDAS, start your free trial today and experience the improvements firsthand.

Tags: UI, user interface, v4.42