Posts Tagged: v4.23

MIDAS v4.23 Out Now!

Filed Under: News, Releases by midas — Leave a comment
December 16, 2019

We hope you’re all ready and getting excited (if not already!) for the holidays just around the corner?

Here at MIDAS HQ we’re excited – not only because Christmas is now just over a week  away (where has this year gone?!), but also because we’re pleased to announce an exciting update to our booking software, which includes a number of new and improved features, including support for setup/breakdown times for bookings.

We’ve also overhauled our optional “RSS Feeds” addon, renaming it to “Data Feeds” to reflect that this improved addon will now also allow you to sync your MIDAS bookings to your external Google/Outlook (or other external) calendar – something which is often requested!

Highlights of MIDAS v4.23 include:

How To Get MIDAS v4.23…

New To MIDAS?

We are committed to fair and accessible pricing for all organizations regardless of size. We’re totally upfront and transparent about our pricing structure, and you can purchase MIDAS v4.23 securely through our website and be up and running in no time!

“Self Hosted” Customers:

Self-Hosted customers with ongoing Annual Support Subscriptions will shortly be able to update to v4.23. It only takes a couple of clicks – simply log in to your MIDAS system and go to MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Update.

If no update is available, please check back again in a day or so.

“Cloud Hosted” Customers:

Cloud-Hosted customers don’t need to do anything! – All our active Cloud-Hosted MIDAS customers have been automatically updated to this latest version of MIDAS over the past weekend!

Thank you for your continued support of our software, and we hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

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Improved “Feeds” addon (formerly RSS Feeds)

Filed Under: Development by midas — Leave a comment
November 21, 2019

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)
Data Feeds addon allowing synchronization of bookings from MIDAS to an external calendar like Google or Outlook
Improved “Feeds” addon, allowing synchronization of bookings to your external calendar

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.

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Modify/Delete Similar Bookings on specific days

Filed Under: Development by midas — Leave a comment
November 12, 2019

Work is nearing completion on the next update to our MIDAS web based room booking and resource scheduling software, anticipated to be released next month.

In our previous blog post, we introduced the new setup/breakdown time features in v4.23. In this post, we’re highlighting one of the improvements we’re making in this next update to bulk modifying/deleting “similar” bookings.

The “modify similar bookings” feature allows you to select an existing booking, and then quickly locate other similar bookings for bulk modification. The “delete similar bookings” feature allows you to select an existing booking and then quickly locate other similar bookings for bulk deletion.

These features allow you to narrow down the search for “similar” bookings to those which fall within a certain date range, and/or which take place in a particular room/venue, and/or which are of a certain type.

Following customer feedback, we’re improving these options in v4.23. They’ll now also include the ability to restrict booking results to those which take place on particular days of the week.

Limit similar booking search results to specific days of the week
Limit similar booking search results to specific days of the week

So now, if you want to modify all similar bookings over a date range, but only include those bookings which fall on say a Tuesday, you can!

Previously, you could still do this, but you’d have to list all relevant bookings in the date range, and then painstakingly mark each of those which fell on the specific day(s) you were interested in. In MIDAS v4.23 we’re making this process far less laborious!

We’re excited about these new features 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.

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New Setup & Breakdown Times

Filed Under: Development by midas — Leave a comment
November 11, 2019

Work is nearly complete on the next update to our MIDAS web based room booking and resource scheduling software, which is anticipated to be released next month.

In advance of this, we wanted to share some of the exciting new and improved features in this forthcoming release…

A commonly requested feature we’re asked for is the ability to add setup and breakdown times to bookings.

As MIDAS allows users to add custom booking fields, some customers add their own bespoke setup/breakdown fields to their MIDAS system to record how long is needed to setup/changeover. This can work well, however, using custom booking fields in this way didn’t alter the actual start/finish times of the bookings themselves. Consequently, they could only be used to denote periods within the confines of the actual start/finish times of bookings.

We’ve listened to customer usage cases. As a result, we are delighted to announce that MIDAS v4.23 will now include full support for specifying setup/breakdown times for bookings!

If these features are enabled, the standard Add/Modify Bookings screen will include two additional fields. By default theses are named “Setup” and “Breakdown” but the good news is that these names are customizable!. These fields allow specifying a setup period before the start, and a breakdown period at the end of each booking:

New Setup and Breakdown custom fields in MIDAS v4.23
New Setup/Breakdown Fields in MIDAS v4.23

In the above screenshot, a booking is to be added from 8am – 10am. The booking has a 30 minute setup period before hand, and 15 minute breakdown period afterwards. The resulting booking would render in the booking grid as follows:

Visual representation of a booking's setup and breakdown periods
A booking in the Booking Grid indicating a 30 minute setup time before the start of the booking, and a 15 minute breakdown period at the end

As you’ve come to expect from our software, we provide loads of control over settings. The new setup/breakdown time options are no different!

Firstly, the names “Setup” and “Breakdown” may not be the most applicable to your business or operational needs. So you can choose from a list of alternatives, for “Setup” these include; “Arrival”, “Build”, “Fit up”, “Get in” “Load in”, and “Rig”. For “Breakdown” these include; “Departure”, “Derig”, “Get out”, “Load out”, “Reset”, and “Strike”. If none of those are suitable, you can even enter your own bespoke labels for these pre/post booking fields. Furthermore, you can set a default value for each field. Like other booking fields, choose whether they appear on printouts, and precisely control which users these fields are presented to:

Rename setup and breakdown time field names in MIDAS
Customize the pre/booking time fields with bespoke names and default values

If addition to be able to control the appearance/visibility of these new fields, we’re also giving you control over their functionality, with a host of new settings:

Control how the setup and breakdown fields function in MIDAS
Control how the new setup/breakdown fields function

Choose whether the times shown on the Booking Availability screen should include setup/breakdown times, you can choose whether setup and/or breakdown times for bookings are allowed to overlap with other bookings, and also whether setup/breakdown times are allowed to overlap for resources.

What’s more, you can also control how setup/breakdown times are handled with respect to invoicing:

Invoicing options for setup/breakdown periods in MIDAS
Invoicing options for setup/breakdown periods

You can include/exclude setup/breakdown times from being invoices, or indeed appearing on your invoices.

We’re excited about these new features 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.

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