Category: Development

Improved Bulk Venue Modification

In the very early days of MIDAS, each “venue” (room/bookable space) you added to the system could have a name and a maximum occupancy level (capacity) setting.

Over the years as MIDAS has developed and improved, the number of venue options has greatly increased. Today, you can set hours of operation, simple and complex hire rates, venue managers, blocking rules, alternatives, and rich HTML descriptions.

These additional options have given our software even more flexibility for a wider range of applications. However, increasing the number of individual venue settings/options available, can increase the time it takes to set up or make changes to a venue.

That’s why last March, in response to customer feedback, we introduced a way to allow you to “bulk modify” venues. Users now no longer have to modify settings for each venue one at a time.

Manage Venues Screen
Manage Venues Screen

Doing Things In Bulk

The “bulk modify” venue feature allowed more than one venue to be selected at a time from the Manage Venues screen. When the “Save Changes” button was clicked, the current venue settings/options would be applied to all selected venues.

However, some users didn’t appreciate that settings including capacity, rates, hours, and managers would be blanket applied to all selected venues.

Therefore, in order to provide even grater flexibility for users, for v4.21, we’re making it even simpler!

Now, when you have multiple venues selected on the Manage Venues screen and you click ‘Save Changes”, MIDAS will prompt you to select which settings to save to the selected venues:

Bulk Modify venues in MIDAS
Bulk Modify Venues Options

This new additional dialog gives users full control by making it easier to make specific bulk changes to venues. We’re sure you’re going to love the enhanced flexibility!

Check out some of the other new and improved features coming in v4.21 here.


New Invoicing Features

We’re introducing a number of invoicing features in out next update. These are in addition to the new deposit invoice features we outlined previously. Here’s a brief outline of new invoicing features in MIDAS v4.21…


Mark invoices as complete even if not paid in full

After invoices are produced in MIDAS, administrative users may freely edit their content up until the point when the invoice is either printed or emailed to the client. At this point, MIDAS assumes that the invoice has been “finalized” and therefore locks it from further editing.

This ensures that the invoice printed/emailed to the client exactly matches the invoice stored within MIDAS.

Finalized invoices indicate the invoice total, the amount already paid (which initially will be zero), and total still due. The total still due is the invoice total minus the amount already paid against it.

Until the “total due” reaches zero (i.e. the invoice has been paid in full), the invoice will continue to be flagged as “outstanding”. It then subsequently becomes “overdue” if the length of the specified payment term is exceeded.

However, we’ve heard from customers that there are instances when they would like to mark an invoice as complete, even if there is still an amount outstanding on it. An example case might be where a client has been invoiced for the use of 4 venues, but when it came to it, they actually only used 3.

Of course, one solution to this would be to invoice the client after their booking(s) have taken place. That way you can ensure that they’re only invoiced for their actual usage of your facilities. However, we appreciate that this isn’t always possible. There are some customers who prefer to invoice their clients in advance of their bookings taking place.

That’s why for v4.21 we’re introducing a way to mark an unpaid/partially paid invoice as complete.

When updating an invoice’s status, there’ll now be an optional “Mark outstanding amount as credit?” tick box. If selected when updating an invoice’s status, the outstanding balance on the invoice will be marked as a “credit” on the invoice. This will reduce the “total due” to zero and mark the invoice as complete.


Quickly “copy” the contents of an invoice to a new invoice

Wouldn’t it be great if you could “clone” (copy) the contents of an existing invoice to a new blank invoice?

Well starting with MIDAS v4.21 you’ll be able to do just that!

Simply view the invoice you’d like to copy and click/tap the new “Clone Invoice” icon. After confirming that you’d like to copy to the contents of the current invoice to a new invoice, MIDAS will create a brand-new invoice. This new invoice will be identical to the current invoice, but without an invoice date and without any payment marked against it.

As the new invoice doesn’t have an invoice date (because it hasn’t been finalized), its contents may be freely edited.

We’re sure this feature will save time for our customers who regularly produce similar or recurring invoices for their clients.


The “Pay invoice online” features can now be configured to allow partial payments

Until now, the “Pay Invoice Online” features of MIDAS, which allow your clients to pay their invoices online, would only allow clients to pay invoice in full.

If a customer wished to make a partial payment, an administrator would need to manually process their payment. Then, the administrator can manually update the status of the invoice within MIDAS to reflect the partial amount paid.

The good news is that for v4.21 we’re introducing a new “Allow Partial Invoice Payments” setting.

If enabled, this setting allows your clients to enter an amount they wish to pay against their invoice, rather than the only option being to pay it in full.

Of course if the new “Allow Partial Invoice Payments” setting isn’t enabled, then the online payments feature of MIDAS will behave as in previous versions. It will then only allow invoices to be paid in full.

We want to provide our customers the most flexible and versatile invoicing features in a booking system we can. So we’re sure that the exciting improvements to invoicing coming in our next update will be great additions!


Deposit Invoices

It may be a new year, but we’ve been hard at work on the next update (v4.21) to our room booking and resource scheduling system. We’re giving you a “first look” here on the blog at some of the upcoming features you can expect.

Invoicing has been a staple feature of our software for many years. Following customer feedback, for v4.08 we expanded the invoice generation capabilities of MIDAS to also allow generating “Cancellation Invoices“.

This feature automatically charges a cancellation fee to your clients and generates an invoice accordingly if their bookings are cancelled (removed from the system) at very short notice.

This has been well-received by customers, many of whom have also asked for the ability for their MIDAS system to generate “deposit” invoices too.

Well, we’ve listened, and are excited to announce that “Deposit Invoices” are finally coming in MIDAS v4.21!

When generating invoices for bookings and deposit invoicing is enabled, MIDAS will instead generate two invoices; the usual “regular” invoice and a separate “deposit” invoice.

Deposit Invoice Settings in MIDAS v4.21
Deposit Invoice Settings in MIDAS v4.21

The amount charged on a deposit invoice can be customized. It can either be set to a fixed amount, or as a percentage of the overall total booking cost.

Furthermore, there’s also the option to deduct the value of the “deposit” invoice from the “regular” invoice. In not selected, the deposit charge will be in addition to the main booking/hire charge.


Theme Improvements

Following on from our previous post, you’ll know about some of the difficulties and challenges we’ve faced over the years in ensuring a consistent user experience can be delivered for our users, regardless of which web browser they’re using.

In response to customer feedback, updating and improving some of the visual elements of MIDAS has been the main focus for our next update, v4.20.

This blog post outlines some of the key visual changes we’re making in order to improve the user interface (UI).


Deprecating some old, less popular themes

The standard (non-HiRes) version of the “Default” theme is being retired, along with the “Pastel” and “Classic” themes.

Pastel Theme for MIDAS

The “Pastel” theme (shown above) was the least used optional theme by our customers. We may re-introduce a similar theme in the future, but for now the “Pastel” theme will no longer be available in v4.20

Classic v3 Theme for MIDAS

The “Classic” theme (shown above) was originally introduced with the release MIDAS v4.00. It was based on the icons in the previous pre-v4.00 interface for MIDAS. As there were significant changes made to various icons between MIDAS v3 and v4, the “Classic” theme’s primary purpose was to ease the transition to v4 for long standing customers familiar with icons from v3. MIDAS v3 was superseded by v4 over six years ago now, and so this interface is now very dated. As such, the “Classic” theme will no longer be available inn MIDAS v4.20.

Standard Resolution Default Theme for MIDAS

The non-HiRes version of the “Default” theme (shown above) was primarily aimed at self-hosted customers who were installing MIDAS onto a server which didn’t support serving SVG images. The non-HiRes default theme version was identical to the “Default-HiRes” theme, but with high resolution SVG icons substituted for lower resolution PNG images.

Nowadays, all modern servers can be configured to correctly serve SVG images. The majority of which being able to serve such content natively. (All our cloud-hosted customers are defaulted to the high resolution, rather than the standard resolution, “Default” theme)

The original purpose of the non-HiRes “Default” theme is therefore pretty redundant, and so has been removed from v4.20.


Updating Existing Themes

High Resolution SVG graphics in MIDAS

The previous “Default-HiRes” theme has been updated and renamed to “Default” for v4.20. The “BrushedSteel”, “HiContrast” and “Slate” themes have all had a face lift too. All of these themes now boast high resolution SVG icons, and improved layouts.

Brushed Steel Theme for MIDAS
High Contrast Theme for MIDAS
Dark Slate Theme for MIDAS

We’ve also increased the size of some visual elements to better aid those with sight difficulties or those accessing MIDAS on very small screen devices. Here’s a comparison of the login screen under the hi resolution “Default” themes in both v4.19 (left) and v4.20 (right):

MIDAS v4.19 login screenMIDAS v4.20 login screen
v4.19 Login Screenv4.20 Login Screen

Introducing New Themes!

We’re also adding THREE exciting new, high resolution themes to v4.20!

Honeycomb

New Honeycomb theme for MIDAS

Squares

New lilac Squares theme for MIDAS

Wood

New Wood effect theme for MIDAS

Additional new themes may also be added in the future. For v4.20 though a total 7 distinctly different themes will be included as standard. No longer will there be a need to download and install (in the case of self-hosted customers) or request (in the case of cloud-hosted customers) optional themes for your MIDAS system. All 7 of these themes are included as standard.


Custom themes

Self-hosted customers will still be able to “tweak” and customize their own visual themes for MIDAS. However, the process for doing this is slightly different than before. We’ve updated our Knowledge Base with instructions in this regard.


Future development

The new way in which themes are handled starting with v4.20 make it easier for us to introduce further themes in the future. It also serves to lay future foundations for an often requested “white label” edition of MIDAS.