Posts Tagged: addons

Work is nearing completion on the next update to our MIDAS web based room booking and resource scheduling software. We anticipate this to be released next month.

In previous posts, we introduced the new setup / breakdown time features and improvements to similar booking searching coming in v4.23. In this post, we’d like to highlight some of the improvements we’ve made to one of our optional “addons”. Addons allow you to further extend the capabilities of your MIDAS system.

Data Feeds Addon

For v4.23 we’re updating and improving the “Feeds” addon. Previously, this addon was known as our “RSS Feeds” addon. That’s because previously it did just that – automatically generating RSS 2.0/Atom data feeds of your upcoming bookings.

Due to popular demand, we’re introducing the ability to sync bookings in your MIDAS system with an external calendar – such as Google Calendar, or any external calendar that’s capable of subscribing to an iCal (webcal) feed. These new capabilities will be included, along with previous RSS feed generation options, in a newly renamed “Data Feeds” addon.

For those customers who are familiar with the “RSS Feeds” addon, the new “Data Feeds” addon looks and feels very similar. However, the new addon includes an additional “Feed Type” selector. The “Feed Type” selector is used to control the type of data feed being generated.

The three available feed types are:

  • RSS (An RSS 2.0/Atom Datafeed – for use in RSS readers and similar)
  • Google Calendar (A feed that will automatically open in Google Calendar)
  • iCal (A iCal data feed that external calendars capable of subscribing to webcal:// URLS can subscribe to)
Data Feeds addon allowing synchronization of bookings from MIDAS to an external calendar like Google or Outlook
Improved “Feeds” addon, allowing synchronization of bookings to your external calendar

Depending upon the selected feed type, the “Feed URL” will update with a link that you can use in your external calendar to synchronize bookings from your MIDAS system to your external calendar.

Configuring A Data Feed

A wide range of settings are available, as per the previous “RSS Feeds” addon. These allow control over which venue(s) bookings and/or which booking types will be included in the generated feed.

There are also no limits on the number of feeds you can create. You could have a different feed for each of your individual venues or booking types if you’d like!

Existing customers who previously purchased the older “RSS Feeds” addon will automatically be migrated to the new “Data Feeds” addon with MIDAS v4.23 at no additional cost! If you’re an existing customer who’d like to be able to add the optional “Data Feeds” addon to your MIDAS system, you’ll be able to purchase it via mid.as/upgrade once MIDAS v4.23 is released.

We’re excited about these new improvements to the optional “Feeds” addon and we’re sure they’ll be of great benefit to our customers! Remember, we love feedback and feature requests from our customers. So do vote and let us know what you’d like to see in future updates to our software.


New Custom Links Addon

MIDAS has a growing range of optional “addons” available. These extend the capabilities of your booking and scheduling system with additional features and functionality.

To coincide with the v4.17 update to MIDAS, we’ll also be launching a brand new “Custom Links” addon. This new optional addon is based upon feedback we’ve received from some of our customers.

Customers have expressed the desire to be able to add their own custom links after the standard “Logout”, “Change Password”, “Help” and “Full Screen” links underneath the main date near the top of the screen when logged in:

Standard links when logged into MIDAS
Standard links when logged into MIDAS

Our new “Custom Links” addon allows administrators to do just that! They can add up to three additional custom links for logged-in users:

MIDAS Custom Links Addon
MIDAS Custom Links Addon

Administrators can specify the URL to the web page or resource to link to. A name for the link as it will appear on screen can also be set. Furthermore, administrators can specify whether each link should open in a new tab/window, or within the main booking grid area:

Custom link to Wikipedia opened within MIDAS
Custom link to Wikipedia opened within MIDAS
Custom link to an Accuweather forecast opened within MIDAS
Custom link to an Accuweather forecast opened within MIDAS

A note about opening custom links in the booking grid area:

Some 3rd party websites prevent their content from being directly embedded within other websites/apps. In such instances, you would need to specify that your custom link opens in a new window instead.

As mentioned, the new Custom Links addon is expected to become available with the upcoming release of v4.17. In the meantime be sure to also check out some of our other exciting addons available for MIDAS at https://mid.as/addons


Latest Addon: PRTG Sensors

PRTG Network MonitorWe have an ever growing range of optional “addons” available to extend the capabilities of our MIDAS room booking and resource scheduling software.

Our latest addon, available for MIDAS v4.11 (or later) allows system/network administrators to monitor – in “real time” – key parameters and metrics of a self-hosted or cloud-hosted MIDAS system in PRTG Network Monitor.

PRTG is a leading professional network monitoring software solution, trusted by over 150,000 network/IT administrators worldwide to provide unified monitoring of the performance and reliability of their entire networks, infrastructure and applications.
In fact, we also use PRTG here at MIDAS for 24/7 monitoring of our global infrastructure.

 

Real-time MIDAS monitoring in PRTG Network MonitorWith our new PRTG Sensors Addon, a system or network administrator can keep track on the number of users currently logged into a MIDAS system, the number of failed login attempts, the size of database, the number of visitors on your premises right now, the number of bookings taking place today, and much much more! – in fact, there’s 18 different parameters/metrics that can be monitored all in real time!

For more information on our optional PRTG Sensors addon for MIDAS, please visit mid.as/prtg.

New customers can purchase our MIDAS web-based Room Booking and Resource Scheduling system along with the optional PRTG Sensors addon securely at mid.as/pricing.

Existing customers running MIDAS v4.11 or later can add this optional addon to their MIDAS system right now by visiting mid.as/upgrade.

Be sure to also check out some of our other exciting addons at mid.as/addons.


New Addon: Slack Integration

SlackSlack is a versatile and increasingly popular team messaging platform, offering real-time communication and collaboration with your colleagues via the web as well as mobile platforms.

Slack already integrates with a vast range of tools and services you use every day to keep all your communication in one central place, but we are pleased to announce that our web based room booking and resource scheduling software, MIDAS is the very first room booking system to offer integration with Slack though our new optional addon!

Available for MIDAS v4.09+, our Slack addon allows “Watch” notifications from your MIDAS system to be posted in real-time to your team’s Slack feed..

Slack Stream

For example, you could setup Watch notifications to automatically post to your Slack stream whenever new bookings are added, or when certain bookings are cancelled, or whenever refreshments are added to bookings, or when you’re running low on consumables!