Category: Development

MIDAS and Internet Explorer 11

Filed Under: Development, News, Tech Insight by midas — Leave a comment
October 8, 2018

Here are MIDAS HQ we love getting feedback from our customers! Whether positive or critical, all feedback is important to us. Feedback helps us to continually develop and improve our MIDAS room booking & resource scheduling software and service.

Our customer feedback is overwhelmingly positive. In fact, you can read some of these comments on our website and also on independent review sites such as TrustPilot.

However, in recent times a handful of customers have commented specifically in relation to the user interface (UI) of MIDAS, which a few perceive as now a little “dated”.

We wanted to begin addressing this for our next MIDAS update. For v4.20 we’ve introduced a number of changes and improvements in this area. You can read about these changes in this blog post.

However, we also thought it would be useful to explain some of the challenges we’ve faced with regards to the UI over the years.

As you may or may not know, MIDAS has been in continuous active development for well over a decade. Our philosophy has always been to support ALL popular web browsers. That includes Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Apple Safari, and more recently Microsoft Edge.

Room Booking System for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and EdgeSupporting all these browsers has been an enormous task over the years. But we feel strongly that our users should have a choice of which web browser they use, with a consistent MIDAS experience between browsers. Users should not be forced to use one particular browser in order to be able to access and use our MIDAS software.

It’s fair to say that the most difficult web browser to maintain support for over the years continues to be Microsoft’s Internet Explorer series. The challenge primarily has been because it has always lagged way behind all other vendor’s browser offerings in terms of its development, updates, and support for the latest standards. Essentially, the web has developed and evolved significantly over the years we’ve been developing MIDAS, yet Internet Explorer doesn’t keep up.

To some extent we’ve been “held back” over the years by our decision to continue to support customers who force their uses to use Internet Explorer. However, as of today the only version of Internet Explorer we officially support is 11. We’ve already deprecated support for IE10 & 9, IE8, IE7, and IE6 over the past decade.

MIDAS and Internet Explorer 11Continuing to support MIDAS in IE11 for the very small (and ever decreasing) percentage of our users who continue to use this old browser, limits how we can develop MIDAS, particularly in terms of the user interface.

Whilst we would have loved to have dropped IE11 support long ago, Microsoft have committed to providing mainstream support for IE11 until the end of life of the operating systems upon which it is installed. This includes Windows 7, 8 and 10. Windows 7 & 8 have both now reached their EOL (End Of Life) for mainstream support. Windows 10 however is still actively supported by Microsoft and will continue to be for the foreseeable future (for a minimum of at least two years).

That’s why we’ve taken the difficult – but necessary – decision that at some point during 2019 we’ll officially be dropping IE11 support in MIDAS.

This won’t necessarily mean that MIDAS will suddenly cease to function for IE11 users next year. But it does mean that over time new features and new user interface elements and enhancements may not display or – even function correctly – if you continue to access MIDAS using Internet Explorer 11.

If you’re currently an IE11 user, there is however, plenty of time to switch to a different web browser. There’s also plenty of choice when it comes to modern alternative web browsers.

MIDAS will continue to be supported in recent versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Opera.

We appreciate that this may affect a very small number of users. However, we hope this post gives some insight and understanding as to why we’re making this decision. We’re also confident that this will give you plenty of time to switch to an alternative, more modern, web browser.

If you have any questions or concerns over how this may impact you and your organization’s use of MIDAS, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Our friendly team will be only too happy to help!

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Invoicing Improvements

Filed Under: Development by midas — Leave a comment
June 19, 2018

The forthcoming update to MIDAS – our popular room booking and resource scheduling system – includes a handful of small, but nonetheless useful, updates and improvements to the extensive Invoicing capabilities of the software.

We often receive ideas and suggestions from our customers as to what new features and improvements they’d like to see. May of these suggestions relate to the invoicing capabilities of MIDAS. Taking these on board, our next update (v4.19) will feature…

A new “View Only” option for the “Can use invoicing” user permission

Existing MIDAS administrators will know of the powerful set of permissions that can assigned to accounts on a per-user basis.

One of the available permissions is the “Can use invoicing” setting. This setting allows administrators to allow/deny each user the ability access to MIDAS’ Invoicing features.

Previously, this permission had three possible settings:

  • No – User has no access to any of the invoicing features
  • Yes – User has full access to all of the invoicing features
  • Limited – User may create/generate invoices, but may only view/modify/delete invoices which they created/generated. (They will not have access to invoices added by other users)

For v4.19 we’re adding a forth option to this permission – “View Only“. User’s who’s “Can use invoicing” permission has been set to “View Only” will be able to view all invoices, but will not be able to modify, delete, email or print them, nor will they be able to generate or create new invoices.

This new option is useful to organizations who wish to grant “read only” access to their invoices, for example, for the purposes of auditing.

Exporting invoice summaries in Excel format will format “Invoice Dates” as Excel dates (rather than as text)

In the previous update to MIDAS (v4.18), we introduced the ability to export invoice summaries in native Excel (.xlsx) format.

We’re made a small improvement to this for v4.19. Invoice dates will now be formatted as Excel dates rather than as regular text strings.

This allows for easier manipulation/format of dates when viewing your exported invoice summaries in Excel.

Tax Amount and Grand Total fields become editable

After generating or create a new invoice in MIDAS, its contents may be modified prior to “finalizing” it. A “Finalized” invoice is one which has been printed/emailed to the client.

When editing invoices, by default, MIDAS will automatically re-calculate totals when you make changes. For example, if you charge $50/hour for room hire and you’ve invoiced for 2 hours, the line total on the invoice would be $100. If you then manually change the quantity from 2 to 3 hours, MIDAS will automatically re-calculate the line total of the invoice to $150, and the grand total of the invoice accordingly.

A small “Calculate Totals” tick box is present when modifying invoices. If un-ticked this will prevent MIDAS from automatically calculating totals, allowing you to specify manual amounts if necessary.

However, in earlier version, with the “Calculate Totals” box un-ticked whilst you could modify item rates, quantities, line totals, and tax rate, the tax amount value and grand total values would still be automatically calculated and couldn’t be manually adjusted.

We’ve changed this for v4.19 so that when the “Calculate Totals” box un-ticked, you’ll be able to manually modify the value of any field on your invoice.

We’ve also made one other small change relating to invoices for v4.19. This relates to the way that a client’s “Paid in Full” and “Outstanding” invoices were displayed in the Booking Information Panel.

Previously, these lists were sorted in ascending order. This meant that the client’s oldest paid invoice would appear at the top of the list “Paid in Full” list of invoices.

We’ve changed this sort behavior to descending order for v4.19. Now, the client’s most recently paid/outstanding invoices will be shown at the top (rather than the end) of each respective list.

Click here to continue reading about some of the other new & improved features in MIDAS v4.19!

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Simplified Password Reset Process

Filed Under: Development by midas — Leave a comment
June 12, 2018

We’re improving and simplifying the password reset process for MIDAS v4.19.

Due to the secure way passwords are stored by MIDAS, it’s not possible to “recover” a forgotten password. The only option if a password is forgotten is to request a password reset.

In the past, this process has been as follows:

  1. User clicks the “Forgot Your Password?” link on their MIDAS login screen.
  2. The user then enters their email address and clicks “Reset My Password”.
  3. MIDAS then emails the user with a reset confirmation link.
  4. The user clicks the reset confirmation link.
  5. MIDAS emails the user a new temporary password (which they’re required to change upon their next login).

We’re simplifying this process and so from v4.19 the process will instead be as follows:

  1. User clicks the “Forgot Your Password?” link on their MIDAS login screen.
  2. The user then enters their email address and clicks “Reset My Password”.
  3. MIDAS then emails the user with a temporary login link.
  4. The user clicks the temporary login link and is prompted to enter a new password after which the user is logged in.

Better Password Resets

This simplified password reset process removes the sending on two emails to users (a reset link followed by a temporary password), as just a single email will be sent. This also strengthens security as a temporary password is no longer sent via email.

This improved flow also addresses the issue of multiple password reset attempts and emails arriving out-of-order. For instance, take the following scenario:

  1. User initiates a password reset, receives an email with a reset link and clicks it.
  2. Whilst the user is waiting for a new temporary password to be sent to them, the initiate a further password reset and click the reset link in that corresponding email.
  3. The original temporary password email arrives, and the user attempts to use the temporary password. However, as they since initiated a second password reset request, the first temporary password is no longer valid.

This caused confusion for a handful of users who’d attempted to reset their password several times within a matter of minutes couldn’t understand why the temporary password they received wasn’t being accepted.

Multiple Password Resets

The improved password reset flow for MIDAS v4.19 completely eliminates this. Even if a user initiates multiple password reset requests the links they receive via email will all permit the user to set a new password, until they have done so.

We’re sure these improvements will make it easier and stress free for users to reset their own passwords.

Along with these changes, administrators can also still specify how long password reset links are valid for (the default is 2 hours). This setting may be found via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Security. For more information, please refer to the help documentation.

Of course, if a user isn’t able to reset their own password, any other administrative user who has been granted the “Can Manage Users & Permissions” user permission can reset a user password on their behalf.

Click here to continue reading about some of the other new & improved features coming in MIDAS v4.19!

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Additional Recipients for Booking Confirmations

Filed Under: Development by midas — Leave a comment
June 8, 2018

When adding new bookings to MIDAS (or modifying existing ones) if there’s an email address on record for the client that you’re making/modifying bookings for, then MIDAS will offer a “Send Booking Confirmation?” tick box on the Booking Availability screen. Selecting this option will send an automated booking confirmation notification by email to the client when the bookings are made.

Sometimes, you may wish these booking confirmation notifications to go to multiple recipients in addition to the primary client that the bookings are for.

That’s why MIDAS (v4.19 and later) automatically detects any email addresses added to the standard “Booking Notes” field, or any text custom booking fields, and offer these as additional “CC” email addresses for the booking confirmation notification to also be copied to.

Here’s an example to illustrate:

Detect email addresses entered into booking fields

Two email addresses have been added to the “Booking Notes” field for the above booking. When “Check Availability and Book” is clicked, the following “Booking Availability” screen is shown:

Offer additional recipients for booking confirmation notification

Notice how MIDAS has detected these email addresses and offered each as an optional “cc” recipient for the booking confirmation email to the client.

Please Note: Cloud-hosted editions of MIDAS will detect a maximum of 5 additional email addresses in booking fields when MIDAS is configured to send via an external SMTP server, or a maximum of 2 additional email addresses when configured to send via the Sendmail option. There are no limits imposed in self-hosted editions.

MIDAS can be configured to send outgoing email via SMTP/Sendmail via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Email. For more information, please refer to the “Manage Email Settings” documentation.

This isn’t the only new feature to be added in v4.19. There are a number of other new & improved features in MIDAS v4.19 too!

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