If your MIDAS booking system is currently configured to send emails via Microsoft’s SMTP servers, it’s time to take action.

Microsoft has announced that it will be retiring support for SMTP AUTH (also known as “Basic Authentication” for SMTP) in 2026. Once this change takes effect, any application which is configured to use Microsoft SMTP endpoints for outgoing mail will no longer be able to send emails.

For MIDAS, if you’re using Microsoft’s SMTP servers, this means that booking confirmations, reminder emails, and other automated notifications sent from MIDAS would silently fail – potentially disrupting your organization’s scheduling and communications.

Here’s what you need to know, and what steps to take before the deadline.

What Is SMTP AUTH and Basic Authentication?

SMTP AUTH is a method that allows applications to authenticate with a mail server using a username and password in order to send outgoing email. It has been widely used for decades.

Why is Microsoft removing Basic Authentication and SMTP AUTH?

It’s worth noting that Microsoft’s decision to retire SMTP AUTH is driven by their own platform strategy around modern authentication – it doesn’t mean that sending email via SMTP is inherently insecure. Under the hood, SMTP works the same way it always has, and the username/password authentication used by SMTP hasn’t fundamentally changed. What Microsoft is retiring is the ability to authenticate to their mail servers this way, as they push users towards OAuth-based access within their ecosystem. MIDAS does not currently support OAuth, but this is not a concern — there are plenty of reliable, independent SMTP providers that continue to support standard SMTP authentication without any issues.

Are You Affected?

You may be affected if your MIDAS booking system’s outgoing email settings are currently configured to use any of the following SMTP servers:

• smtp-mail.outlook.com — used by personal Outlook.com/Hotmail accounts
• smtp.live.com — an older endpoint also associated with Outlook.com/Hotmail/Live accounts
• smtp-legacy.office365.com — a temporary fallback endpoint for Microsoft customers that stilled relied on SMTP AUTH after the initial Basic Auth deprecation push.
• smtp.office365.com — An Exchange Online endpoint used by Microsoft 365 services.
• outlook.office365.com — another Exchange Online endpoint sometimes used in place of smtp.office365.com

You can check your current email sending settings via MIDAS Admin Options > Email.

The good news is that the fix is straightforward, and we’ve made it as easy as possible for MIDAS customers.

For Cloud-Hosted MIDAS Customers

If you’re on our cloud-hosted platform, we have the simplest possible solution for you: switch to MIDAS’s built-in Zero-Configuration Email Delivery.

This option requires no SMTP credentials, no third-party accounts, and no technical configuration on your part. MIDAS handles email delivery on your behalf, so you don’t need to worry about SMTP servers at all. You can find full details on how to enable this feature in our dedicated guide:

👉 Zero-Configuration Email Delivery for MIDAS

We strongly recommend all cloud-hosted customers make this switch at their earliest convenience – and certainly before Microsoft’s 2026 deadline.

For Self-Hosted MIDAS Customers

If you run MIDAS on your own server or hosting environment, you’ll need to update your outgoing mail settings to use an alternative SMTP provider. Fortunately, there are several excellent options available, many of which offer generous free tiers that would suit most MIDAS installations.

We recommend the following providers:

SMTP2GO

SMTP2GO is a reliable, cloud-based email delivery service with a free tier that allows up to 1,000 emails per month. It’s straightforward to set up and works seamlessly with MIDAS’s outgoing mail settings. Simply create a free account, verify your sending domain, and update your MIDAS SMTP settings with the credentials provided.

Mailgun

Mailgun is another popular transactional email service offering a free tier for low-volume sending. It provides robust deliverability, detailed sending logs, and is well-suited for automated system emails like those generated by MIDAS. After signing up and verifying your domain, update your MIDAS SMTP configuration with your Mailgun credentials.

To update your SMTP settings in MIDAS, navigate to MIDAS Admin Options > Email and enter the new SMTP server details provided by your chosen transactional email delivery service.

Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late

According to Microsoft, their revised SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication Deprecation Timeline is as follows:

• Now to December 2026: SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication behavior remains unchanged.
• End of December 2026: SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication will be disabled by default for existing tenants. Administrators will still be able to enable it if needed.
• New tenants created after December 2026: SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication will be unavailable by default. OAuth will be the supported authentication method.
• Second half of 2027: Microsoft will announce the final removal date for SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication.

While Microsoft’s deadline is the end of December 2026, we recommend customers make this change sooner rather than later.

Email is a critical part of how MIDAS keeps your staff and visitors informed – from booking confirmations to reminders and notifications. A disruption to outgoing mail can go unnoticed until someone realizes they never received a confirmation, which can cause real-world scheduling problems.

Taking a few minutes now to update your settings will ensure uninterrupted email delivery well into the future. If you have any questions or need assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact our support team – we’re happy to help.

The post Microsoft SMTP AUTH Deprecation in 2026: What You Need to Know appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

March 2026 marks 20 years since the very first public release of MIDAS. We first unveiled Version 1.00 of our room booking and resource scheduling software to the world on 11th March 2006.

Where it all began

Work actually began on MIDAS a few months earlier. In December 2005, Mark Harrington, the creator of MIDAS, was working in a brand new Performing Arts College – the first of its kind in Greater Manchester, UK.

This new school for students aged 11-16 boasted impressive state-of-the-art facilities. These included sports facilities, dance studio, 300-seat community theatre, outdoor stage, recording studios and rehearsal space.

All these spaces were available for internal use during the school day and for hire by external clients and community groups in the evenings, weekends, and school holidays.

Soon after the new school opened, the school appointed a Community Facilities Manager, Miriam. Her role was to oversee bookings and the smooth operation of the exciting new facilities. Demand from the local community was immediately high.

It soon became obvious that the software the school had been using for handling their room bookings was not up to scratch. It was simply not meeting the increasing demands on the busy new facilities.

The (now defunct) software named “VenueBooker”, was slow, cumbersome, buggy, and not very user-friendly.

After much discussion, frustration, and plenty of “wouldn’t it be great if we had a system that could…?” conversations, they soon realized that no existing alternatives did everything they wanted from an ideal room scheduling system.

The Problem That Sparked an Idea

Mark had a strong programming background. He was confident he could build something that covered everything a Community Facilities Manager would need — facilities, clients, and bookings.

So Mark sat down with Miriam and the two of them brainstormed how she wanted the software to ideally function.

Dozens of sheets of paper later, covered with all kinds of scribbled notes, arrows, and flow charts, Mark had something to go away and work on!

A few days later, Mark had a working prototype: MIDAS v0.01.

Mark named the software “MIDAS”, although to this day he has never confirmed whether that’s an acronym that stands for “Mark’s Infrastructure Daily Allocation System“, or “Miriam’s Infrastructure Daily Allocation System“(!)

Over the Christmas holidays of 2005, Mark worked diligently to develop and improve MIDAS, ready to deploy it at the school in the new year.

He even spent New Year’s Eve sitting in front of his computer at the stroke of midnight, coding away!

Within the first few weeks of 2006, MIDAS went “live” at the school for the first time. It transformed the way staff and external clients booked rooms.

Now for the first time, staff could check room availability themselves using just their web browser. The booking process was simpler, more efficient, and streamlined. Bookings increased substantially, revenue rose accordingly, and double-bookings were finally a thing of the past.

Going Public

Mark quickly realised MIDAS could help other schools and organisations facing the same challenges. Just a few months after the first internal prototype, he publicly released MIDAS v1.00 on 11th March 2006.

What began as a solution for one school has since grown into a trusted booking system that organisations across the world rely on.

Fast forward to 2026

For twenty years, MIDAS has evolved alongside changing technologies, shifting user expectations, and an increasingly competitive software landscape.

In that time, we’ve helped thousands of users in dozens of countries manage millions of bookings.

Our resource scheduling software remains in active development and we remain true to our original ethos of helping organizations of all shapes and sizes better manage their facilities and resource bookings.

Through browser revolutions, mobile adoption, cloud computing, and changing security standards, MIDAS has continuously adapted without losing its core mission.

New feature-rich updates are released at least three times a year, and many loyal customers stay with us for years.

Celebrating our 20th Anniversary

To coincide with our 20th anniversary, today we’re releasing the latest update to our MIDAS software, v4.42. Read about the new features in MIDAS v4.42.

Also to mark the 20th anniversary of our MIDAS room booking software, for a limited time – until 31st March 2026 – new customers get 20% off with Promo Code MIDAS20.

The Future

We’re tremendously proud to have been here for the past 20 years.

In that time, hundreds of competitors have appeared, many of whom were short-lived and have since vanished. MIDAS has stood the test of time.

To all our customers, whether you’ve been with us for the past 20 years, or just the past month – we appreciate you choosing MIDAS and sincerely thank you for your support! – You’ve committed to us, and we in turn continue to be fully committed to you.

New to MIDAS?

If you’ve never come across MIDAS before today (where have you been for the last twenty years?!) we appreciate that there’s a vast array of options out there today when it comes to choosing a room booking system.

Maybe you’re currently considering a change and are evaluating a number of different scheduling software solutions.

Whether you’re looking for a cloud booking or self-hosted booking system, a subscription or a perpetual license – we’ve got the facility management software for you!

When evaluating potential booking solutions, make sure you take into account 3 key factors:

• How long a product has been established?
• How frequently are updates released?
• How responsive and reliable is customer support?

With MIDAS, you get a solid product from a trusted booking software provider with a proven track record. You get a stable system that’s in active development with unrivalled support to back it up!

Did you know that we even offer a no-obligation free 30-day trial today? Get yours today and experience the reliability that has defined MIDAS for two decades.

Twenty years ago, MIDAS began as a solution to a single school’s challenge. Today, it stands as a proven, stable, and continually evolving room booking solution trusted by organizations worldwide.

If you’re searching for a system built not just for today, but for the long term, now is the perfect time to experience MIDAS for yourself.

Don’t forget – use code MIDAS20 at checkout for 20% off your first purchase or subscription. Offer ends 31st March 2026.^*

* Promotional Code valid until 31st March 2026 and is valid for initial MIDAS purchases or subscriptions only. We reserve the right to withdraw this offer at any time.

The post MIDAS at 20: Celebrating Two Decades of Room Booking Innovation appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

Over the past week, a significant and fast-moving controversy has unfolded in the AI industry – one that has caused us, along with many others, to take a hard look at which AI companies we choose to support and partner with.

We’ve decided to switch. From today, MIDAS is moving away from OpenAI and over to Claude, the AI assistant developed by Anthropic.

Here’s why.

What Happened

If you haven’t been following the news, here’s a quick summary. The US Department of Defense had been using Anthropic’s Claude AI on its classified networks – the first AI to be deployed in that context. As the contract came up for renegotiation, the Pentagon demanded that Anthropic remove two key restrictions from the agreement: a prohibition on using Claude to power fully autonomous weapons systems, and a prohibition on using it for mass domestic surveillance of American citizens.

Anthropic refused. Their CEO, Dario Amodei, was unequivocal: current AI models are simply not reliable enough to be trusted with lethal autonomous targeting decisions, and mass surveillance of citizens is incompatible with democratic values. The company had tried for months to reach a workable agreement, but the Pentagon’s position was that it required the ability to use AI for “all lawful purposes” without restriction – a standard that, as legal experts have noted, is far broader than it sounds.

The fallout was swift. President Trump ordered every federal agency to immediately cease using Anthropic’s technology. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Anthropic would be designated a national security supply chain risk. Hours later, OpenAI – having apparently been in talks throughout – announced it had struck a deal with the Pentagon to fill the gap.

Many of OpenAI’s own employees were furious. A number of them, along with other prominent tech figures, signed an open letter opposing the government’s retaliation against Anthropic. Sam Altman himself had written in an internal memo just days earlier that OpenAI shared Anthropic’s “red lines” – before going on to sign a deal that critics said those red lines were far less robustly protected.

The contrast in the two companies’ behaviour was stark and, for us, clarifying.

Why This Matters to Us

We’re a small UK software company. We make room booking software. We’re not in the defence industry, and the intricacies of US military contracting aren’t something we’d normally have strong opinions about.

But this issue isn’t really about US military contracts. It’s about what kind of company you’re doing business with – what they stand for, and what they’re willing to sacrifice to stay in favour with those in power.

Anthropic chose to walk away from a government contract worth up to $200 million rather than remove safeguards they believed were ethically essential. OpenAI, in the same week its CEO had privately affirmed those same values to his own staff, made the opposite choice.

We think that matters. The companies whose technology we choose to use reflect, in a small way, on us. And we’d rather reflect the values of a company that held its ground.

What We’ve Changed

We used OpenAI’s models primarily in two places within our products and workflows:

Miriam, our virtual assistant. When no live support agents are available, visitors to our website can get help from Miriam, our AI-powered chatbot. Miriam was previously powered by OpenAI. She’s now powered by Claude.

Code optimisation. As we written about previously, we’ve been using AI assistance to help our human developers optimise MIDAS source code – identifying opportunities to make our software run faster and more efficiently. We’ve switched that workflow from ChatGPT to Claude as well.

In both cases, the transition has been smooth. Claude is a highly capable model, and we’re pleased with the results so far.

We’re Not Alone

Claude surged to number one on the Apple App Store in the days following the controversy. Thousands of individuals and organisations made the same decision we did – not because Anthropic asked them to, but because the situation made the choice feel important.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t simply about picking a “winner” in a commercial rivalry. We genuinely hope the situation with Anthropic and the US government is resolved fairly and without further retaliation. Anthropic has, by all accounts, been one of the most thoughtful voices in AI development when it comes to safety and responsible deployment. The idea of that voice being sidelined – or punished for speaking up – should concern anyone who cares about where this technology is heading.

A Note on AI in MIDAS

As we’ve said before, AI is not taking over the development of MIDAS. Our software is, and will remain, built and maintained by our human team. But AI tools have become a genuinely useful part of how we work – and it matters to us that we use them thoughtfully, including being selective about whose tools we use and why.

If you have any questions about these changes, or about how AI is used in our products, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

The post Why We’ve Switched from OpenAI to Claude appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

If you follow our blog, you’ll already know about some of the new and improved features in v4.42. One example is the expansion of administrative permissions.

Administrative Area Improvements

The old “Manage MIDAS” screen has been split into separate sections, each now controlled by its own dedicated permission and accompanied by a unique icon.

Changes have also been made within each administrative area. We’ve moved the previous “Save Changes” button from underneath the settings to being fixed in the top-right corner. This eliminates the need to scroll through lengthy settings pages to save changes.

We’ve also refined the way changes are saved within administrative screens.

Improved Save and Change Indicators

The addition of a new “Unsaved Changes” indicator alongside the new save button draws user’s attention to changes they’ve made to settings which have yet to be saved.

In addition to the UI and UX improvements in the administrative area, we’ve also improved the “Quick Tour” in MIDAS v4.42.

Enhanced Quick Tour Experience

The “Quick Tour” is shown to new users by default upon their initial sign in. It provides a brief overview of the user interface and controls.

We have replaced outdated third-party code previously used to generate dynamic tooltips. In its place we’ve written new code for generating these tooltips. This has allowed us to make improvements, one of which is better highlighting of elements in the “Quick Tour”.

These updates reflect our ongoing commitment to making MIDAS both powerful and easy to use. By continually refining the interface and enhancing usability, we help administrators and end users work more efficiently every day.

If you’re new to MIDAS, start your free trial today and experience the improvements firsthand.

The post User Interface Improvements in MIDAS v4.42 appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

MIDAS allows you to import bookings and data from a range of applications, and we’re always looking to extend this support.

In our last update, v4.41, we introduced better support for importing bookings from Skedda. This included support for “multi-room” bookings, as well as additional date and time formats.

In v4.42, we’ve introduced several additional improvements to make data imports even smoother.

Automatic Field Detection and Mapping

When importing data MIDAS needs to understand how fields in your source data correspond to fields in your MIDAS system. This process is known as field mapping.

After selecting a file to import, MIDAS offers a preview of your data in a table view. At the top of each column is a drop-down selector. This is used to inform MIDAS of the type of data contained in each column.

For example, if you’re importing bookings, one column in your source data will contain the room or space name. Setting that column’s drop-down selector to “Venue” ensures the data is imported correctly.

Until now, selecting the correct value from the drop-down selector at the top of each column was a manual process. For v4.42, MIDAS will now try and automatically detect the data in each column and suggest an appropriate value for its drop-down.

Of course, you should still check the drop-down for each column before continuing, but this new ‘auto detection’ feature should make importing data into MIDAS easier.

Support for Importing Split Client Names

In many cases of data import, client names are contained within a single field of data.

For instance, if you’re importing a booking for “Joe Blogs”, it’s likely that there’ll be a single field containing the text “Joe Blogs” in your raw data.

Some booking systems however may split client names across multiple fields when exporting data. There may for example be separate fields for first (given) name and last (surname).

MIDAS typically expects a single field containing the client name, but for v4.42 we’ve added support for instances such as the one described above where names are split across fields.

This improvement makes it easier to migrate to MIDAS from booking systems such as Hallmaster.

Together, these improvements reduce manual setup and make transitioning to MIDAS faster and more efficient.

The post Intelligent Data Imports appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

We’re now making it easier to apply bulk permission changes across multiple user accounts.

Previous Behavior

In previous versions, when adding or modifying a user account, an “assign permissions from group” drop-down was presented above the various user permissions that could be assigned:

This was a great way to quickly copy the current permissions from a user group to an individual user account.

However, this was a one-time action. MIDAS would snapshot the selected user group’s current permissions and apply them to the individual user account. Any subsequent changes to the group’s permissions would not affect existing user accounts.

Introducing Permission Inheritance

So we have re-worked this for MIDAS v4.42. The “Assign permissions from group” selector has been removed and replaced by a new role-based “Inherit Permissions from” selector.

When a user account is set to inherit permissions from a user group, any subsequent changes to that group’s permissions will automatically apply to all linked user accounts.

This now allows you to bulk modify user account permissions with ease!

When to use manual permissions

If you still want to grant or revoke individual permissions on a per-account basis, you can – simply set the “Inherit Permissions from” option to “[None]”. When you do this, MIDAS will display the complete list of current permissions for that user, allowing you to make individual changes as required.

User accounts set to ‘[None]’ will not be affected by changes to any user group permissions.

While this new feature may not be all that significant for customers with only a handful of user accounts, larger organizations with several hundred users will benefit greatly from the ability to modify user permissions in bulk.

The post Bulk Modify User Account Permissions appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

These allow the creation of anything from fully privileged administrative accounts to ones with very limited “view only” permissions, and everything in between.

To provide administrators with even greater control, we’ve extended the range of available permissions for MIDAS v4.42 to now include 14 additional administrative permissions.

These new permissions replace the previous “Can Manage MIDAS” permission. This generic permission controlled whether a user was able to access the “Manage MIDAS” configuration screens.

Over time the “Manage MIDAS” screens have grown to include a vast array of options and settings. These screens allowed users to change email settings, update templates, configure scheduled tasks, tweak invoice or database settings, and much more.

For v4.42, we have split up the old “Manage MIDAS” screen into separate sections. Access to each section is now controlled by its own dedicated permission. This means, for instance, that you can grant permission to a user to be able to modify your templates, but not allow them to adjust the email settings of your MIDAS system.

The 14 new administrative permissions added in v4.42 are:

• Can Manage Appearance Settings
• Can Manage Booking Settings
• Can Manage Database Settings
• Can Manage Email Settings
• Can Manage Fields
• Can Manage Invoice Settings
• Can Manage Miscellaneous Settings
• Can Manage Print Settings
• Can Manage Public Settings
• Can Manage Safety Settings
• Can Manage Scheduled Tasks
• Can Manage Security Settings
• Can Manage Templates
• Can Update Software (Not applicable in cloud-hosted systems)

When updating from an earlier version to v4.42, any user account which held the “Can Manage MIDAS” permission will automatically be granted all 14 of the new administrative permissions during the update.

Administrators can then refine access for each user account via MIDAS Admin Options → Users.

These changes, together with the ability to make bulk permission changes, provide administrators with significantly greater flexibility and control over who can access specific system settings.

The post Expanded Administrative Permissions in MIDAS v4.42 appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

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”

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.

The post Zero Configuration Email Delivery for Cloud-Hosted Customers appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

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.

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.

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.

The post Limit Printing Bookings Over a Date Range to Specific Days of the Week appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

None of those very early 0.xx versions were ever made public and were instead used to test and refine the functionality of the software and to fix bugs.

The first “public” release, v1.00, came just a few months later in early 2006, which means that 2026 will mark MIDAS’ “official” 20th anniversary.

Our software certainly has longevity and a proven track record, and two decades later remains in active development. We regularly release booking software updates with new and improved features, and in this post we thought we’d summarize some of the highlights over the past 12 months.

💬 Unrivalled Customer Support

As well as the peace of mind our longevity gives to users, we know that customers also care about good customer service. This is just one of the areas that our customers regularly praise us for.

At the start of the year, we reviewed how responsive our support service had been over the previous 12 months, and you can read our customer support performance review.

♻️ Reduced Environmental Impact

Given our high levels of service, we clearly care about our customers. But we also care about the environment too.

As with any online or cloud-based business, computer and server equipment runs on electricity.

The Website Carbon Calculator is an innovative initiative which analyzes five key metrics to estimate the carbon emissions of any website.

Back in 2021 we were “greener” than 86% of all websites globally.

By 2025, we are now greener than 91% of all websites, and have reduced our carbon footprint by 5% over that period.

🇺🇸 US Tariffs

In April 2025, US President Donald Trump announced he would be imposing new ‘Tariffs’ on the majority of countries in the world, including the UK (where we’re based).

Concerned US customers were reaching out to ask whether the cost of MIDAS was affected by these tariffs. The good news was that tariffs only applied to physical or tangible goods – they didn’t apply to “services”, and therefore our prices for US customers were unaffected.

Politics aside, here’s what else happened in MIDAS in 2025…

⏱️ Staying “Signed In”

In April 2025, MIDAS v4.29 introduced a brand new “Stay signed in” option that truly allowed users to remain signed in between sessions. This was a game-changer for many who were frustrated at having to sign-in each time they opened their browser.

Of course remaining signed-in was something that could already be achieved with Single Sign-In (SSO) support via Active Directory – something MIDAS has supported for some time.

🔐 Improved Single Sign-On (SSO) support

In August 2025, for v4.40, we improved Single Sign-On support by expanding support to include SAML 2.0 Identity Providers.

🚪 Venues, Rooms, Spaces, and more

When we first came up with the concept of MIDAS two decades ago, we needed a term to refer to the “spaces” being booked. If you don’t know, MIDAS was originally written for a school environment, and we didn’t want to use “room” for facilities like sports halls or dance studios. We settled on the generic term “venue” to refer to a “bookable space” within the software, and this terminology has been in use ever since.

However, this year we introduced a brand new setting to replace the term ‘venue’ with something more applicable to what each organization uses MIDAS for. So if you’re a bowling alley, you can change the term to “lane”. Or if you’re running a complex of recording studios, you can change venue to “studio”.

🧾 Invoice Improvements

Invoicing is arguably the one area in MIDAS that receives the most user suggestions for new and improved features. That’s certainly not to say that the extensive invoicing capabilities of MIDAS aren’t good enough – it’s simply that every organization invoices differently – there’s no “standard that everyone uses”. That’s even more true as we have customers in dozens of countries around the world, and accounting/audit rules differ between jurisdictions.

Our most recent improvement to invoicing in 2025 was to support setting tax rates to three decimal places. Now, in most places in the world, tax rates are given to two decimal places, but there are actually a few exceptions!

Here are some examples:

• Washington (United States):
  Washington law allows certain local sales/use tax rate increases in 0.001% increments. 
• California (United States):
  California’s district sales taxes commonly use 0.125% increments. 
• New York City (United States):
  8.875% is the combined sales tax rate in New York City. It comprises 4.00% (New York State sales tax), 4.50% (New York City sales tax), and 0.375% (Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District (MCTD) surcharge).

Allowing for tax rates to be specified to three decimal places, ensures MIDAS can accurately support regional and local tax rules across different jurisdictions.

This year, we also made invoices searchable and allowed the order of invoice items to be changed. Plus we provided greater control over unsent invoices by allowing an administrator to specify a date each month when unsent invoices are automatically sent to customers. This improvement better accommodates organizations that typically invoice on a specific date every month.

⬇️ Import Improvements

The ability to import data into a MIDAS resource scheduling system is crucial. Many customers who make the switch to MIDAS naturally wish to import data from their previous venue booking system.

The import tool in MIDAS allows for this. However, every booking software application is different – there’s no standardized format for how an application chooses to store and present data.

So our import tool strives to accommodate as many different data formats and “peculiarities” as possible for maximum compatibility when migrating from other booking systems.

In 2025, we introduced support for importing ‘dynamic’ .csv files. Traditionally, a Comma Separated Values (or CSV file) contains “one record per line”.

Some booking systems export to .csv files in a non-standard way, where data may actually be split across multiple lines. MIDAS can now support importing such files.

MIDAS also now supports importing multi-venue bookings. Traditionally, each record or “row” in a CSV file containing bookings should equate to a single booking (i.e. one row = one booking). However, some booking systems, such as Skedda, export multi-room bookings (where a booking takes place across multiple bookable spaces) as single records.

When importing such data into MIDAS, the software can now correctly identify and process such records.

📋 Logging and Audit Improvements

Every MIDAS booking system includes a “Recent Activity” log. In this audit log, every user action which takes place in the booking system is timestamped and logged. This allows administrators to keep track of all activity occurring within the system.

We’ve made a number of improvements in this area in 2025, including:

• The Recent Activity log now differentiates between custom booking and client fields
• The Recent Activity log now differentiates between removed obsolete and unsent invoices
• Changing MIDAS core settings is now recorded to the Recent Activity Log
• Dynamically duplicated or moved bookings are more clearly identified in the Recent Activity log

👩‍💼New User Permissions

Audit logging is certainly very useful – but we also provide administrators the ability to set an extensive range of permissions to individual user accounts. In 2025, we’ve added two additional new user permissions:

• Allow a user to change their display name
• Allow a user to update their email address

📲 User interface improvements

The user interface – or UI – of MIDAS has evolved considerably since 2005. This has been driven by advancements in new web technologies, browsers, and style trends. At the same time, we also know that functionality and familiarity are also key drivers for our users.

We’ve made a number of UI improvements to MIDAS this year, including;

• A simplified Manage Booking Types screen
• Various UI improvements to graphs on Statistics screen
• Tooltips are now shown when hovering over graphs on Statistics screens
• New icons on the Manage MIDAS screen
• Several other UI/UX improvements

♿️ Accessibility Improvements

Accessibility on web pages and web apps simply wasn’t a “thing” back in 2005 when MIDAS was born. Today, it’s not only important, it’s an essential consideration for many.

We first built in keyboard shortcuts to MIDAS well over a decade ago, and not long after introduced a special “high-contrast” visual theme too. Since then newer technologies and accessible web standards have emerged, and we continually strive to make MIDAS more accessible with every update.

This year, we’ve made a number of tweaks including better contrast for text on the booking availability grid display on public booking/request screens. We’ve also revamped the included help documentation for our most recent update, v4.41, to make it more accessible.

✅ Optimizations

Whilst many of the changes we introduce with each new version are visible, many take place behind the scenes.

We frequently review the code that makes up our software, and we’re always looking for ways to make it more efficient and run faster. A couple of years ago we experimented with using AI to assist with code optimization, and the results were impressive.

We continue to use AI to assist with this task this year to realize some small performance optimizations Rest assured, we certainly don’t let AI loose on the source code, and a human review of all AI generated code optimizations is carried out before the changes are accepted.

In addition to code optimization, we also look at database query optimization. These are the “commands” that MIDAS sends to the backend storage database, and the data it receives back in response. Communication with the database is actually one of the biggest factors that can affect performance, and so any gains in this area are always welcome.

We’ve made a number of optimizations to both code and database queries in 2025 to further improve performance and responsiveness of our software.

➕ New Add-ons

This year saw the introduction of two exciting new optional “add-ons” for MIDAS, allowing you to;

• Create Zoom Meetings from bookings (optional Zoom Meetings add-on)
• Post Watch Notifications to a Discord server (optional Discord add-on)

🔎 Looking ahead to 2026

As we mentioned at the top of this article, MIDAS officially celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2026, so watch this space for exciting updates in the coming months…

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