Category: Development

Zero Configuration Email Delivery for Cloud-Hosted Customers

Zero Configuration Email Delivery

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”

New Zero Configuration Email Sending Option
New Zero Configuration Email Sending Option

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.


Limit Printing Bookings Over a Date Range to Specific Days of the Week

MIDAS v4.42 introduces a new advanced print option that allows bookings to be printed for specific days of the week within a selected date range.

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.

Advanced booking print settings dialog in MIDAS v4.42
Advanced booking print settings dialog in MIDAS v4.42

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.

Option to restrict printing of bookings over a date range to certain days of the week
Option to restrict printing of bookings over a date range to certain days of the week

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.


User Interface improvements in v4.41

Whilst we love adding new and improved features in every software update, we also know that user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are important too!

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" in previous versions of MIDAS
The previous “user bar” in earlier versions of MIDAS

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:

New User Drop-Down in MIDAS v4.41
New User Drop-Down in MIDAS v4.41

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:

New icons on the MIDAS Admin Options screen
New icons on the MIDAS Admin Options screen

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.

Graphs now have tooltips
Graphs now have tooltips

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:

Info Boxes pre-v4.41

…and here how these look now:

New Info Boxes in MIDAS v4.41

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!


Improved Booking Import Support

The ability to import data from other software is crucial to those looking to change booking systems. This is especially true if they wish to retain existing data from their current scheduling solution.

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 wishing to migrate from Skedda to MIDAS.

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!