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.
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.
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 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.
As the wet and windy wintry weather shows no sign of letting up here in the UK, we continue to put the finishing touches to the next update to our MIDAS web based room booking and resource scheduling software, v4.24.
In our previous article, we announced support in v4.24 for a new multi-select custom list field. In this blog post, we’re revealing a new user permission we’re adding to our forthcoming update.
“User Permissions” in MIDAS allow administrators to precisely control what each user account within the system can access. From very restrictive “view only” permissions to fully-fledged administrator – and everything in between! In fact, there are in excess of 30 individual permissions you can set on a per-account basis. A full list of these permissions may be found here.
For v4.24 we’re adding a new additional user permission: “Can Bypass Venue Blocks”. To understand the purpose of this new permissions, we first need to understand what “Venue Blocks” actually are..
What are venue “blocks”?
Back in 2014, we introduced “Venue Blocks” to MIDAS. You can read more about this cool feature in this blog post. Essentially, venue “blocking” allows administrators to set up rules so that when a certain venue is booked, another venue is then automatically blocked from having any bookings during the same time period.
An example of where this may be useful is in a Church environment where you have a quiet prayer room adjacent to a sports hall. It may be desirable to prevent noisy bookings taking place in the sports hall when there’s a prayer meeting happening in the room next door. This is where Venue Blocking comes in.
Another example might be a large room which can either be hired as a whole space, or sub-divided and hired as two separate, smaller rooms. Obviously, if one of the sub-divisions is booked, another booking couldn’t take place in the space as a whole at the same time. Again, this is where Venue Blocking in MIDAS becomes really useful, as you can easily prevent such occurrences.
Bypassing Venue Blocks
Until now, however, there has been no way to “override” venue blocks, short of removing the blocks from venues themselves. That’s why we’re introducing the new “Can Bypass Venue Blocks” permission for v4.24:
New “Bypass Venue Blocks” permission in v4.24
This permission isn’t granted to any user by default. However, any user account subsequently granted the “Can Bypass Venue Blocks” permission, can then make bookings regardless of any venue blocking rules in effect.
We’re sure this additional user permission will be of considerable use in helping you manage your bookable spaces more effectively. And once again, this improvement is being implemented as a direct result of feedback from our users. We love hearing feedback and suggestions for improvement and new features from our customers. Why not vote on some suggestions and let us know what you’d like to see in MIDAS in the future!
You can also ask questions and discuss the new features of v4.25 over on Reddit.