Category: Development

Printing Improvements

We’re adding a couple of cool new features to the print functionality in MIDAS for the next release of our web based room booking and resource scheduling software, v4.16.

New Advanced Print Filter

MIDAS already features a wealth of advanced print options. These may be accessed by right/long clicking the “Print” toolbar icon. They include the ability to print bookings over a custom date range and limit printouts of bookings to only include those taking place in certain venues or which are of specific booking types.

For v4.16, we’re adding an additional “Advanced Filter”:

Advanced Print Filter

This will allow you to only include bookings within your printout that match (or not) the value of certain fields. You can also match against any custom booking fields you’ve set up. You’ll be able to select a booking field from a drop-down list, select a match type, and a match string.

Match types available include:

  • Equals – Will include bookings where the selected booking field’s value exactly matches the string you enter
  • Does Not Equal – Will include bookings where the selected booking field’s value doesn’t exactly matches the string you enter
  • Contains – Will include bookings where the selected booking field’s value contains an occurrence of the string you enter
  • Does Not Contain – Will include bookings where the selected booking field’s value contains no occurrences of the string you enter
  • Begins With – Will include bookings where the selected booking field’s value begins with the string you enter
  • Ends With – Will include bookings where the selected booking field’s value ends with the string you enter
  • Is Greater Than – Will include bookings where the selected booking field’s numeric value is higher than the value you enter
  • Is Less Than – Will include bookings where the selected booking field’s numeric value is higher than the value you enter

So, for example, you could generate a printout which only includes booking where there are more than 10 people attending. Or you could generate a printout which excludes any bookings that have “exclude from printing” in their booking notes, etc.

A “Case Sensitive” option is also available allowing you to optionally make string matches case-sensitive.

But that’s not all….

Limit Resource Category When Printing Bookings With Resources In “Grid” Layouts

The Advanced Print settings window in MIDAS allows you to choose between two different print layouts – a “table” layout and a “grid” layout.

If “grid” layout is selected, bookings are printed in a “grid”, with venues listed vertically, and each date shown across the horizontal axis. You can further specify a field you’d like to be shown within each grid cell. For instance, selecting “Booking Types” would create a printout indicating the types of bookings taking place in your venues over the selected date range.

The ability to select “Resources” as the field to show on these printouts has long been available. However, for v4.16 we’ve also introduced “Resources (Equipment)”, “Resources (Consumables)” and “Resources (Staffing)” options, allowing you to further drill-down the resources on your print-outs.

Print Resources including Equipment, Consumables, and Staffing

These new options provide a some great new possibilities! For example, selecting a “Resources (Staffing)” grid printout, will generate a printout of which venues, dates, and times your staff are assigned to.

Click here to continue reading about some of the other new & improved features coming in MIDAS v4.16!


MIDAS Room Booking & Resource Scheduling systems come with a set of basic booking fields enabled by default. These allow you to record the type of booking, the number of attendees, any resources, and booking notes. That’s in addition of course to the room (venue), date/time, and client details.

Booking fields can be re-ordered as well as made optional or required. They can also be selectively hidden from certain users.

Furthermore, MIDAS gives you even more flexible control by allowing you to add your own “custom” booking fields as well!

A variety of different custom booking field types may be added to MIDAS, including:

MIDAS v4.16 expands upon this range with the inclusion of a new “Range” (or “slider”) custom booking field type:

Custom Range/Slider Booking Field
Custom Range (Slider) Booking Field

When adding a new “Range” custom booking field to MIDAS, you’ll be able to configure the minimum and maximum limits of the “slider”. You can also control the number of increments (or “steps”), as well as specify a default value for the slider.

Then when users add or modify bookings, they’ll be able to adjust the slider to the desired value. That value will then be saved along with the booking.

We’re sure that the addition of the new “Range” custom booking field will find a variety of applications within customer’s MIDAS systems.

For example, a “Range” slider could be used to record the desired room temperature for each booking, which your site’s caretaker/facilities manager could use to program heating/cooling/HVAC systems accordingly.

Furthermore, our optional API could even be used to interface MIDAS directly with your building’s environmental control systems – meaning users could set room temperatures directly from within MIDAS itself! – There are so many possibilities!

Click here to continue reading about some of the other new & improved features coming in MIDAS v4.16!


New Public “Book Online” feature

With MIDAS v4.15 just around the corner, we’re offering a “first look” at some of the highlights coming in the next update to our web based room booking and resource scheduling software.

From the very outset MIDAS has included an ability to allow non-users to check availability of your facilities and submit booking “requests” online. “Non users” are visitors to your website, members of the public, etc.

These booking “requests” then go into a pending booking requests queue. Administrative users can quickly approve or reject each request. Approved booking requests then become “confirmed” bookings.

You can find out more about how this works in our “Accept Booking Requests Online” video tutorial.

We know that our customers love this long-standing feature of MIDAS. Put simply, it makes their lives significantly easier. That’s because it allows people to check room availability themselves, without having to phone/email/speak to an administrator.

We also know that some of our customers would like the Public Booking Request features to go one step further. You’d like to allow non-users to check availability, book and pay for their booking instantly there and then (rather than having to be invoiced for their booking at a later date)

That’s why in addition to the “Web Request” features of MIDAS, for v4.15 we’re also introducing a “Web Booking” feature.

The “Web Booking” process is very similar to the traditional “Web Request” process. The difference being the addition of a payment step, allowing the individual to pay to confirm their booking.

Here’s How It Works:

  1. A person selects the date(s)/time(s) they wish to book, and MIDAS checks their availability.
  2. If available, the person can enter more details about their booking and continue to the payment page.
  3. At this point, the booking is temporarily added as a “tentative” booking until the person completes payment. At this point the tentative booking automatically becomes a “confirmed” booking.

If the person fails to complete their payment in a timely manner, the temporary tentative booking will automatically expire, and the person would need to re-start the booking process. By default, this time frame is set to 15 minutes, but can be changed by an administrator.

As per the native invoice payment methods offered within MIDAS, both PayPal (with IPN correctly configured) and Stripe are available for Web Booking payments. Stripe however is recommended over PayPal.

The “Web Request” and “Web Booking” features share a set of common settings. So we’ve redesigned the previously named “Web Request” tab on the Manage MIDAS screen to become the “Public Settings” tab:

New Public Settings
New Public Settings

As you can probably tell from the above screenshot, the new auto-venue selection option we unveiled earlier this month, will also be available for “Web Booking”.

The combination of new auto-venue selection and Web Bookings helps make MIDAS even more suited for hotels, B&B’s, hostels, and other overnight accommodation businesses. Your customers will now be able to truly “book online”!

You may like to check out some of the other features of MIDAS v4.15 too!


Maintain fixed spacing between bookings

Work on the next update to our popular web based room booking and resource scheduling, MIDAS, is nearing completion. We’re excited to reveal some of the exciting improvements you can look forward to first here on our blog…

Resulting from customer feedback (which we love getting by the way!), we’re introducing new global settings for v4.15 allowing administrators to enforce fixed spacing (or “gaps”) between adjacent bookings.

Maintain Spacing (Gaps) Between Bookings
Enforce a “gap” between adjacent bookings in MIDAS

This can be useful to allow for room setup, breakdown, reset or cleaning periods between adjacent bookings.

Two new settings are available in this regard. The first controls the amount of free time to maintain before each booking. The second, the amount of free time after each booking finished before the next one can commence.

For example, with the booking spacing settings shown in the screenshot about (15 minutes before / 30 minutes after), and a booking taking place between 2pm-3pm;

  • The latest allowed finish time of a booking added earlier in the day would be 1.45pm,
  • The earliest allowed start time of another booking added later on the same date would be 3.30pm.

You may like to check out some of the other features of MIDAS v4.15 too!