Category: News

MIDAS v4.12 Out Now!

We’ve been actively developing our Web Based Room Booking and Resource Scheduling Software for over 10 years now!

During this time we’ve seen many competitors come and go, and numerous customers making the switch to MIDAS. We have a genuine passion for how our software helps make life easier, saving time, money, and effort for venue administrators right across the globe, and we remain extremely customer focused.

With exciting new and improved features being added to MIDAS several times each year, we’re pleased to tell you about our latest update – v4.12 – which has just been released!

New & Improved in 4.12:

How To Get MIDAS v4.12…

New To MIDAS?

We are committed to keeping our pricing fair and accessible to organizations of all sizes and budgets. Unlike many of our competitors who don’t publish their prices, we’re totally upfront and transparent about our pricing structure and clearly display prices on our website.

You can view pricing, find out more, and purchase MIDAS securely at https://mid.as/pricing

Existing “Self Hosted” Customer?

Self-Hosted customers with ongoing Annual Support Subscriptions may update to v4.12 right now! It only takes a couple of clicks – simply log in to your MIDAS system and go to MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Update

Existing “Cloud Hosted” Customer?

Cloud-Hosted customers don’t need to do anything! – All our active Cloud-Hosted MIDAS customers were automatically updated over the weekend to this latest version of MIDAS!

Help Improve MIDAS!

We’re able to bring you exciting updates like v4.12 thanks in part to our Beta Testers – many of whom are just every day MIDAS users!

Our Beta Testers get early-access to upcoming releases to explore and provide feedback on, allowing us to make changes and address potential issues before each new version is publicly released.

We also reward Testers for their contributions with discounts against the cost of purchasing MIDAS, or which can be used against upgrades & renewals for an existing MIDAS system!

We’re always on the lookout for additional testers to help shape future versions of MIDAS. It’s free to get involved and you don’t need any previous experience.

Find out more, apply now, and help shape future MIDAS releases


If you have any questions about MIDAS, why not drop us an email, or reach out to us through social media – We’d love to hear from you!



World Backup Day 2016 – Take a moment to backup your data

World Backup Day 2016Today is World Backup Day. This annual event raises awareness of the importance of keeping your critical files and data regularly backed-up.

We strongly believe in the importance of regularly backing-up data you can’t afford to lose. To that end, we built a number of backup features into our MIDAS room booking software to do just that!

Automated Backups

MIDAS seamlessly makes a complete and automated backup of its own database and settings upon the first successful login each and every day. These database backups are then compressed and stored on the server where your MIDAS resides for a period of time. This is usually for up to 30 days, but can be customized. Typically, each backup is less than 1MB in size too.

To further protect your data, automated daily backups can be optionally emailed to a specified email address each day too. This allows you to retain your own “off-site” database backup too!

Manual Backups

In addition to automated backups, MIDAS provides the ability to generate manual backups on-demand via a one-click “Backup” button. This may be accessed via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Database → Backup Now.

Restoring From Backups

Database backups (whether generated manually or automatically) can be readily restored at any time via a simple restore user interface. Databases may be restored – either full or partially – via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Database → Restore. So, should you ever wish to “roll back” your MIDAS system to an earlier point in time, or if you suffer a massive server failure and lose data, you can have your MIDAS system back up and running in next to no time!

Backup and Restore in MIDAS
Easily Backup and Restore Data in MIDAS Booking Systems

For more information on the powerful backup/restore features of MIDAS, please see mid.as/help/manage-database-settings

Additional Protection for Cloud-Hosted customers

For our cloud hosted customers, we also separately take complete database backups daily. These are then stored off-site at two geographically separate locations for a period of six months.

What’s more, we also offer an “Emergency Access” addon for our hosted customers. This optional addon allows cloud-hosted customers to access a “real-time” backup of their hosted MIDAS system in event that they are unable to access their primary MIDAS system. These backups run on different servers, in different data centers, via different ISPs to our Primary Servers.

So, as you can see from all the above features and procedures we’ve built into our software, we take backups very seriously! We make it easy to ensure that your important MIDAS booking data can easily and readily be backed up and restored with the minimum of fuss!

But on World Backup Day today, whilst your MIDAS data is taken care of, why not take a moment to back up your own important personal files – your family photos, home videos, documents and emails too!? Yes, it may seem a little time-consuming, but you’ll be glad you did should anything ever happen to the originals!


Latest Addon: PRTG Sensors

PRTG Network MonitorWe have an ever growing range of optional “addons” available to extend the capabilities of our MIDAS room booking and resource scheduling software.

Our latest addon, available for MIDAS v4.11 (or later) allows system/network administrators to monitor – in “real time” – key parameters and metrics of a self-hosted or cloud-hosted MIDAS system in PRTG Network Monitor.

PRTG is a leading professional network monitoring software solution, trusted by over 150,000 network/IT administrators worldwide to provide unified monitoring of the performance and reliability of their entire networks, infrastructure and applications.
In fact, we also use PRTG here at MIDAS for 24/7 monitoring of our global infrastructure.

 

Real-time MIDAS monitoring in PRTG Network MonitorWith our new PRTG Sensors Addon, a system or network administrator can keep track on the number of users currently logged into a MIDAS system, the number of failed login attempts, the size of database, the number of visitors on your premises right now, the number of bookings taking place today, and much much more! – in fact, there’s 18 different parameters/metrics that can be monitored all in real time!

For more information on our optional PRTG Sensors addon for MIDAS, please visit mid.as/prtg.

New customers can purchase our MIDAS web-based Room Booking and Resource Scheduling system along with the optional PRTG Sensors addon securely at mid.as/pricing.

Existing customers running MIDAS v4.11 or later can add this optional addon to their MIDAS system right now by visiting mid.as/upgrade.

Be sure to also check out some of our other exciting addons at mid.as/addons.


Microsoft kills off Internet Explorer 9 & 10… well, not quite!

Microsoft Internet Explorer 12You may have seen articles recently on other websites and blogs claiming that as from today, 12th January 2016, Microsoft will end support for all versions of Internet Explorer, except for IE 11.

This isn’t strictly true!

What in fact Microsoft have announced is that “Beginning January 12, 2016, only the most current version of Internet Explorer available for a supported operating system will receive technical support and security updates“.

What this essentially means is that if you’re a Windows 7 user with Internet Explorer 9 or 10 installed, only Internet Explorer 11 will continue to be supported going forward.

However, if you’re a Windows Vista user, the highest version of Internet Explorer that can physically be installed on that operating system is IE 9. Therefore, if you’re currently running IE 7 or 8, only IE 9 will be supported on your operating system going forward, so you should update to IE 9.

The following table from Microsoft outlines which versions of Internet Explorer they will continue to support as from today:

Windows Desktop Operating SystemsSupported Internet Explorer Version
Windows Vista SP2Internet Explorer 9
Windows 7 SP1Internet Explorer 11
Windows 8.1 UpdateInternet Explorer 11
Windows Server Operating SystemsSupported Internet Explorer Version
Windows Server 2008 SP2Internet Explorer 9
Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1Internet Explorer 11
Windows Server 2012Internet Explorer 10
Windows Server 2012 R2Internet Explorer 11

Our web-based room booking and resource scheduling software, MIDAS, is currently supported in IE9+ and all other major browsers.

Over the years we have previously dropped support for MIDAS in IE6 in 2011, IE7 in 2012, and most recently IE8 in 2013.

Whilst we have no immediate plans to drop support for IE9, it’s likely that our support for this aging browser will within the next couple of years. Therefore, if you’re using an older Windows operating system, like using Internet Explorer, and can’t update to a more recent version of Windows, we’d encourage you to at least ensure that your browser is the most up-to-date it can be for your particular operating system.

You might also be interested in:
Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge now available
Could Internet Explorer go Open Source?