As you’ve come to expect from our regular releases, this latest update includes a variety of new and improved features, many of which are based on direct customer feedback!

Here’s What’s New & Improved in v4.18:

• New: Custom “Checkbox” (tick box) booking field
• New: Export data in native Excel format (.xlsx)
• New: Statistics can now be exported in Excel format (.xlsx)
• Improved: Now possible to modify/remove venues in bulk
• Improved: Choose which types of emails are BCC’d
• Improved: Fields set to show on blocks/tooltips can now optionally include the name of the field as well
• Improved: Deleting bookings via the grid now highlights booking whilst delete confirmation dialog is shown
• Improved: Watch notification text now distinguishes between bookings added and booking requests approved
• Improved: Manage Addons page now cached for a short while to improve frequent successive page loads
• Improved: Logging of imports, merges, and database clean-ups to the Recent Activity Log
• Improved: Security Audit checks for left over installation/test files
• Fixed: Cumulative roll-up of various fixes for issues discovered since v4.17 – see https://bugs.mid.as for details

How To Get MIDAS v4.18…

We hope you’ll enjoy all the new and improved features that MIDAS v4.18 has to offer!

In other news…

MIDAS was recently tested and reviewed by FinancesOnline.com. FinancesOnline is a respected global Business-to-Business Directory of SaaS (Software As A Service) solutions, each of which have been independently reviewed by experts. We’re delighted that FinancesOnline have awarded MIDAS both their “Great User Experience” and “Rising Star” awards!

You can read their full and independent review of MIDAS here.

About these awards…
FinancesOnline recognizes software solutions that provide exceptional ease of use and an intuitive interface with its “Great User Experience” award in their appointment booking software category. Meanwhile, the “Rising Star” award certifies software products that have proven reliable and effective for users. MIDAS is also recommended in the platform’s “What is appointment scheduling software?” guide. These recognitions are complemented by the high 98 percent user satisfaction rating gathered by their Customer Satisfaction Algorithm, which aggregates the feedback and reviews of users across the web.

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One of these improvements concerns the way that information is display on “blocks” within the booking grid. Each “block” within the booking grid represents a booking. Administrators can set up to two booking fields to display within each block. A further two booking fields can be set to display on the associated tooltip.

Here’s a typical example showing the Client and Organization field values on the booking block, and the booking times and booking notes in a corresponding tooltip:

Now, that’s all fairly obvious as to which fields are being displayed. But as MIDAS allows you to add your own custom booking fields, which can also be shown on booking blocks and their tooltips, consider the following example:

In the above example, the value of two custom booking fields has been set to shown on booking blocks. These two fields are drop-down lists. However, because the name of the field isn’t shown on the block, only it’s value, the above offers little insight into what’s being shown.

That’s why for v4.18, we’re giving administrators the option to choose whether individual field names are included on booking blocks/tooltips along with their corresponding values, or just the field values only (as in earlier versions of MIDAS).

Here’s the above example again but this time with the settings configured to include the name of the field too:

As you can see, this is a lot much user-friendly. So we’re sure this improvement will be welcomed by our customers.

Click here to continue reading about some of the other new & improved features coming in MIDAS v4.18!

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…because we’re adding the ability to export directly in the native Excel (2007+) .xlsx format.

Previously in MIDAS, if you wished to export bookings, clients, invoice summaries, or resources directly to Excel, you’d first need to export as a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file, and then import this file into Excel.

However, in MIDAS v4.18, you’ll now be able to export data directly into a native .xlsx Excel 2007+ format!

Furthermore, following customer feedback, we’re also providing the ability to export Statistics & Reports data directly to Excel too. On Statistics report pages you’ll now find an “Export” icon:

Self-Hosted Customers: Please note – in order to take advantage of the new Excel export options in MIDAS v4.18, you’ll need to ensure that the Perl module “Excel::Writer::XLSX” has been installed on your server. (This module is already installed on our cloud-hosted infrastructure). For assistance installing Perl modules on your server, please refer to our KB article: How to install Perl modules.

Click here to continue reading about some of the other new & improved features coming in MIDAS v4.18!

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Now, MIDAS has included a “BCC outgoing email to” setting for quite some time now. This setting allows you to enter an e-mail address to which e-mail (excluding generated notifications) sent by your users through MIDAS will be BCC’d (Blind Carbon Copied) to.

It’s a useful setting, as it allows administrators to keep track of outgoing e-mails, or for archiving purposes.

However, the setting has caused confusion for some customers who instead expected this setting to send a copy of EVERY single outgoing email (including system-generated notifications) to the defined email address, rather than its intended use of only BCC’ing emails that are not generated notifications (for example, if a user emails a client through the in-built email function).

Therefore, to add greater flexibility for those customers who have requested it, we’ve expanded the email BCC capabilities of MIDAS for v4.18.

Choosing which emails to BCC

You’ll now be able to select which “types” of outgoing emails from your MIDAS system you’d like to be BCC’d to a pre-defined address:

The types of outgoing email you can choose to be BCC’d include:

• Generic
• Bookings:
  • Booking Cancellation
  • Booking Confirmation
  • Booking Reminder
• Booking Requests:
  • Booking Request Approved
  • Booking Request Approved (with changes)
  • Booking Request Rejected
  • Booking Request Submitted
• Invoices:
  • Invoice (Cancellation)
  • Invoice (Regular)
  • Invoice Overdue
  • Invoice Reminder
  • Receipt

We do however suggest that you think very carefully as to which types of emails you select to be BCC’d. For larger MIDAS systems this could result in a significantly higher volume of outgoing email traffic.

For this reason, the extended BCC email options for our “cloud-hosted” customers are limited to only be available if your MIDAS system is configured to send outgoing email via an external SMTP server/relay. If your cloud-hosted MIDAS system is configured to send email via the internal “Sendmail” option, extended BCC email options will be unavailable to you. This restriction does not apply to self-hosted MIDAS systems.

Click here to continue reading about some of the other new & improved features coming in MIDAS v4.18!

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That’s why in v4.18, we’ve made it easier to make “bulk” changes to multiple venues at once, which we’re sure will be a real time saver!

On the “Manage Venues” screen, multiple venues can now be selected simultaneously from the “All Venues” list to the left. Any changes then made in the “Venue Details” section to the right will be applied to all selected venues.

Furthermore, you’ll also be able to remove venues in bulk (rather than one at a time)

Click here to continue reading about some of the other new & improved features coming in MIDAS v4.18!

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These booking fields can be re-ordered as well as made optional or required. They may also be selectively hidden from individual users.

MIDAS also offers even more flexible control by allowing you to add your own “custom” booking fields as well!

A variety of different custom booking field types may be added to MIDAS, including:

• Single-line text Field
• Multi-line text Field
• Number Field
• List Field
• URL Field
• File Upload Field (Self-Hosted Editions Only)

Last year, we expanded the types of custom booking fields available. This included the addition of a new “Range” (or “slider”) custom booking field type.

For MIDAS v4.18, we’re adding a further custom booking field type to the available range, with the introduction of a custom “Checkbox” (tick box) booking field type:

When adding a new “Checkbox” custom booking field to MIDAS, you’ll be able to title it, specify whether the box should be “checked” (ticked) by default, and also whether the checkbox is required to be checked/ticked in order to proceed in adding/modifying/requesting the booking.

This new custom booking field and associated options will certainly find uses in a variety of applications. For example, it will now be easy for MIDAS users to ensure that their hirers/customers have accepted any Terms & Conditions of Hire, etc before making their request/booking.

Click here to continue reading about some of the other new & improved features in MIDAS v4.18!

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