Category: Development

Reset Invoice Counters

Filed Under: Development by midas — Leave a comment
July 7, 2021

We’re giving administrators the ability to reset invoice counters in MIDAS v4.28.

Previously, invoice counters could only be reset through the optional MIDAS API.

What are invoice counters?

Each time a new invoice is generated or created in MIDAS, it is assigned a unique incremental number. This is prefixed with an editable string of characters.

So for instance, if the invoice prefix was set to be “MIDAS”, then the first invoice added in MIDAS would be numbered “MIDAS0001“. The second invoice would be automatically assigned “MIDAS0002“, the third “MIDAS0003” and so forth.

Separate counters and prefixes exist for both deposit and cancellation invoices too, as well as for credit notes.

Whilst their prefixes can be changed at any time, the numeric “counters” themselves are internal and couldn’t – until v4.28 – be easily changed.

That meant that if your invoice counter was up to 0123 and you wanted to change prefixes from “MIDAS” to “TEST”, the next invoice to be generated would be “TEST0124”.

Why you might wish to reset a counter

Some of our customers commented that it would be useful to be able to “reset” invoice counters back to 0001.

This is particularly useful for users who first wish to test the invoicing capabilities of MIDAS by creating some example invoices. Then once they’re comfortable with the invoicing features of MIDAS, start using them for “real” invoices.

Until now, the only way to reset an invoice counter was via the optional MIDAS API.

For MIDAS v4.28, we’re providing the means to reset an invoice counter without requiring the API.

Administrators can reset an invoice counter at any time via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Database → Database Tools → Reset Invoice Counter.

The Reset Invoice Counter screen looks like this:

Reset Invoice Counters in MIDAS
Reset Invoice Counters in MIDAS

The screen displays the current counter for regular, deposit, and cancellation invoices, as well as for credit notes.

To reset any of these counters back to 0001, simply click/tap the corresponding “Reset” button.

To prevent the chance of this resulting in duplicate invoice numbers in MIDAS, counters may only be reset if no other invoices/credit notes with same prefix exist in the database.

Therefore, before resetting a counter it’s recommended that you either remove all existing invoices with the current prefix, or change the prefix to something else.

Invoice/Credit Note prefixes may be modified via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Invoicing.

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Watch for Venue Availability

Filed Under: Development by midas — Leave a comment
July 6, 2021

In MIDAS v4.28, we’ve introduced a new “Notification Center“. In earlier versions of MIDAS, this functionality could be found within the “My Messages” screen.

As part of the new “Notification Center”, we’ve added a brand new type of “Watch” notification. “Watch” notifications allow you to be automatically notified whenever certain activity occurs within your MIDAS booking system.

For example, you may wish to be notified whenever a new booking is added to a particular venue, or when a particular type of booking is modified. You may also wish to be notified whenever certain “consumable” resources are running low.

From MIDAS v4.28 you can now create Watches for “Venue Availability”.

Receive notifications when a space becomes free and available in MIDAS
New Venue Availability Watch option in MIDAS v4.28

We know it can be frustrating when you go to book a room and find that it’s already been booked.

Well, wouldn’t it be great if MIDAS could automatically notify you should that timeslot become available again?

That’s exactly what Venue Availability watches allow you to do!

Simply select a currently occupied date, room, and time slot, add a new Watch, and MIDAS does the rest!

Should the unavailable time slot become available again (for instance, if the existing booking is moved or deleted), MIDAS will automatically notify you.

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New Notification Center

Filed Under: Development by midas — Leave a comment
July 5, 2021

For MIDAS v4.28 we’ve overhauled the “My Messages” screen, and renamed it to the “Notification Center”.

All the previous functionality of “My Messages” has been retained, but we’ve given the screen itself a bit of a “facelift” to de-clutter and simplify things.

We’ve even introduced a new “Watch” option… but more on that later.

For users with the “Can use Notification Center” permission, their Notification Center may be accessed via the new “bell” icon in the MIDAS toolbar.

Here’s how the new Notification Center itself looks:

The new "Notification Center" (formally "My Messages") in MIDAS
The new “Notification Center” (formally “My Messages”) in MIDAS

The Notification Center comprises three components:

  • Messages
  • Reminders
  • Watches

The numbers in the upper right corner of these component’s icons denoted the number of notifications currently in each section. Clicking the corresponding icon toggles the display of notifications for that particular section.

In the lower right corner of each icon, there’s a smaller icon that allows you to add/configure each section.

Messages

The “Messages” section displays internal messages you’ve received from other users in your MIDAS system. The “+” icon allows you to leave a message for another user:

Leave a message for another MIDAS user
Leave a message for another user

For more information on messaging another user, please see the Help Documentation.

Reminders

The “Reminders” section displays both booking and custom reminders you’ve set. To set a new booking reminder, simply select a booking in the Booking Grid, and then “Add Reminder”. To set a custom reminder, click the “+” icon near the bottom right of the “Reminders” icon in your Notification Center:

Set yourself custom reminders in MIDAS
Set yourself a custom reminder

For more information on Reminders, please see the Help Documentation.

Watches

The “Watches” section displays watch notifications. These are generated when certain activity that you specify occurs within your MIDAS system. The “cog” icon adjacent to the “Watches” icon is used to configure your Watch notifications.

Configure Watch notifications in a MIDAS booking system
Configure “Watch” notifications

There are three types of Watch notification available:

  • Bookings
  • Consumables
  • Venue Availability

“Bookings” allows you to monitor and be alerted to new activity in certain venues, and/or for certain booking types, and/or for certain resources.

“Consumables” allows you to monitor levels of your consumable resources.

“Venue Availability” allows you to be alerted if and when a currently unavailable time slot for a given venue becomes available again. This is a brand new feature introduced for v4.28, which you can read more about in this post.

For more information on Watch notifications, please see the Help Documentation.

Notification Center Settings

You can adjust your Notification Center settings from within the Notification Center via the “cog” icon in the upper right corner.

MIDAS software notification center
Notification Center Settings

These settings allow you to control how and when you receive notifications from your Notification Center.

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Other new features in v4.27

Filed Under: Development by midas — Leave a comment
February 17, 2021

In previous blog posts we’ve covered a number of new features coming in MIDAS v4.27. These include quickly selecting common date ranges, printing individual bookings, and auto-approve improvements for booking requests.

In this post we’ll brief touch on some of the other new features we’re introducing in v4.27.

Search results can now be easily printed

The “Print” icon in the MIDAS toolbar is really flexible! When viewing the Booking Grid, clicking the Print icon allows you to print bookings for the currently viewed date (or date range).

Furthermore, right-clicking the Print icon show advance print options allowing you to further customize booking print outs.

But that’s not all, the Print icon also allows printing in other areas of MIDAS. For example, when viewing reports/statistics, the Print icon will print the current report.

For v4.27 we’ve further extended the Print icon’s functionality in relation to search results.

When performing a search (via the “Search” toolbar icon), the Print icon can now be used to send the search results to your printer.

The Recent Activity audit log can now be exported to Excel

The “Recent Activity” feature in MIDAS allows administrators to view an audit log of all recent user activity within your booking system. This includes log ins and outs as well as bookings added, modified, and deleted.

Each entry in the Recent Activity log is timestamped with the user who performed each action, as well as their IP address.

This allows a full audit trail to be maintained for actions taking place in your MIDAS system.

For v4.27, we’ve added an “Export” button to the Recent Activity log. This allows you to easily export the log to Excel.

Exported client data now includes current credit and tax exempt status

Whilst we’re on the subject of exporting data from your MIDAS system; Exporting client data (MIDAS Admin Options → Export → Clients) in v4.27+ will now also include each client’s current credit and tax exempt status.

Note: This information will only be included in exported client data if the user performing the export has been granted the “Can use invoicing” permission.

Improved booking import support

As you may be aware, MIDAS allows you to import bookings from 3rd party software.

When importing bookings, MIDAS needs to know the date format used in the data you’re importing.

Every 3rd party application stores/exports dates differently, and so we strive to support as many different date formats as possible.

Currently supported import date formats are:

  • DD.MM.YYYY (Example: 23/07/2021)
  • DD.MM.YY (Example: 23/07/21)
  • MM.DD.YYYY (Example: 07/23/2021)
  • MM.DD.YY (Example: 07/23/21)
  • YYYY.MM.DD (Example: 2021/07/23)
  • YYYY.DD.MM (Example: 2021/23/07)
  • YY.MM.DD (Example: 21/23/07)
  • YY.DD.MM (Example: 21/07/23)
  • DD.MM.YYYY HH.MI (Example: 23/07/2021 16:30)
  • MM.DD.YYYY HH.MI (Example: 07/23/2021 16:30)
  • HH.MI.SS – Day DD Month YYYY (Example: 16:30:00 – Friday 23 July 2021)
  • HH.MI-HH:MI, Day DD Month YYYY (Example: 16:30-17:30, Friday 23 July 2021)
  • Day DD Month YYYY HH.MI – Day DD Month YYYY HH.MI (Example: Friday 23 July 2021 16:30 – Friday 23 July 2021 17:30)

For MIDAS v4.27, we’re adding support for a couple more date formats:

  • DD.Mon.YYYY (Example: 23-Jul-2021)
  • DD.Mon.YY (Example: 23-Jul-21)

This extensive range of supported date formats for your raw booking data should cover the formats used by most 3rd party applications.

If you have booking data that you wish to import that doesn’t conform to one of the above date formats, please let us know and we’ll try and add support in a future update.

Advanced filter improvements

When advanced printing or when generating invoices, MIDAS offers an advanced “filter” option. This allows you to include/exclude bookings from your printout/generated invoice(s).

For v4.27 we’ve imported these advanced filters to now allow blank (empty) search terms.

This improvement now allows you to include/exclude bookings where a certain booking field is blank, which previously you couldn’t do.

We’ve also further improved the advanced print filter to allow filtering of bookings by invoice.

This allows you to now generate a printout of bookings which match, partially match, or don’t match a particular invoice number.

Custom logo improvements for cloud hosted customers

MIDAS allows you to “co brand” the software by uploading your own logo. This logo then appears throughout the software. For example, it is included on the login screen for your MIDAS system. It can also then be included in various templates in MIDAS – including email and invoicing templates.

Your logo may be added/changed via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Appearance → Logo.

Our cloud hosted customers may notice that when changing their logo, the changes are not immediately visible. This is due to the way our network “caches” static content, like logos. Sometimes it can take up to 24 hours to a logo change to be visible.

We’re improving this for MIDAS v4.27. Now, when our cloud hosted customers change their logo, their new logo should be visible right away!

How To Get MIDAS v4.27…

“Self Hosted” Customers:

Self-Hosted customers with active Support Subscriptions will shortly be able to update to v4.27. It only takes a couple of clicks – simply log in to your MIDAS system and go to MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Update.

If no update is available, please check back again in a few days time, as we are staggering updates for self-hosted customers over the next few weeks.

“Cloud Hosted” Customers:

Cloud-Hosted customers don’t need to do anything! – All our active Cloud-Hosted MIDAS customers will shortly be automatically updated to this latest version of MIDAS.

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