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.

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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.

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.

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.

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MIDAS allows you to import bookings and data from a range of applications, and we’re always looking to extend this support.

In our last update, v4.41, we introduced better support for importing bookings from Skedda. This included support for “multi-room” bookings, as well as additional date and time formats.

In v4.42, we’ve introduced several additional improvements to make data imports even smoother.

Automatic Field Detection and Mapping

When importing data MIDAS needs to understand how fields in your source data correspond to fields in your MIDAS system. This process is known as field mapping.

After selecting a file to import, MIDAS offers a preview of your data in a table view. At the top of each column is a drop-down selector. This is used to inform MIDAS of the type of data contained in each column.

For example, if you’re importing bookings, one column in your source data will contain the room or space name. Setting that column’s drop-down selector to “Venue” ensures the data is imported correctly.

Until now, selecting the correct value from the drop-down selector at the top of each column was a manual process. For v4.42, MIDAS will now try and automatically detect the data in each column and suggest an appropriate value for its drop-down.

Of course, you should still check the drop-down for each column before continuing, but this new ‘auto detection’ feature should make importing data into MIDAS easier.

Support for Importing Split Client Names

In many cases of data import, client names are contained within a single field of data.

For instance, if you’re importing a booking for “Joe Blogs”, it’s likely that there’ll be a single field containing the text “Joe Blogs” in your raw data.

Some booking systems however may split client names across multiple fields when exporting data. There may for example be separate fields for first (given) name and last (surname).

MIDAS typically expects a single field containing the client name, but for v4.42 we’ve added support for instances such as the one described above where names are split across fields.

This improvement makes it easier to migrate to MIDAS from booking systems such as Hallmaster.

Together, these improvements reduce manual setup and make transitioning to MIDAS faster and more efficient.

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We’re now making it easier to apply bulk permission changes across multiple user accounts.

Previous Behavior

In previous versions, when adding or modifying a user account, an “assign permissions from group” drop-down was presented above the various user permissions that could be assigned:

This was a great way to quickly copy the current permissions from a user group to an individual user account.

However, this was a one-time action. MIDAS would snapshot the selected user group’s current permissions and apply them to the individual user account. Any subsequent changes to the group’s permissions would not affect existing user accounts.

Introducing Permission Inheritance

So we have re-worked this for MIDAS v4.42. The “Assign permissions from group” selector has been removed and replaced by a new role-based “Inherit Permissions from” selector.

When a user account is set to inherit permissions from a user group, any subsequent changes to that group’s permissions will automatically apply to all linked user accounts.

This now allows you to bulk modify user account permissions with ease!

When to use manual permissions

If you still want to grant or revoke individual permissions on a per-account basis, you can – simply set the “Inherit Permissions from” option to “[None]”. When you do this, MIDAS will display the complete list of current permissions for that user, allowing you to make individual changes as required.

User accounts set to ‘[None]’ will not be affected by changes to any user group permissions.

While this new feature may not be all that significant for customers with only a handful of user accounts, larger organizations with several hundred users will benefit greatly from the ability to modify user permissions in bulk.

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These allow the creation of anything from fully privileged administrative accounts to ones with very limited “view only” permissions, and everything in between.

To provide administrators with even greater control, we’ve extended the range of available permissions for MIDAS v4.42 to now include 14 additional administrative permissions.

These new permissions replace the previous “Can Manage MIDAS” permission. This generic permission controlled whether a user was able to access the “Manage MIDAS” configuration screens.

Over time the “Manage MIDAS” screens have grown to include a vast array of options and settings. These screens allowed users to change email settings, update templates, configure scheduled tasks, tweak invoice or database settings, and much more.

For v4.42, we have split up the old “Manage MIDAS” screen into separate sections. Access to each section is now controlled by its own dedicated permission. This means, for instance, that you can grant permission to a user to be able to modify your templates, but not allow them to adjust the email settings of your MIDAS system.

The 14 new administrative permissions added in v4.42 are:

• Can Manage Appearance Settings
• Can Manage Booking Settings
• Can Manage Database Settings
• Can Manage Email Settings
• Can Manage Fields
• Can Manage Invoice Settings
• Can Manage Miscellaneous Settings
• Can Manage Print Settings
• Can Manage Public Settings
• Can Manage Safety Settings
• Can Manage Scheduled Tasks
• Can Manage Security Settings
• Can Manage Templates
• Can Update Software (Not applicable in cloud-hosted systems)

When updating from an earlier version to v4.42, any user account which held the “Can Manage MIDAS” permission will automatically be granted all 14 of the new administrative permissions during the update.

Administrators can then refine access for each user account via MIDAS Admin Options → Users.

These changes, together with the ability to make bulk permission changes, provide administrators with significantly greater flexibility and control over who can access specific system settings.

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The ability to send email is essential for any booking system.

From booking confirmations and reminders, to invoices, notifications, and password resets, booking and scheduling systems rely on email.

MIDAS naturally supports the sending of email, but we’ve made some exciting and significant improvements to email sending for our cloud-hosted customers for v4.42.

But first, let’s look at the existing ways in which MIDAS can send email.

Until now, the sending of email by MIDAS has been through a choice between “Sendmail” or “SMTP”.

What is Sendmail?

Available on Linux-based servers, Sendmail is a built-in server application for sending email directly from the server itself. Read more about Sendmail.

What is SMTP?

SMTP (or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the standard language used by computers to send emails across the internet. Read more about SMTP.

Sendmail vs SMTP

Both Sendmail and SMTP options have been available in both our cloud-hosted and self-hosted editions.

“Sendmail” has long been the default ‘out of the box’ email transport setting for cloud-hosted customers. However, we’ve always encouraged customers to move over to SMTP as soon as possible.

That’s because generally email deliverability rates are substantially higher when MIDAS is configured to send email through a customer’s own SMTP server, than if instead sent directly through our own servers.

Whilst Sendmail is configured to work ‘out of the box’ for cloud-hosted customers, SMTP requires a little more configuration.

To configure MIDAS to send email via SMTP, you will need:

• The address of your SMTP server
• The correct port number
• The SMTP username and password
• The correct SSL, TLS, or STARTTLS encryption method setting

You will also need to ensure that your SMTP server accepts connections from your cloud-hosted MIDAS system. In addition, your organization’s domain must be configured to allow MIDAS to send email on behalf of your domain.

This requires significant configuration and setup. We want to simplify this for our cloud-hosted customers. That’s why we’re introducing cloud email sending.

Introducing “Cloud Sending”

For MIDAS v4.42, we’ve introduced a new “Cloud” option for sending email. This new option is available to all cloud-hosted customers, and replaces the previous “Sendmail” option. (Sendmail continues to remain an option for self-hosted customers).

With the new cloud email option selected, you won’t need to specify an SMTP host, or enter credentials or specify ports – MIDAS will take care of all of that!

We have partnered with a dedicated transactional email provider specializing in high-deliverability email delivery services, to provide efficient and reliable email delivery for cloud-hosted customers who select the “Cloud” email sending option.

Zero Configuration Email Sending

To complement our new “cloud” email offering, we’ve also included a “Zero Configuration” option.

With this option enabled, MIDAS and Mailgun will seamlessly handle email delivery for your MIDAS system. You won’t need to configure an outgoing email address, nor will you need to update your organization’s domain’s SPF (Sender Policy Framework) DNS record – email will just ‘work’ right out of the box.

Of course, if you wish to customize the “send from” or “reply to” addresses, you can untick the “Zero Configuration” option and change those settings.

But in its simplest form, our new “cloud” email sending and “Zero Configuration” options mean that brand new cloud-hosted email systems can now reliably send email right from the outset.

Migrating from Sendmail to Cloud email sending

For our existing cloud-hosted customers, if you’re currently using the “Sendmail” option in your MIDAS system, you’ll be automatically migrated to “cloud” sending soon after we update you to v4.42.

If you do not wish to use the new “Cloud” sending option, you should update your MIDAS settings to instead send email via SMTP.

You can change your MIDAS email settings via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Email.

If your cloud-hosted MIDAS system is currently configured to send email via SMTP, this setting will be unaffected when we update your booking system to v4.42. Of course, you can then always change over to use the cloud email sending option at any time.

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The “Print” icon in the MIDAS toolbar allows for quick printing of bookings shown in the current booking grid.

Right-clicking (or long-pressing on touch devices) this icon opens an advanced print dialog.

From this dialog, you can customize the booking printout in a number of ways:

• Change the layout
• Set the date range
• Restrict to certain times
• Restrict to certain rooms
• Restrict to certain booking types
• Filter bookings based on advanced criteria

We’ve improved the date range customization section in MIDAS v4.42 to now also allow selection of specific days of the week across the selected date range.

Previously, selecting a date range would simply include bookings for each and every day in the range. Now you can limit this to only include bookings on certain days of the week.

For instance, if you’re only interested in printing bookings that take place on Saturdays and Sundays over the next three months, you can now do so.

This makes it easier to generate focused and concise booking printouts without unnecessary information.

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We’ve made a number of UI/UX improvements for our latest update. Some of these will be immediately noticeable, others are more subtle.

In this post, we’ll highlight some of the UI and UX improvements in MIDAS v4.41.

A more concise user bar

If you’ve been using MIDAS for a while, you’ll be familiar with the “user bar” which is shown directly under the main date heading:

The “user bar” indicated who was signed in, and provided options to sign out, change your password, access help, or make MIDAS go fullscreen. You could also click your name to show a list of all the devices you were currently signed in from.

We’ve decluttered this area for v4.41. Now, just your name will be shown under the main date. You can select your name and a new drop-down list will appear:

This new drop-down contains the following options:

• Your Current Sessions – view details of all the devices you’re currently signed into MIDAS from, and remotely sign out any you’re not actively using.
• Your Details – as v4.41 introduces new permissions allowing users to change their name or email, the previous “Change Password” link has now become a “Your Details” option in the new drop-down. Depending on the permissions assigned to your account, this option will allow you to change your display name, password, or the email address you use to access MIDAS.
• Full Screen – quickly enter or exit full screen mode.
• Help – open the help documentation.
• Sign out of MIDAS – instantly sign out at any time.

New icons

You may have spotted some new icons alongside the options in that new user drop-down above.

Well, this isn’t the only place you’ll see some new icons in MIDAS v4.41. We’ve also created a new set of icons for the options on the main administration creen:

Previously all the options on this screen used the “cog” icon used for the “Manage MIDAS” option. We felt it was about time for a refresh, and that each of the options on this screen deserved their own unique icons.

Improved graphs with tooltips

In case you missed our post a few days ago, for v4.41 we’ve rewritten the graphics code that MIDAS uses to generate graphs on the statistics (reporting) screen.

Bar graphs and pie charts now show tooltips when you move your cursor over each segment. Furthermore, we’ve also adjusted how dates are shown along the bottom axis in bar charts to prevent overcrowding.

Info, Tips, Warnings, and More!

The help documentation has also had a bit of makeover for v4.41. Not only have we improved its accessibility, we’ve also made some visual changes.

Throughout the documentation you’ll see coloured boxes with either additional information, helpful tips, warnings, or links to more resources.

Here’s how these looked in the documentation before v4.41:

…and here how these look now:

It doesn’t end there!

Whilst these might be the main UI/UX improvements we’ve made for v4.41, we’ve also made numerous other small improvements to the user interface and user experience in our latest update – too many to list here!

So whilst we’ll continue to add exciting new features and functionality with every new release, we’ll also be working to continually improve your user experience too!

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MIDAS supports importing data from a range of applications – if your current application can export bookings, clients, or users in common CSV format, the chances are you can import this directly into MIDAS.

We’ve made some enhancements for v4.41 to better support those looking at MIDAS as an alternative to Skedda.

Support for importing “Multi-Room” Bookings

Traditionally, booking data in CSV format contains “one booking per line” in data file. That is to say that each “line” of data in the CSV relates to a single booking.

Data exported from Skedda is a little different. If a client has bookings in multiple spaces/rooms at the same time, Skedda sees these as a single “multi room” booking, rather than as individual bookings in each space.

Consequently, multi-room bookings continued within an exported Skedda CSV data file occupy a single “line” (or “row”) in the file.

We’re pleased to announce that MIDAS v4.41 now supports importing “multi room bookings”.

Support for importing dates / times in additional formats

Booking systems store dates and times in various formats. This means that when data is exported from them, there isn’t necessarily a standardized date format that they all follow.

When it comes to importing booking data into a MIDAS booking system, our software can recognize dates and times in a variety of formats.

Here’s a complete list of the date/time formats MIDAS supports when importing booking data – including two new ones for v4.41:

Single Dates:

• DD.MM.YYYY (Example: 26/11/2025)
• DD.MM.YY (Example: 26/11/25)
• MM.DD.YYYY (Example: 11/26/2025)
• MM.DD.YY (Example: 11/26/25)
• YYYY.MM.DD (Example: 2025/11/26)
• YYYY.DD.MM (Example: 2025/26/11)
• YY.MM.DD (Example: 25/26/11)
• YY.DD.MM (Example: 25/11/26)
• DD.Mon.YYYY (Example: 26-Nov-2025)
• DD.Mon.YY (Example: 26-Nov-25)

Single Dates with Times:

• DD.MM.YYYY HH.MI (Example: 26/11/2025 16:30)
• MM.DD.YYYY HH.MI (Example: 11/26/2025 16:30)
• YYYY.MM.DD HH.MI (Example: 2025/11/26 16:30) ← NEW FOR MIDAS v4.41
• YYYY.DD.MM HH.MI (Example: 2025/26/11 16:30) ← NEW FOR MIDAS v4.41
• HH.MI.SS – Day DD Month YYYY (Example: 16:30:00 – Wednesday 26 November 2025)

Date / Time Ranges:

• HH.MI-HH:MI, Day DD Month YYYY (Example: 16:30-17:30, Wednesday 26 November 2025)
• Day DD Month YYYY HH.MI – Day DD Month YYYY HH.MI (Example: Wednesday 26 November 2025 16:30 – Wednesday 26 November 2025 17:30)

The various date and time formats that MIDAS supports when importing data cover those used by many popular booking systems, including MRBS, Skedda, and more.

So if you’re looking to move away from your current booking solution, and that system allows you to export booking data, you’ll likely be able to import it directly into MIDAS.

Not sure if your data is compatible? No problem! Just reach out to our sales team (perhaps include a sample of the data you’d like to import), and they’ll be happy to advise!

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Previously, bar graphs and pie charts were dynamically rendered within HTML <canvas> elements. This had a number of limitations, and so starting with v4.41, we’ve switched to dynamically rendering graphs using SVG instead.

The most notable benefit to this is that we can now show “tooltips” when you hover over elements within a graph.

Another issue we’ve addressed when rewriting graph code is that of x-axis scaling.

Most vertical bar graphs which MIDAS can generate have dates along their x-axis. As MIDAS allows you to select a date range for many generated reports, the resulting x-axis could represent a single date, or a very wide date range spanning several years.

Until now, MIDAS would label each date within the selected range on the X-axis. For larger date ranges, these labels would all overlap causing an illegible mess along the X-axis.

Now that we’re able to bring dynamic “tooltips” to graphs in v4.41, it’s no longer necessary to display labels for every date in the selected range along the bottom axis. That’s because these tooltips will show the date of the bar your cursor is ‘hovering’ over.

Consequently, for large date ranges, the X-axis will now only be labelled with select dates within that range. This produces a far clearer bottom axis, which we’re sure you’ll appreciate.

Floating “tooltips” aren’t just confined to bar charts – they’ve also been added to pie charts too!

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