Dedicated sub domains for cloud-hosted customers

We are delighted to announce the completion of our roll out of dedicated sub-domains for all our cloud hosted customers!

This follows a desire expressed by a few of our customers to be able to have their cloud-hosted MIDAS systems accessible via a dedicated sub domain.

The makeup of a URL containing a subdomain
The makeup of a URL containing a subdomain

What is a subdomain?

A subdomain is a part of a website’s domain name that comes before the main domain name, separated by a dot.

It functions as a separate website, but still shares the same primary domain name.

Think of it like an apartment within a larger building: it has its own address and entrance, but it’s still part of the overall structure.

Here’s an example:
Main domain: mid.as
Subdomain: demo.mid.as

Subdomains for new hosted customers

At the start of this year (2016) we began providing this to all new customers who chose a cloud hosted edition of MIDAS.

Let’s assume that your company was called “My Organization”. If you subscribed to a cloud-hosted edition of MIDAS in 2016, you would have been able to choose the dedicated MIDAS subdomain https://my-organization.mid.as for your hosted booking system.

However, if you purchased a cloud-hosted MIDAS system prior to 2016, you’d instead have been accessing your system via https://mid.as/my-organization.

This was before dedicated mid.as subdomains were available.

Subdomains for all hosted customers

The good news is that from today, we’ve now rolled out dedicated mid.as subdomains to all our hosted customers who purchased prior to 2016 as well!

So, if you previously accessed your hosted MIDAS system via https://mid.as/my-organization, you’ll now have the dedicated subdomain https://my-organization.mid.as. Old mid.as/my-organization URL’s will continue to work and redirect to my-organization.mid.as for some time.

If you purchased a cloud-hosted MIDAS system prior to 2016, we’d like to encourage you to update your bookmarks and links. Going forward, they should now point to your new dedicated mid.as subdomain!

There are a few things to note when updating your bookmarks/links:

  1. If your hosted MIDAS URL previously contained underscores (_), you’ll need to change these to hyphens () when updating your bookmarks and links.
    For example:
    https://mid.as/my_organization would now become https://my-organization.mid.as
  2. If your hosted MIDAS URL previously contained a domain name (other than mid.as) i.e. .co.uk, .com, etc, you’ll need to remove the end part when updating your bookmarks and links.
    For example:
    https://mid.as/myorganization.com would now become https://myorganization.mid.as
  3. If your hosted MIDAS URL previously contained any period characters (.) (other than the initial period in the primary “mid.as” domain), you’ll need to remove these when updating your bookmarks and links.
    For example:
    https://mid.as/my.organization would now become https://myorganization.mid.as

If you have any questions, or aren’t sure what the new dedicated subdomain for your hosted MIDAS system is, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Our team will be more than happy to help!


Firefox: The last browser to drop Windows XP/Vista support

Firefox on Windows XP/VistaIf you’re still accessing your MIDAS room booking system via a Windows XP or Windows Vista machine, you’ll want to read this!

As you should be aware, Windows XP and Vista are now considered obsolete operating systems. They are no longer supported or maintained by Microsoft.

As a result, over the past few years major browser vendors have been slowly dropping support and updates for their products in these operating systems.

For instance, the most “recent” version of Internet Explorer that can be run on Windows XP is IE8 (MIDAS requires at least IE9). For a while this wasn’t a major issue as XP/Vista users could simply switch to either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox instead. Both of which were still being actively updated by the respective vendors on these operating systems.

However, Google announced back in November 2015 that Chrome would no longer be supported or receive updates on Windows XP or Windows Vista after April 2016.

Since then, Firefox has been the only major browser to continue supporting and providing updates on Windows XP and Vista.

This week, Mozilla have now announced that Firefox 52 (due for release in March 2017) will be the last version of their browser to receive updates on Windows XP and Vista.

Whilst Firefox 52 will still work on XP/Vista after March 2017, it will no longer receive updates. At this point, none of the modern major web browsers that are supported in MIDAS will continue to be updated on these operating systems.

We are therefore advising any MIDAS users who still access their scheduling systems via Windows XP or Vista to upgrade their operating systems as soon as possible. This will ensure their web browser(s) are kept up-to-date and they’re able to continue using MIDAS in the future.


MIDAS v4.13 Out Now!

This year we’re celebrating our 10th year developing MIDAS, our Web Based Room Booking and Resource Scheduling Software!

With exciting new and improved features being added to MIDAS several times each year, we’re pleased to tell you about our latest update – v4.13 – which has just been released!

New & Improved in 4.13:

How To Get MIDAS v4.13…

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. We 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 v4.13 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 will be automatically updated this weekend to the latest version of MIDAS!

Help Improve MIDAS!

We’re able to bring you exciting updates like v4.13 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. This allows 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!



Security Enhancements in MIDAS v4.13

If you follow our blog, then you’ll know we’ve been busy putting the finishing touches to the next update to MIDAS. Whilst each new version of our world class room booking and resource scheduling software includes exciting new and improved features and functionality, we’re also proactively committed to providing a secure scheduling solution for your organization.

To that end, MIDAS v4.13 includes a number of security enhancements which we’ll explain below…

15-Point Security Audit

We’re including an on-demand security audit with v4.13. Administrators may access this audit via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Security. When run, the audit will test a number of key metrics of your MIDAS system. This includes your MySQL setup, MIDAS files, and recommended MIDAS settings. A detailed report is generated with appropriate advisories for improving and hardening the security of your MIDAS system:
15-Point Security Audit

Password “Block list”

MIDAS v4.13 includes a list of passwords that are considered “banned”. Banned passwords cannot be used by users when setting a new password or changing an existing password. By default, the block list contains the Top 1000 most common passwords of 2016. Passwords such as “123456”, “password”, “qwerty”, etc are included.

For our self-hosted customers, the list of banned passwords is also editable allowing you to add/remove banned passwords. You’ll find this within within the a file named “bannedpw.dat” within your MIDAS installation.

Improved clean-up of Temporary Logs

MIDAS has included a “Keep temporary logs for x days” setting for many years. This setting has previously defined how long entries persist in the “Recent Activity” log (an audit log which records all user activity within MIDAS). For v4.13 we’ve extended the functionality of this setting to also cover the persistence of log files which MIDAS may create from time to time. For instance, a log file is created if there are issues upgrading MIDAS from a previous version, or issues when importing data from another application, or when logging of API calls is enabled, etc. Whilst these log files would be retained until manually removed, the “Keep temporary logs for x days” setting will now ensure that these files are also removed after a specific period of time.

“Minimum” Minimum Password Length

MIDAS has also included a “Minimum password length” setting since its inception. This setting allowed administrators to set a minimum password length for all user passwords. Starting with v4.13 it will no longer be possible to set this value less than 5 characters.

Password Strength Indicator

Password Strength IndicatorOur password strength indicator has been a feature for administrators creating new user accounts since v4.07. For v4.13, we’ve also made this useful visual indicator available whenever an end-users changes their password. The visual indicator classifies the password as either “Very Weak”, “Weak”, “Fair”, “Good” or “Strong” as you type, with a corresponding color to match (i.e. Red = Very Weak, Orange = Fair, Green = Strong). This classification is based upon a number of factors including the length of the password, the presence of upper and lower case letters as well as numbers and special characters, and whether the password has been banned.
We hope the addition of this visual indicator for end-users will help promote the use of strong passwords.

MIDAS v4.13 is expected to be made available to Beta Testers in the next few weeks, with a general release shortly after. We’re always looking for additional testers to help test and provide feedback/bug reports on pre-release versions of our software, like v4.13. Becoming a tester is free and no experience is required, and what’s more we’ll reward you for your participation! Find out more about becoming a MIDAS Beta Tester here.

If you would like to be notified when v4.13 is fully released, then why not join our Mailing List?