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!


New Custom “Range” (Slider) Booking Field

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:

Expanding the ‘range’ of custom field types

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!


MIDAS v4.15 Out Now!

With Easter over for another year (and with what seems like enough chocolate to keep us going until the next!), we’re excited to announce the availability of MIDAS v4.15, our powerful web based room booking and resource scheduling software.

Here’s What’s New & Improved in v4.15

How To Get MIDAS v4.15…

New To MIDAS?

We are committed to fair and accessible pricing for all organizations regardless of size. We’re totally upfront and transparent about our pricing structure. In fact, with the affects of “Brexit”, our international prices are some 13% lower right now than they were 12 months ago – so there’s never been a better time to buy!

“Self Hosted” Customers:

Self-Hosted customers with ongoing Annual Support Subscriptions will be able to update to v4.15 in the next few days. It only takes a couple of clicks – simply log in to your MIDAS system and go to MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Update

“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 the latest version of MIDAS over Easter!

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 2017 – Time to check your important data

World Backup Day 2017Today marks the annual World Backup Day, an event designed to raise 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 loose. With that in mind, we built in a number of backup features to our world class web-based room booking and resource scheduling software, MIDAS.

In the background, MIDAS makes a complete and automated backup of its own database and settings upon the first successful login each and every day. These compressed database backups are then stored on the server where your MIDAS resides. Typically, compressed backups are each less than 1MB in size. They’re then stored on the server for a period of time you specify, typically up to 30 days.

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

In addition to the automated backups that MIDAS makes, our scheduling software also provides the ability to manually generate instant backups at any time. This can be achieved via a simple one-click “Backup Now” button. You’ll find this button via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Database → Backup Now.

Database backups (whether generated manually or automatically) can be easily and readily restored at any time. You can choose to restore either partially or in full via a simple user interface. This can be found 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 loose data, you can quickly get your MIDAS system back up and running!

Backup and Restore in MIDAS
Easily Backup and Restore Data with MIDAS software

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

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

Even More Backup Options

What’s more, we also offer an optional “Emergency Access” addon to our hosted customers. This optional addon allows cloud-hosted customers to access a “real-time” backup of their MIDAS system in event that they’re ever 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, that we take data backups very seriously! We make it easy to ensure your important MIDAS data can easily be backed up and restored with minimal fuss!

But on World Backup Day today, whilst your MIDAS data is taken care of, why not take a moment to backup your own important personal files? Your family photos, home videos, documents and emails are important! Could you stand loosing them? Whilst it may seem tedious and time consuming, you’ll be glad you did should anything ever happen to the originals!