Whilst many businesses shut down over the Christmas period, we also appreciate that many of our customer’s businesses remain open this time of year. That’s why our Priority Support remains available across the festive season to those customers with active Annual Support subscriptions!

We’re also excited to announce our latest update to MIDAS, v4.17 is now available!

Here’s What’s New & Improved in v4.17:

• New: Custom resource categories
• New: Ability to set a default booking type
• New: Ability to control which booking types are available on public booking/request screens
• New: Optional “Custom Links” addon
• New: Option to exclude tentative bookings on the Advanced Print Settings dialog
• Improved: Booking watch notifications under My Messages can now be clicked to jump to triggering booking
• Improved: Invoice summary screen now indicates recently overdue invoices
• Improved: The Pending Booking Requests screen now indicates the number of venues you’re assigned to be a manager of
• Improved: Print Client’s Bookings dialog now retains options for next time
• Improved: Clicking on variables from the list on the Manage Template screen now inserts variable at current caret position in template code (previously inserted at the end)
• Optimization: Code optimization
• Fixed: Cumulative roll-up of various fixes for issues discovered since v4.16

How To Get MIDAS v4.17…

We’ve plenty more exciting updates in the pipeline for 2018, so watch this space!

In the meantime, whatever you’re up to this festive season, we wish you a very happy and peaceful time with friends, family, and loved ones.

The post MIDAS v4.17 Out Now! appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

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:

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

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:

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

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In this post, we’ll look at the improvements coming to “booking types”. Booking Types allow you to color-code bookings based on their “type” making them easier to spot in the booking grid. Furthermore, you can assign discounts to each booking type. This allows charging different rates depending upon the type of booking.

You can also set booking types to be “tentative“. Bookings assigned as “tentative” will automatically be removed if not confirmed in a timely manner.

This time last year, for v4.14, we introduced the ability to set a default booking type on a per-client basis. For v4.17, we’re also giving you the ability to specify a global default booking type. If set, then any bookings added without a booking type being specified, will automatically be assigned the default type. This is especially useful if you’ve “hidden” the booking type selector from view, as you can still assign bookings a default booking type.

Additionally, following customer feedback, we’re making it possible for you to limit which booking types are available for selection on the public web request/booking screens. Many organizations have “internal” booking types/classifications. They may not wish to make these available for selection by external clients. This new feature will allow this to be achieved!

You’ll find the new “Public?” and “Set as Default?” options on the Manage Booking Types screen. This may be accessed via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage Booking Types. These settings can be set independently for each of your booking types. If a booking type is set as being the default, this will be indicated by an “*” after its name in the “All Booking Types” list.

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Over the next few posts, we’re excited to give you a first look at some of the new features and improvements in this forthcoming update.

First up – Custom Resource Categories!

“Resources” are additional items/services you can add to your bookings. Until now, resources have been split into three distinct categories; “Equipment”, “Staffing”, and “Consumables”.

The differences between each of these three categories are outlined below:

Equipment:

Resources categorized as “Equipment” are those which are charged per booking, irrespective of the length of a booking. For example, a Flip Chart may be added to this section, as its charge would be the same for 30 minutes or 2 hours. The “Quantity Available” allows you to define how many flip charts are available site-wide at any one time. So, if you own 5 flip charts, set the “Quantity Available” to 5. MIDAS will then not allow more than 5 flip charts to be in-use at the same time.

Consumables

Resources categorized as “Consumables” are those which would only be used one-time, and cannot be reused. For example, paper for a flip chart could be classed as a consumable. The “Quantity Available” figure is very fluid in this category. For example, you may have bulk purchased 100 flip chart paper pads. You would therefore set the “Quantity Available” to 100. However, unlike the other categories, whenever consumables are added to a booking, the remaining “Quantity Available” of that resource decreases by the amount added. So once all 100 flip chart pads have been used, they will no longer be able to be added to any further bookings. That is, until your stocks are replenished, and the “Quantity Available” updated accordingly. Consumables, like Equipment, are charged per booking.

Staffing

Staffing is a section to list human resources you have available to clients. These are charged per hour when added to bookings. For example, you may have 3 AV Technician’s on staff, with an hourly rate of $40. Adding these details to the Staffing section of resources allows your staff to be allocated to bookings with the client charged accordingly.

Following requests from a number of our users, for MIDAS v4.17, we’re adding more flexibility. You can now add your own custom resource categories to compliment the three default categories:

This will be beneficial to organizations with large numbers of resources. Resources can now be broken down into smaller groups.

Each custom resource category you add can be named, and resources assigned to it accordingly. You can also specify how resources assigned to the category should behave in terms of billing and remaining quantities. Items in custom categories can behave as either Equipment, Consumables, or Staffing for these purposes.

When adding resources to bookings, additional tabs will be shown on the Add Resources dialog for each of your custom categories:

We believe this new feature offers even more flexibility in managing your resources along with your venues in MIDAS!

You can become more familiar with how “Resources” work within MIDAS in our short video tutorial:

How To Setup Resources & Add Them To Bookings

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