Posts Tagged: user permissions

Allow users to change their name or email

MIDAS now allows administrators to control whether users can change their display name, email address, or password – providing greater security and flexibility for shared and individual accounts.

Previously, users couldn’t change their display name or email themselves – only an administrator could do this. An administrator could also grant or deny the ability for each user to be able to change their account password.

Why would you ever not want to allow a user to change their password?” you’re probably thinking!

Many organizations like to create a very limited and generic ‘view only’ account in their MIDAS system. One account that a number of staff all share.

Obviously, you wouldn’t want one person to change the account password on such a ‘shared’ account and lock every one else out. So on this account an administrator could revoke the “Can Change Password” permission to strengthen account security.

For MIDAS v4.41 we’ve added a couple of new and related permissions…

New User Permissions in MIDAS v4.41
New User Permissions in MIDAS v4.41

Allow Users To Change Their Display Name

With the new “Can Change Display Name” permission granted to a user account, that user will be able to change their display name within your MIDAS system any time they wish.

Allow Users To Change Their Email Address

With the new “Can Change Email Address” permission, a user will be able to change the email address associated with their MIDAS user account. This is the address they use to sign in with and receive notifications at.

How a user updates their details

If a user has been granted at least one of the following permissions…

  • Can Change Display Name
  • Can Change Email Address
  • Can Change Password

… then they can change their details at any time from the drop-down menu that’s displayed when they select their name (under the main date heading), and then select “Your Details”:

Users can manage their account details in MIDAS v4.41
Users can manage their account details in MIDAS v4.41

From the “Your Details” dialog, the user will be able to modify one or more of their details (depending upon permissions granted)

Updating your name, email, or password in MIDAS v4.41
Updating your name, email, or password in MIDAS v4.41

Administrators can also see when a user last updated their details from the Manage Users & Permissions screen:

Administrators can see when each user last made changes to their account
Administrators can see when each user last made changes to their account

For a complete list of all the booking software permissions that can be assigned on a per-user account basis in MIDAS, please see: https://mid.as/help/manage-users-and-permissions/list-of-available-user-permissions


Limit number of bookings per user per month or year

Limit the number of bookings a user can make for any given period
Limit the number of bookings a user can make for any given period

For MIDAS v4.30 we’ve improved the range of options available for the “Maximum bookings allowed” setting.

This is a per-user setting enabling administrators to restrict the number of bookings individual users can make for a given period.

This setting itself isn’t new – it was first introduced in v4.11. However, this setting initially only allowed an administrator to set a maximum number of bookings each user could add to any individual date.

For v4.15, the setting was expanded to include an alternative “Per Week” option. This allowed restrictions to be placed on the maximum number of bookings a user could add to any given week.

With MIDAS v4.30, we’ve now added a further two options to this setting – Month and Year.

These new additional options give administrators even greater control over bookings. Users can now be limited to a maximum number of bookings for any date, week, calendar month, or calendar year.


Restrict users to “self-booking” only

New options to restrict users to "self" booking or requesting
New options to restrict users to “self” booking or requesting

For MIDAS v4.29, we’re expanding the range of options available to administrators when it comes to assigning user permissions.

MIDAS already includes an extensive range of permissions which can be assigned on a per-user basis. One of these permissions is the “Can Make Bookings” permission. This setting controls whether a given user account can make bookings, or just booking “requests”, or neither.

Following customer feedback, we’re adding a couple of additional options to this particular user permission.

Now administrators can restrict user accounts to only be able to book/request for themselves.

Prior to this, a user with permissions to make bookings/requests could select a client on their Add Bookings screen that the booking or request was to be for.

Now, if the “Can Make Bookings” permission is set to “Yes (For self only)”, the user will only be able to make bookings for themselves. They will not be able to make bookings for any arbitrary client in the system.

Similarly, the “Requests Only (For self only)” option works the same, but only allows the user to make booking requests for themselves.


User Management Improvements

For v4.25, we’ve made a some improvements to user management. These include..

New “Can Search” Permission

We’ve added a new “Can Search” user permission allowing administrators to control which users can access the Search features within MIDAS.

New “Can Import / Export” Permission

We’ve also added a new “Can Import / Export” user permission allowing administrators to control which users can import and/or export data. As well as simple Yes/No options, this setting also includes “Export Only” and “Import Only” options too.

Re-Show The Quick Tour Upon A User’s Next Login

Re-enable the Quick Tour option on any user account. The next time the user logs in, they’ll be presented with the option of a quick tour of the user interface. For more information please see this post.

Support For Users On Unstable Connections

One of the security features we built into MIDAS automatically logs out a user’s session if it detects their IP address has changed. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we found many more users were working remotely from home. Often their home internet connections were unstable, or their ISPs were under heavy load as a result of increased demand. Consequently, some users were finding that their IP address was frequently changing. In some cases, this was happening every couple of minutes! Due to the security restrictions we built into our software, this meant they were being frequently logged out of their MIDAS system.

So for v4.25, we’ve introduced a new “User is on an unstable connection” setting. With this setting enabled on a give user account, MIDAS will ignore any IP address changes whilst the user is logged in. This means that even if their IP address changes, they will remain logged into MIDAS.

This setting, disabled by default, should only be temporarily enabled for users who are experiencing frequent log outs due to a fluctuating IP address.

Optionally Add New Users As Clients

Whenever an administrator adds a new user to their MIDAS system, a corresponding entry is automatically made in the client database for the individual. This is because it is generally assumed that there will be instances when a user adds a booking for themselves.

However, following customer feedback, we’ve now made automatically adding a new user as a client optional. Now, when a new user is added, an “Also add user as a client” box is shown. If this box is unselected, the new user will be added without an associated entry made in the client database.

Easily Toggle “View Access” settings

The “View Access” options allows an administrator to control which venue groups (and therefore venues) a user has access to. By default users have access to all venue groups, but there may be instances when you wish to restrict this. If you have a long list of venue groups, it can be tedious to manually check/uncheck lots of groups. As such we’ve added a way to “toggle” all currently selected groups. Simply click/tap on the “View Access” label, and all checked groups will become unchecked, and vice versa.

Easily toggle View Access options
Easily toggle selected “View Access” options for a user by clicking/tapping “View Access”

These are just a few of the new and improved features for MIDAS v4.25. Please see this post for details of other new features you’ll find in v4.25.

Reddit You can also ask questions and discuss the new features of v4.25 over on Reddit.