Better support for “shared” email addresses

August 21, 2024

One of the great features of our software is that it can allow visitors to your website to check room availability. They can then make an online booking (or booking request) for use of your facilities.

As this can be done without requiring a login or a user account. When making a “public” booking/request, the person simply needs to enter their details. This will typically include their name and contact email address.

When a public web booking/request is made, MIDAS checks the email address that’s been entered against its existing client database.

If a single matching client with the same email address already exists in the client database, MIDAS will associate the booking/request with that existing client.

This negates the need for a person to have to re-enter all their information (i.e. address, phone number, etc) each time they make a web booking or request.

MIDAS can also be configured to allow a person to update their information each time they make a web booking or request, if you so desire.

Multiple clients with the same email address

But what if there is more than one existing client in the database with the same email address as the person making the web booking / request?

In these instances, MIDAS will not only compare the email address given, but also the client and organization names provided.

If there is a single exact match based on this additional information, MIDAS will associated the booking/request with the one matching client.

Again, MIDAS can be configured to update the existing client record at time of web booking / request with new details supplied by the individual.

The problem

There is however an “edge case” where the above options don’t quite go far enough.

Take for example an individual who uses their personal email address to make web bookings or requests for multiple different organizations they’re associated with.

That’s no problem if there are existing client records for the client for each of their organizations. But it becomes an issue if this is a brand new client, or a client with just a single existing client record under one of their organizations.

Here’s an example to illustrate:

Let’s say Jeff is associated with two organizations – let’s call them “A” and “B”.

Let’s also assume that Jeff is a brand new client. There is therefore currently no client record with the same email address existing in your MIDAS system.

Jeff makes a booking request using his personal email address on behalf of organization “A”. A new client record is created for Jeff using this information.

A short while later, Jeff makes another booking request. He uses his personal email address again, but this time he’d like to make a request for organization “B”.

When Jeff makes his second request, MIDAS will see that there is already a single client in its database matching Jeff’s email address. At this point one of two things will happen, based on whether the “Allow client record updates” setting has been enabled in MIDAS.

If the “Allow client record updates” option is disabled, MIDAS will reuse Jeff’s original details (i.e. organization “A”). This will result in both his booking requests being for organization A.

If the “Allow client record updates” option is enabled, MIDAS will update Jeff’s original details (i.e. to become organization “B”). This will result in both his booking requests being for organization B.

…but that’s not what we want! We want his first request to be for organization A, and his second for organization B.

The solution

Instances of someone making web bookings / requests on behalf of different organizations but using the same email address are uncommon. But we still wanted to better accommodate this scenario.

So for MIDAS v4.37 we’ve introduced a new “Account for multiple clients/organizations sharing the same email address” setting.

Enabling this setting will automatically create additional client records for each client/organization variant using the same email address.

The result – in our illustrative example above – would be that Jeff can make booking request for either organization A or B (or even a future organization C) using his personal email address without issue.

Tags: email, public booking requests, v4.37

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A couple of invoicing improvements for v4.37

Filed Under: Development

August 8, 2024

We often make improvements to the already extensive invoicing capabilities of our room booking software. This is to accommodate a diverse range of invoicing scenarios and usage cases that our customers tell us about.

For MIDAS v4.37, we’ve made a couple of improvements based on customer feedback.

Manual quotation payments for tentative bookings can now update the booking’s type

“Tentative” bookings were first introduced in MIDAS v4.14 in 2016. Bookings of this type are automatically removed from the system if they’ve not ‘confirmed’ within a specified time frame or by a certain date/time.

In 2023, we also introduced a “quotation” feature. Used in conjunction with tentative bookings, you could generate quotations for clients when making tentative bookings for them.

If the client accepts and pays their quotation online, their ‘tentative’ bookings automatically convert to regular ‘confirmed’ bookings.

Of course, there may be instances when a client wishes to accept a quotation but pays ‘offline’ – perhaps over the phone or in person.

MIDAS can deal with ‘offline’ payments by allowing administrators to manually update quotations or invoices to reflect that a payment has been made against them.

Starting with MIDAS v4.37, if ‘manual’ payment is made for a quotation for a tentative booking, this can now update the associated bookings and make them ‘confirmed’.

Previously, this functionality was only available when an ‘online’ payment was made for a quotation.

Updating an invoice’s internal notes is now recorded in the Recent Activity Log

We appreciate that keeping an accurate audit trail is essential. The ‘Recent Activity Log’ in our software logs all user actions with date and time stamps. This useful log (which can also be downloaded) allows administrators to monitor how their booking system is being used.

Whenever an invoice’s status is updated, these actions are recorded to the audit log.

Each invoice can also have ‘internal notes‘ added to them. These notes are not visible to the recipient of the invoice, but are visible to administrators when viewing an invoice.

Until now, the action of updating internal notes for an invoice was not recorded to the ‘Recent Activity Log’ itself.

We’ve addressed this for v4.37. Whenever an administrator makes or updates the internal notes for an invoice, quotation, or credit note, this activity is noted in the recent activity log.

Tags: activity tracking, invoice, invoicing, payment, quotations, v4.37

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Selectively process multiple booking requests

Filed Under: Development

August 5, 2024

One of the helpful features of MIDAS is the ability to allow visitors to your website to check availability of your facilities and submit booking “requests” online. They can do this without logging in or requiring an account.

Once a booking request is submitted, the manager(s) of the request facility are notified. A manager can then then quickly approve or reject the booking request in MIDAS with just a few clicks.

In MIDAS v4.14 in December 2016 we introduced the option to allow a manager to “bulk” approve or reject all outstanding requests with just a single click.

Bulk processing of all booking requests was first introduced in MIDAS v4.14

This saved time in instances where there were numerous booking requests which all required approval or rejection.

To be able to bulk approve a number of booking requests, a setting was made available. This instructed MIDAS as to the order in which it should approve requests when approving them in bulk.

The “Bulk Approval Order” setting has the following options:

Earliest Requested First – Booking requests will be approved in the order in which they were received. The earliest request received will be approved first.
Latest Requested First – Booking requests will be approved in the reverse order in which they were received. The most recently received request will be approved first.
Earliest Commencing First – Booking requests will be approved in the order in which the requested booking would start. Requests for the soonest start times will be approved first.
Latest Commencing First – Booking requests will be approved in the reverse order in which the requested booking would start. Requests for the furthest away start times will be approved first.

For MIDAS v4.37 we’re giving managers even greater control when it comes to processing multiple booking requests.

In addition to be able to approve or reject one booking request at a time, or “bulk” approve/reject ALL requests at the same time, you can now also selectively approve/reject multiple requests.

On the Pending Booking Requests screen there’s now a checkbox alongside each request that’s awaiting processing.

Selectively process multiple booking requests in MIDAS v4.37+

A manager can use these tick boxes to select multiple requests and then click the “Approve Selected” or “Reject Selected” buttons at the bottom of the screen to process the selected requests accordingly.

If no requests are selected, the “Approve Selected” and “Reject Selected” buttons change. They then become the familiar “Approve All” and “Reject All” options which if used process all requests in the queue.

Tags: public booking requests, v4.37, web requests

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Custom Field Improvements in v4.37

Filed Under: Development

July 31, 2024

MIDAS includes a number of useful booking and client fields out-of-the-box. You can use these to capture information about your clients and their bookings. In addition, the software also allows you to create custom fields to record additional information with each booking or client.

For MIDAS v4.37, we’re making improvements to a couple of the ‘custom’ fields you can add to your scheduling system.

Custom “Text Area” fields can have a height set and can be resizable

Set the number of visible lines and make textareas resizable

Sometimes a single-line input field may not be sufficient to capture the amount of information you desire. In such instances, MIDAS allows you to alternatively create a multi-line “Text Area” input field.

Until now, creating a custom Text Area field would display a text input field with a relatively small height. Whilst its contents would be scrollable, the field would typically only show 2-3 lines of text at a time.

Now when creating (or editing) a custom Text Area field, you’ll have more control! You’ll be able to specify the number of rows that should be displayed at any given time on the field.

So if you anticipate that your custom field is only going to hold a couple of lines of text, you can set the number of rows to display low. But, if you expect your custom field to capture dozens of lines of text, you can increase the number of rows shown.

Furthermore, you can also set a custom Text Area field to be “Resizable”. When a Text Area field is set as resizable, a user will be able to drag the bottom of the custom Text Area field down to allow the display of more lines of text at once.

Custom file uploads can be set to either view or save/download the file when clicked

Choose whether file attachments should be downloaded or viewed inline

The custom “File Upload” field was first introduced in MIDAS v4.07. If utilized, this allows a document or file to be uploaded and attached to a booking or client record.

When we implemented this custom field type in 2014, we configured MIDAS to ‘hint’ to an end-users user’s browser that an uploaded and attached file should be ‘downloaded’ to the user’s device when clicked.

In those days, it wasn’t common place for web browsers to be able to open a variety of file types. There was even a time when browsers would struggle to open and correctly display PDF files.

These days, web browsers can open and display a wide range of document/file types.

For v4.37, we’ve provided administrators with the option to allow MIDAS to ‘hint’ to user’s browsers whether an custom file upload should be either ‘downloaded’ to the user’s device when clicked, or ‘opened/displayed’ in a new window/tab instead.

So if you’re attaching PDF files to bookings, for instance, you can now instruct browsers to display these files in your browser instead of prompting you to download them to your device.

Please note that MIDAS only provides ‘hints’ to user’s browsers as to whether to view or download an attached file. It’s down to individual browsers as to whether they respect these hints and how they process the attached files.

Tags: custom booking fields, custom fields, v4.37

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