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)

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.