Back in August we released MIDAS v4.00. This was a major release of our room booking system, culminating in over 8 months of development. Crucially, it utilizes a different, faster, and more efficient database architecture than previous versions.

Much of the original MIDAS code was re-written from the ground up, and many new features were added. Since then, we’ve been working hard on making MIDAS even better, and we’ll soon be releasing v4.01.

The primary focus for v4.01 has been to further optimize the speed and performance of MIDAS. In our benchmark testing, on average,
MIDAS v4.01 is 15% faster than v4.00 !!

Whilst the main focus for v4.01 has been on performance, we’re also squeezing in a few new features too:

Full Screen Mode

If you’re accessing MIDAS in a browser that supports the new “Full Screen API”, you’ll see a “Full Screen” link on both the login screen and within MIDAS itself:

Clicking a “Full Screen” link will make your MIDAS run in “full screen” mode – MIDAS will fill your entire screen! No tabs, address bar, taskbar or other items cluttering up your screen. You’ll be able to see your booking grid at its largest possible size!

You’ll be able to exit full screen mode at any time by clicking the “Exit Full Screen” link or by pressing “Esc”.

At time of writing supported browsers include: Firefox 15+, Chrome 22+, Safari 5.1+, and Opera 12.1+.

Additional Export Options

In v4.01, we’ve improved the Export function within MIDAS. Now you can export Resources and Invoice Summaries in either XML, CSV, or TXT formats. This is ideal if you wish to use this data in 3rd party applications (such as Quickbooks, etc).

Set Operating Hours for all Venues at once

Setting up your venue’s “Hours of Operation” is generally something you’ll do once. Still, it can still be quite time-consuming clicking lots of green squares for each hour period during the week for each of your venues. That’s why in v4.01 we’ve added an “All Venues” checkbox.

If you select this box, when you click “Save Changes”, the Hours of Operation for the currently selected venue will be applied to all your venues!

Improved Booking Information “Client” Tab

The Client tab of the Booking Information Panel in v4.01 now also includes a list of the client’s Paid and Outstanding invoices when you “hover” over a booking for any particular client. You can further click any invoice from these lists to jump straight to that invoice!

Better User Experience when making “Booking Requests” on Smartphones/Mobile Devices

If you’re a regular reader of our blog, you’ll know we recently introduced a mobile version of our main website. We’re currently in the process of developing a mobile-specific version of MIDAS too, which should make an appearance sometime next year. In the meantime, however, for MIDAS v4.01 we’ve made the Public Booking Request feature much more “mobile friendly”. It’s now easier for people to check room availability and make bookings requests through their smartphone or similar mobile device:

Keep Your Browser Up-to-date!

We want you to have the best possible user experience when using MIDAS in your favorite web browser. We support our scheduling software in all 5 major browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera). A list of the minimum and recommended versions for each of these browsers we support may be found here.

Keeping your web browser up-to-date is so important! That’s why, starting with v4.01, MIDAS will display a notification if your browser is too old to use MIDAS, prompting you to update:

Additionally, if your browser meets the minimum version we support, but falls short of the version of your browser we recommend, MIDAS will also show a notification:

These notifications are enabled in MIDAS v4.01 by default, but may be turned off if desired.

It’s a very exciting time for web based development – there are lots of new and emerging technologies and standards (such as HTML5 and CSS3). Some of these are already used by MIDAS v4 (such as the new “drag & drop to reschedule bookings” feature).

If you’re stuck on an older web browser that doesn’t support these standards/technologies, you won’t be able to take advantage of all the features that MIDAS (and internet in general) has to offer.

Plus you’ll be potentially exposed to web based security threats that emerge all the time if your browser is not kept up-to-date.

To allow us to continue to develop new and exciting features for MIDAS, we have to “phase out” support for older browser versions, as they become too old, and newer versions are available.

For instance, we took the decision in 2010 to drop support for Internet Explorer 7.

Now that IE10 is available for Windows 8 (and soon to be available for Windows 7 users), it’s likely that in the not too distance future we’ll be dropping support for IE8 too. Internet Explorer 8 is now nearly 4 years old – which by today’s fast evolving browser landscape is very old!

Don’t worry, MIDAS v4.01, will still be supported on IE8. The introduction of this new notification system with MIDAS v4.01 will hopefully encourage users to update their older IE8 browsers. That way they’ll be prepared for when support ends for older browsers, such as IE8.

UPDATE: 1^st January 2013 – MIDAS v4.01 is now available!