For v4.25, we’ve made a few improvements to custom booking and client fields. These include..
Custom Fields Can Now Include A Descriptive Explainer
When creating a custom field in MIDAS, it may not always be clear precisely to end-users what the field is for. Or, there may be additional information you’d like to present along with the field itself.
That’s why for v4.25 you may also set a description for each custom field. These descriptions are shown to users just above the field, so they’ll know exactly what the field is for.
What’s more, these descriptions may also include simply HTML, allowing for instance the inclusion of a link.
Here’s an example of a custom field without a description:
Custom Checkbox Field
Here’s the same field, but this time with a description, including a clickable link:
Custom Checkbox Field with additional descriptive content
Enforce a Maximum Input Length in Custom Text Fields
When creating a custom text field, you can now limit the maximum number of characters users may enter into the field:
Control the maximum input length of custom text fields
Control How Many Options Are Displayed At Once In Custom List Fields
When creating a custom single select or multi select drop-down list field, you may now indicate how many items from the list should be displayed at any one time. Typically, browsers default to showing 1 item at a time in a single-select list, and 4 items at a time in a multi-select. You can now override this default behavior for each list field:
A custom multi-select list, showing a maximum of 5 items at any given time
These are just a few of the new and improved features for MIDAS v4.25. Please see this post for details of other new features you’ll find in v4.25.
For v4.25, we’ve made a number of small but significant improvements to the user interface. These include..
New Default Font
Since MIDAS v4.20, the default font used in our software was “Geneva” on MacOS systems and “Tahoma” on Windows systems. Different platforms have different default fonts available, and we wanted MIDAS to look as similar as possible regardless of the OS being used. “Geneva” and “Tahoma” are quite similar in appearance, which is why we originally chose them.
“Geneva” Font
“Tahoma” Font
For other systems where neither of these fonts were available, MIDAS would fall back to the closest sans-serif font available.
However, from v4.25, the default font across all operating systems is instead now “Open Sans“:
“Open Sans” Font
This font comes included with MIDAS, meaning that our software should now look identical on every operating system!
Larger Font Size
Following customer feedback, we’ve also increased the font size in many areas of the software.
Previous Font Size in MIDAS v4.24
Increased Font Size in MIDAS v4.25
New Drop-Down Lists, Checkboxes and Radio Buttons
You may also note from the previous screenshot a couple of other changes. We’ve fully styled and themed drop-down (select) lists, check (tick) boxes and radio buttons in MIDAS v4.25. Previously, these input elements would be styled by the user’s own browser/operating system. This led to MIDAS looking slightly different for users on different browsers and operating systems.
System default styled Check (Tick) Boxes and Radio Buttons in v4.24
Styled Check (Tick) Boxes and Radio Buttons in v4.25
The new styled inputs for v4.25 look consistent across supported browsers and operating system. Coupled with the increased font size, these new-style inputs are now even easier to select/toggle than before.
Default Template Improvements
We’ve updated a couple of the default templates for v4.25. The “Public Booking Requests” and “Public Web Request” templates have been updated.
Previously, these template defaults made use of an HTML “table” for laying out the header. This worked fine on regular screens, but on smaller mobile devices, it could result in the header being truncated:
Public Booking Request Default Template in v4.24 on a mobile device, using a “Table” Layout. Note how the “DEMO” logo has been truncated
So to improve their appearance on smaller screens, for v4.25, we’ve dropped the use of tables in favor of a “flex” layout instead. Here’s the same screen as before, but using a “flex” layout instead. Now on smaller screens, the header components will “wrap” where necessary:
Public Booking Request Default Template in v4.25 on a mobile device, using a “Flex” Layout. Note how the header components automatically “wrap” on very small screens
We would ideally like to migrate all the default templates (email, invoice, etc) within MIDAS over to a “flex” layout model. However, older email clients don’t fully support “flex” rendering in this way. This would mean that an invoice emailed to a customer may not display correctly in their email client. We do however plan to one day update all default templates to the “flex” layout model. In the meantime, as templates within MIDAS are editable, user may choose to do this themselves!
These improved templates apply to new installations of our software. They won’t be retrospectively applied to existing MIDAS systems. However, existing customers can reset their templates to these new templates via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Templates → Reset Template.
These are just a few of the new and improved features for v4.25. Keep following our blog as we unveil more on v4.25 in our next posts.
The world has been seemingly grinding to a halt over the past couple of months due to COVID-19.
As a small and agile UK business, we’ve been fortunate in that our day to day operations haven’t been adversely affected. We’re still promptly responding to pre-sales questions and providing support to customers to the same high standards as before.
But we’re aware that many of our customer’s operations have had to temporarily be put on hold. If your business is one of those affected, remember we’re here to help. Please see our blog post from March for ways we can support your business in these challenging times.
During these past few months however, development of MIDAS hasn’t stopped! In fact, it’s provided us with a unique opportunity to devote additional time to development of our software.
As you may know, MIDAS has been in active development for some 15 years now. Throughout this time, we’ve been regularly releasing significant updates at least three times a year. Each significant updates always includes new and improved features.
We’ve added dozens of new features and improvements for this next release, which we’re really excited about!
There’s so much to share, which is why over the coming posts here on our blog, we’ll be taking a closer look at what you can expect in v4.25. Here’s what we’ve announced so far:
With the latest update (v4.24) to our MIDAS web based room booking and resource scheduling software fast approaching, we’ve been introducing some of the highlights of the new update over the past few blog posts.
In our previous post, we revealed a new editable “Booking Feedback” template and options to allow your MIDAS system to automatically send clients a post-booking follow-up email. This could be used, for example, to thank them for their recent visit and to encourage them to use your facilities again soon.
To further enhance and extend this new feature, we’re also introducing a new optional “Reviews” addon, which works in conjunction with this feature. This addon allows you to automatically collect feedback, ratings, and reviews of your facilities/business on leading independent review sites, such as Trustpilot.
Initially, the new optional “Reviews” addon supports four leading independent review platforms;
https://collect-reviews.com
https://reviews.io
https://trustpilot.com
https://trustspot.io
How It Works
The “Reviews” addon works by automatically notifying an independent review collection platform after a client’s booking has taken place at your facilities. The review platform then in turn sends out a review invitation by email to your client asking them to leave a review or rating of your business on their website.
Here’s how the process works:
A client’s booking in MIDAS takes place.
Shortly thereafter, MIDAS automatically sends the client a post-booking email (the content of which is customizable via a template)
When this email is sent, it is also transparently BCC’d (Blind Carbon Copied) to your chosen review collection platform
The review platform in turn sends your client an invitation to rate/review your business on their independent review platform
What you’ll need
In order to be able to take advantage of the functionality the optional “Reviews” addon offers, you’ll need the following:
You can also ask questions and discuss the new features of v4.25 over on Reddit.
