Category: News

Control heating automatically with MIDAS

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February 6, 2023

We’re excited to announce that you can now integrate your room and building heating controls with MIDAS.

Inspire Home Automation are a UK based business who design, develop and sell smart heating controls.

In conjunction with Inspire Home Automation’s Smart Thermostats, spaces can be heated according to when bookings are due to take place in them.

Benefits of a calendar based thermostat

There are a range of benefits to automatic scheduled temperature control based on a calendar of bookings. Most notably, it can help:

  • Reduce heating costs by only heating rooms and spaces when they are in use.
  • Reduce administration and staffing costs – no need to get somebody in before a booking to switch the heating on and ensure it’s turned off again afterwards.
Room Booking System using Inspire Smart Thermostats
Inspire Smart Thermostat

Fully Configurable

Inspire Smart Thermostats with MIDAS calendar integration are fully configurable.

For example, you can setup your heating schedule to automatically switch on one hour before a booking, and then automatically switch off, or turn the temperature down, at the end of the booking.

If you want greater control, and have different heating zones for different rooms, multiple Smart Thermostats can be added.

For more product information on Inspire Smart Thermostats, please visit www.inspirehomeautomation.co.uk.

How it works

There are two options for having Inspire Smart Thermostats control temperature based on your MIDAS room bookings.

Option 1: Export Bookings

Simply export bookings from your MIDAS system, and then import them into your Inspire Smart Thermostat. The Smart Thermostat then automatically controls a heating schedule based upon the booking calendar you import.

Option 2: Sync Bookings

For fully automated temperature control, Inspire Smart Thermostats can read an updating Data Feed of bookings from your MIDAS system.

This avoids the need to manually export bookings from your MIDAS system and then manually import them into your smart thermostat each time bookings change in your MIDAS system.

Instead, the Smart Thermostat automatically pulls an updated schedule from the Data Feed every 24 hours, so that any changes to bookings since the last check can be automatically captured.

Need an updated booking to be pushed to the Smart Thermostat schedule quicker? No problem, Inspire Smart Thermostats also have the option to refresh a Data Feed on demand.

Setting Up

Please see our How to setup automated heating control with Inspire Smart Thermostats Knowledge Base article for full details of how to configure MIDAS with Inspire thermostats.

Availability

Basic Inspire Thermostat integration (Option 1 above) is included as standard in both cloud hosted and self hosted editions of MIDAS room booking software.

Automated calendar sync functionality (Option 2 above) is available through our optional “Data Feeds” addon.

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Review of the year: 2022

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December 31, 2022

As we wave goodbye to 2022, we thought we’d take a few moments out to reflect on our year here at MIDAS HQ.

If you’ve been a valued customer of ours for a while now, you’ll know that we typically release significant “feature rich” new updates to our room booking software at least three times a year. This isn’t a new thing either – we’ve been adding exciting new features to our software ever since 2006!

2022 has seen some great new additions to our software for our customers to benefit from.

Here’s a brief recap of some of the major new features, in case you missed any of our previous posts and announcements during the year…

Send invoices as PDF attachments

In December with MIDAS v4.32, there’s now the option to send invoices directly to your clients as PDF attachments, rather than “inline” within the body of an email.

Send PDF versions of invoices as email attachments
Send PDF versions of invoices as email attachments

Read more in this blog post.

Set room rates based upon the time of day

Also, for v4.32 in December 2022, you can now set charging rates based upon a booking’s start time. This new addition now makes it easier than ever to charge different rates for daytime and evening bookings.

NEW: Set Rates based upon the time of day a booking starts
NEW: Set Rates based upon the time of day a booking starts

Read more in this blog post.

Visual booking from a floor plan or map

In September 2022, for MIDAS v4.31 we introduced a new “Floor Plan” feature. This allowed you to upload a map of your facilities to allow users to be able to visually book by simply clicking on a space on the map.

The Floorplan / Map Editor in MIDAS
The Floorplan / Map Editor in MIDAS

Read more in this blog post.

Other new features in MIDAS during 2022

Onwards to 2023…

Whilst we may have been developing MIDAS for over 16 years now, as you can see from all of the above (and from our changelog too), our commitment to making our software even better is unwaning.

This will of course continue during 2023, with lots more exciting new features in the pipeline.

Remember too, that many of the new and improved features you see added to our software come as a direct result of feedback and suggestions from our worldwide customer base.

So if you’ve got an idea for something that could potentially make MIDAS work better for your organization, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Finally, we’ve like to end this post by wish you a very healthy, peaceful, and prosperous New Year from all of us at MIDAS HQ.

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Our “Reviews” addon now supports 5 review sites

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June 17, 2022

Back in 2020 we released a brand new optional addon for MIDAS room booking systems.

The “Reviews” addon works in conjunction with leading review sites to allow you to collect reviews and feedback from your customers following their use/hire of your facilities.

Initially, the “Reviews” addon supported 4 major independent review platforms:

Collect Reviews
https://collect-reviews.com
Reviews.io
https://reviews.io
Trustpilot
https://trustpilot.com
TrustSpot
https://trustspot.io

We’ve recently update our “Reviews” addon to add support for a new fifth review platform, Psydro…

Psydro

Psydro is a UK based startup with a user-friendly platform that has been meticulously designed to help consumers make informed decisions about the businesses and organizations they interact with.

The platform allows you to collect feedback from real people about your services, which in turn allows other perspective customers to have confidence and trust in what your business offers.

How Our Reviews Addon Works

The optional “Reviews” addon for MIDAS works by automatically notifying an independent review collection platform after a client’s booking has taken place at your facilities. The review platform then in turn sends out a review invitation by email to your client asking them to leave a review or rating of your business on their website.

Here’s how the process works:

  1. A client’s booking in MIDAS takes place.
  2. Shortly thereafter, MIDAS automatically sends the client a post-booking email (the content of which is customizable via a template)
  3. When this email is sent, it is also transparently BCC’d (Blind Carbon Copied) to your chosen review collection platform
  4. The review platform in turn sends your client an invitation to rate/review your business on their independent review platform

What you’ll need

In order to be able to take advantage of the functionality the optional “Reviews” addon offers, you’ll need the following:

Complete documentation for the new Reviews addon is available online.

How to get the “Reviews” addon for MIDAS

If you’ve not yet using our MIDAS room booking system, you can purchase or subscribe to our software, and add the optional “Reviews” addon through our secure site.

Existing customers with valid subscriptions may add the optional “Reviews” addon to their booking system by upgrading online. (You’ll need to be running at least MIDAS v4.30 in order to use Psydro)

Are there any other review platforms you’d like to see included in this addon in the future? Why not let us know!

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MIDAS v4.30 Out Now!

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April 30, 2022

We’re excited to announce that the latest update to our MIDAS room booking and resource scheduling software is now available.

Many of the new and improved features we add to our software come as a direct result of customer feedback, so please read on to find out what’s new in this feature-rich update, and how you can obtain it…

Highlights of MIDAS v4.30 include:

How To Get MIDAS v4.30…

New Customers:

You can try MIDAS v4.30 for yourself with no obligation to purchase!

We offer both a functional online public demo, as well as the opportunity for you to try MIDAS free for 30 days.

If you’ve decided that MIDAS is the right solution for your scheduling needs, then you can securely purchase online here.

“Self Hosted” Customers:

Self-Hosted customers with active Support Subscriptions will shortly be able to update to v4.30. It only takes a couple of clicks – simply log in to your MIDAS system and go to MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Update.

If no update is available, please check back again in a few days time, as we are staggering updates for self-hosted customers over the next few weeks.

“Cloud Hosted” Customers:

Cloud-Hosted customers don’t need to do anything! – All our active Cloud-Hosted MIDAS customers have already been automatically updated to this latest version of MIDAS.

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