Our optional “Discord” addon joins our existing range of addons which allow events occurring in your MIDAS booking system to be posted to your organization’s communication channels.

We already have addons that support popular communication platforms Slack and Microsoft Teams. Now we’re adding Discord to this list.

Discord is a popular free communication platform that allows users to interact through text, voice, and video. Users can join or create servers, which are essentially chat rooms organized around a specific topic.

Setting up this new MIDAS addon is as simple as obtaining a Discord WebHook URL, and selecting which MIDAS user’s Watch notifications should be sent to your Discord server.

To learn more about Watch notifications in MIDAS, watch our short “How to setup watch notifications” tutorial.

To find out more about the new Discord addon, head over to mid.as/discord.

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Our optional “Zoom Meetings” addon adds a “Create Zoom Meeting” option to the Booking Availability screen.

If this option is selected when a booking is added, a corresponding Zoom meeting will also be automatically scheduled for the same time (an active Zoom account is required).

You can also configure the addon to automatically send a link to the Zoom meeting to the client via email, and for that link to be stored in a custom field for the booking, allowing users easy access to it.

A number of other settings are available too, which can be used to customize the Zoom meetings that this addon can automatically schedule…

..and there’s also an email template you can customize for the Zoom meeting invite links that can be automatically sent to your clients…

Expanding possibilities

Not only does the new Zoom Meetings addon make it simple to schedule Zoom meetings which correspond to your bookings, but it also opens up new possibilities!

Until now, MIDAS could primarily be used to book and schedule ‘physical’ spaces and resources.

But with the addition of the Zoom Meetings addon, MIDAS can now be used to schedule “virtual” spaces and meetings with your clients.

This opens up MIDAS to new business sectors who use Zoom as a primary tool for client communications, such as…

• Online Counselling
• Consulting and Coaching – Business consultants, life, career, or executive coaches, marketing consultants.
• Education and Training – Tutors and educators, corporate trainers, language tutors.
• Financial and Legal Services – Financial planners, accountants, bookkeepers, lawyers and legal consultants.
• Health and Wellness (non-counseling) – Personal trainers and fitness coaches, dietitians and nutritionists, meditation or yoga instructors.

To learn more about the new Zoom Meetings addon, visit mid.as/zoom-meetings.

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If you’re not familiar with this addon, it allows your business to automatically collect feedback, reviews, and ratings on independent review sites from the customers who hire and book your facilities.

How the Reviews addon works

The “Reviews” addon 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 an invitation by email to your client asking them to leave a review or rating of their experience with your business on their website.

Supported Review Platforms

First released in 2020, initially integration was supported for four independent review platforms by our addon. This was further increased to five review platforms in 2022.

As our Reviews addon integrates with independent, third party review and rating services, our addon is reliant on these services remaining active.

Latest updates to our Reviews addon

Recently, the “Psydro” review platform appears to have closed. It’s main website has been timing out and returning errors for a while now. Whilst there’s been no official statement from Psydro, given their website had been inaccessible for some time, we believe this platform is now dead. Consequently, we have now dropped support for Psydro.

There’s also something strange going on with the “collect-reviews” website. Recently, it’s content has changed to a Thai gambling site. Again, there’s been no official statement from the collect-reviews team. It is therefore not known if they’ve sold their domain, or if it’s been hacked. Either way, it’s clear that right now their website is not the review platform it was previously. Consequently, we have now also dropped support for “collect-reviews”.

Finally, “TrustSpot” has recently rebranded to become “RaveCapture”. TrustSpot was one of the review platforms our addon supported from the outset. According to the TrustSpot/RaveCapture team, other than a name and logo change, nothing else has changed. The platform’s functionality remains the same. We’ve therefore updated the name and logo in our Reviews addon to reflect this rebrand.

In addition to RaveCapture/TrustSpot, our addon continues to support the Reviews.io and TrustPilot platforms too!

How to get the Reviews addon

If you’d like to get reviews from users of your facilities on popular review sites like TrustPilot, then the Reviews addon for MIDAS is for you!

This optional addon is available for both cloud hosted and self hosted MIDAS booking systems.

To add this addon to your existing MIDAS system, simply go to mid.as/upgrade.

If you’re not yet using MIDAS to handle your bookings and scheduling, you can get MIDAS today with the Reviews addon.

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What is Geolocation?

Geolocation is the process of determining the geographic location of a user’s device. It is used in a variety of applications, such as mapping, navigation, and weather forecasting. A device’s location can be determined using a variety of methods, including GPS, cell tower triangulation, and IP address location.

IP address geolocation is a method of determining the position in the world of an IP address. This can be done by using a variety of methods, including:

• Reverse DNS lookup: This method involves looking up the IP address in a DNS database to determine the name of the domain that is associated with the IP address. The domain name can then be used to determine the geographic location of the server that hosts the domain.

• Geolocation databases: These databases contain information about the geographic location of IP addresses. This information is typically collected from a variety of sources, such as ISPs and network operators.

It is important to note that IP address geolocation is not always accurate. The accuracy of IP address geolocation depends on a variety of factors. These include the quality of the geolocation database and the method that is used to determine the geographic location of the IP address.

What is Geofencing?

Geofencing is an extension of geolocation. Once a device’s geographic location can be determined through geolocation, “Geofencing” can be used by a website or application to ensure that devices outside of an authorized area are denied access.

IP geofencing works by creating a virtual radius at a set distance around a fixed point on the globe. By comparing the latitude and longitude coordinates of a user’s device, with this fixed point, the distance between them can be calculated. This calculation will determine whether the user’s device falls within the set virtual radius.

Access form any device which falls outside of a set radius of the central fixed location can then be blocked.

Geolocation applications within MIDAS

Initially, there are two main areas within our booking software where geolocation information can be shown.

First, is the Recent Activity Log. This audit log in MIDAS records all user activity and actions taking place in your booking system. Each entry in the log is time-stamped, and shows the user account and IP address which performed the action.

From MIDAS v4.33, the optional Geolocation addon can be configured to allow location information to be shown for IP addresses in the Recent Activity Log. This location information includes the city, region, and country that the IP address resides in.

The second application for geolocation in MIDAS accompanies the unfamiliar login notifications feature.

The unfamiliar login notifications feature alerts users when their account is signed in to from a new device or location.

These notifications typically include details of the user’s device / browser and their IP address.

Geolocation support now means that you can optionally configure these notifications to now also include the city, region, and country that the login occurred from.

Geofencing applications within MIDAS

Building on the new geolocation support, Geofencing can be used to further enhance the security of your MIDAS system.

It can be used to restrict account logins to certain countries. For example, if your organization only has offices within the United States and the United Kingdom, your colleagues are typically likely to only need to login to MIDAS from within either the US or the UK. You can use geofencing to block any login attempts originating from countries other than the US or the UK.

Geofencing can additionally (or alternatively) also restrict account logins to within a certain distance from your location. For example, if you run a radio station in Manchester, UK, you could restrict logins to your MIDAS system to within say a 10 mile radius of Manchester.

How to enable Geolocation or Geofencing in MIDAS

The new Geolocation and Geofencing features are available for MIDAS v4.33 (or later) via our optional Geolocation addon.

Existing customers with active subscriptions can obtain this addon via mid.as/upgrade.

If you’re new to MIDAS, you can subscribe with the Geolocation addon via mid.as/pricing.

Geolocation data accuracy

The accuracy of IP geolocation data depends on a number of factors, including the quality and freshness of the geolocation database, the method that is used to determine the geographic location of the IP address, and the type of IP address.

The IP geolocation data we use in the Geolocation addon for MIDAS is never more than 30 days old.

In general, IP geolocation data is most accurate for large geographic areas, such as countries or states. It can become less accurate for smaller geographic areas, such as cities or neighborhoods.

That’s why if you use the distance based geofence features of the Geolocation addon, you should always set a larger liberal distance than necessary, rather than a very small strict distance from your location. The Geolocation addon does include an instant IP lookup test tool, so you can check IP distances before you apply them.

The Geolocation addon also includes “fallback” options for both country / distance geofence enforcement. For IP addresses where a country and/or latitude and longitude coordinates cannot be determined, you can configure MIDAS to either block or allow these connections.

It’s also worth noting that the accuracy of IP geolocation data can be affected by the use of proxy servers and VPNs. Proxy servers and VPNs can mask the true IP address of a device, making it difficult to determine the device’s geographic location.

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Did you know that with one of our optional addons you can actually display a calendar of bookings right on your own public website?

Display a calendar of bookings on your website

The Web Calendars addon allows visitors to your organization’s public website to see what’s on at your venue.

You can embed daily and monthly calendars directly into your public website. You also have precise control which events appear (or are hidden) on these calendars, and how much information is shown for each.

Plus, if you already make use of the built-in Public Booking Request or Public Web Booking features of MIDAS, you can also configure Web Calendars to allow a visitor to directly book/request a specific date by simply clicking it.

Check our some live examples of embeddable public calendars at https://mid.as/web-calendars/live-examples

Get Web Calendars for your MIDAS system

Web Calendars is by far our most popular addon, with nearly a quarter of all customers choosing to add it to their MIDAS booking system!

You can add the Web Calendars addon to your MIDAS system too, by simply going to mid.as/upgrade.

Also check out our other optional addons to further extend the capabilities of your MIDAS software.

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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:

UPDATE: August 2024: Collect-Reviews support has now been removed.

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

UPDATE: August 2024: Psydro support has now been removed.

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:

• MIDAS v4.24 (or later – you’ll need MIDAS v4.30+ in order to use Psydro)
• A valid account with a supported review platform.
• Your MIDAS booking system correctly configured to send email
• Scheduled Tasks correctly configured to run in MIDAS, and the Post-Booking email notification option enabled.

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!

The post Our “Reviews” addon now supports 5 review sites appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

This allows you to re-brand (white label) a MIDAS booking system, removing any references to “MIDAS” and replacing them with your own name and logo.

The “Custom Branding” addon is available to both self-hosted and cloud-hosted customers.

Now, for cloud-hosted customers, if you want to remove references to “MIDAS” from your booking system, you’ll still have the “mid.as” reference in the actual URL for your MIDAS system (i.e. “example.mid.as”).

Our new companion “Domain Alias” addon solves this issue!

It allows you to setup access to cloud hosted MIDAS system via another domain instead. – for instance a sub-domain of your organization’s own website domain.

So for example, if your hosted MIDAS domain was “example.mid.as”, and your organization’s own domain was “example.com”, you could use the optional Domain Alias addon and set say “bookings.example.com” to use as the URL for your hosted MIDAS system instead.

Setting up a domain alias is a simple 3-step process:

1. Enter the domain/sub-domain you wish to “alias” to your hosted MIDAS system.
2. Make a small DNS change on your organization’s domain using the information provided in the addon
3. Confirm that you’ve made your DNS change

Once your changes become active, you’ll be able to access your hosted MIDAS system via your chosen domain alias.

For more information about this optional addon for cloud-hosted customers, please visit: https://mid.as/domain-alias

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Our new optional “Custom Branding” addon can completely re-brand our software. This allows you to create a “white-label” software edition in which you can apply your own branding.

Visible traces of the word “MIDAS” can be removed, along with the MIDAS logo, links to the MIDAS website, and more. In their place, you can give the booking software your own bespoke name, logo, and icon.

An extensive range of customization options are available through the Custom Branding addon. These provide extended control over your booking system’s appearance:

The new Custom Branding addon also allows easy modification of any of the included “language packs” in MIDAS too. This means that you can completely customize all the wording and phrasing used throughout the software.

Moreover, the Custom Branding addon is available for both self-hosted and cloud-hosted editions of MIDAS.

For more information on this exciting addon, please see our new Custom Branding addon pages.

If you’re a cloud-hosted MIDAS customer, you may also be interested in our new “Domain Alias” addon. This addon compliments our “Custom Branding” addon. The Domain Alias addon allows you to make it appear that your hosted MIDAS system is in fact running on your own domain!

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One of our most popular addons is the “Web Calendars” addon.

This addon generates customizable monthly overview calendars of your room bookings, which can be seamlessly embedded directly into your own website to allow visitors to see what’s on.

Here’s an example of an embeddable Web Calendar using live data from our free online public demo:

Each calendar’s settings and appearance may be configured. You can, for instance, limit a Web Calendar to only show bookings from certain rooms, or that are of a certain booking type.

Since our Web Calendars addon first launched, we’ve had lots of positive feedback from customers. We’ve also had suggestions of how the Web Calendars addon could be improved to better meet specific needs.

Well, we’ve listened, and so for v1.38 of the Web Calendars addon (available for MIDAS v4.28+) we’ve added some exciting new features!

NEW: Embed single day Web Calendars

You can now embed a Web Calendar for a single day’s bookings into your website. Here’s an example of Web Calendar showing today’s bookings using live data from our public demo:

NEW: Allow visitors to book/request a date directly from a Web Calendar

One of the settings you can configure for each Web Calendar is what happens when someone clicks on a date or a booking. Until now, the only options available were:

• Do Nothing
• Show extended info for the selected date in a popup
• Show extended info for the selected booking in a popup

Additionally, you can now also select:

• Request this date
• Book this date

If “Request this date” is selected and someone clicks on a date in a monthly Web Calendar, they’ll be taken to the Public Booking Request screen with their selected date pre-selected.

Similarly, for the “Book this date” option, the visitor will be taken to the Public Web Booking screen with their selected date pre-selected.

IMPROVED: Web Calendars can now be referenced by name

The Web Calendars addon can generate multiple embeddable calendars for you. To choose which calendar to embed, you’d previously have to pass its numeric reference number in a URL parameter.

We’ve now made this more user-friendly, by allowing Web Calendars to be referenced by name.

So for example, if you create a Web Calendar and name it “TestCal”, you can embed it by simply appending “?calendar=TestCal” to your Web Calendar URL.

IMPROVED: Setup/Breakdown times can now be included in Web Calendars

Setup/Breakdown periods were first introduced to MIDAS in v4.23. Until now, however, this information couldn’t be displayed on Web Calendars… well now it can! We’ve added support for additional placeholder “variables” in your Web Calendar templates to allow you to include setup and breakdown times or lengths!

Find out more about the new and improved Web Calendars addon for MIDAS at https://mid.as/web-calendars

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In our previous post, we revealed a new editable “Booking Feedback” template and options to allow your MIDAS system to automatically send clients a post-booking follow-up email. This could be used, for example, to thank them for their recent visit and to encourage them to use your facilities again soon.

To further enhance and extend this new feature, we’re also introducing a new optional “Reviews” addon, which works in conjunction with this feature. This addon allows you to automatically collect feedback, ratings, and reviews of your facilities/business on leading independent review sites, such as Trustpilot.

Initially, the new optional “Reviews” addon supports four leading independent review platforms;

How It Works

The “Reviews” addon 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:

• MIDAS v4.24 (or later)
• A valid account with a supported review platform (see above for a list of currently supported review platforms)
• Your MIDAS system correctly configured to send email
• Scheduled Tasks correctly configured to run in MIDAS, and the new Post-Booking email notification option enabled.

Complete documentation for the new Reviews addon is available online.

Once MIDAS v4.24 is released, new customers will be able to purchase the “Reviews” addon through our secure site.

Existing customers with valid subscriptions running MIDAS v4.24 may add the optional “Reviews” addon to their system by upgrading.

Are there any other review platforms you’d like to see included in this addon in the future? Let us know!

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