If you follow our blog, you’ll already know about some of the new and improved features in v4.42. One example is the expansion of administrative permissions.

Administrative Area Improvements

The old “Manage MIDAS” screen has been split into separate sections, each now controlled by its own dedicated permission and accompanied by a unique icon.

Changes have also been made within each administrative area. We’ve moved the previous “Save Changes” button from underneath the settings to being fixed in the top-right corner. This eliminates the need to scroll through lengthy settings pages to save changes.

We’ve also refined the way changes are saved within administrative screens.

Improved Save and Change Indicators

The addition of a new “Unsaved Changes” indicator alongside the new save button draws user’s attention to changes they’ve made to settings which have yet to be saved.

In addition to the UI and UX improvements in the administrative area, we’ve also improved the “Quick Tour” in MIDAS v4.42.

Enhanced Quick Tour Experience

The “Quick Tour” is shown to new users by default upon their initial sign in. It provides a brief overview of the user interface and controls.

We have replaced outdated third-party code previously used to generate dynamic tooltips. In its place we’ve written new code for generating these tooltips. This has allowed us to make improvements, one of which is better highlighting of elements in the “Quick Tour”.

These updates reflect our ongoing commitment to making MIDAS both powerful and easy to use. By continually refining the interface and enhancing usability, we help administrators and end users work more efficiently every day.

If you’re new to MIDAS, start your free trial today and experience the improvements firsthand.

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MIDAS allows you to import bookings and data from a range of applications, and we’re always looking to extend this support.

In our last update, v4.41, we introduced better support for importing bookings from Skedda. This included support for “multi-room” bookings, as well as additional date and time formats.

In v4.42, we’ve introduced several additional improvements to make data imports even smoother.

Automatic Field Detection and Mapping

When importing data MIDAS needs to understand how fields in your source data correspond to fields in your MIDAS system. This process is known as field mapping.

After selecting a file to import, MIDAS offers a preview of your data in a table view. At the top of each column is a drop-down selector. This is used to inform MIDAS of the type of data contained in each column.

For example, if you’re importing bookings, one column in your source data will contain the room or space name. Setting that column’s drop-down selector to “Venue” ensures the data is imported correctly.

Until now, selecting the correct value from the drop-down selector at the top of each column was a manual process. For v4.42, MIDAS will now try and automatically detect the data in each column and suggest an appropriate value for its drop-down.

Of course, you should still check the drop-down for each column before continuing, but this new ‘auto detection’ feature should make importing data into MIDAS easier.

Support for Importing Split Client Names

In many cases of data import, client names are contained within a single field of data.

For instance, if you’re importing a booking for “Joe Blogs”, it’s likely that there’ll be a single field containing the text “Joe Blogs” in your raw data.

Some booking systems however may split client names across multiple fields when exporting data. There may for example be separate fields for first (given) name and last (surname).

MIDAS typically expects a single field containing the client name, but for v4.42 we’ve added support for instances such as the one described above where names are split across fields.

This improvement makes it easier to migrate to MIDAS from booking systems such as Hallmaster.

Together, these improvements reduce manual setup and make transitioning to MIDAS faster and more efficient.

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We’re now making it easier to apply bulk permission changes across multiple user accounts.

Previous Behavior

In previous versions, when adding or modifying a user account, an “assign permissions from group” drop-down was presented above the various user permissions that could be assigned:

This was a great way to quickly copy the current permissions from a user group to an individual user account.

However, this was a one-time action. MIDAS would snapshot the selected user group’s current permissions and apply them to the individual user account. Any subsequent changes to the group’s permissions would not affect existing user accounts.

Introducing Permission Inheritance

So we have re-worked this for MIDAS v4.42. The “Assign permissions from group” selector has been removed and replaced by a new role-based “Inherit Permissions from” selector.

When a user account is set to inherit permissions from a user group, any subsequent changes to that group’s permissions will automatically apply to all linked user accounts.

This now allows you to bulk modify user account permissions with ease!

When to use manual permissions

If you still want to grant or revoke individual permissions on a per-account basis, you can – simply set the “Inherit Permissions from” option to “[None]”. When you do this, MIDAS will display the complete list of current permissions for that user, allowing you to make individual changes as required.

User accounts set to ‘[None]’ will not be affected by changes to any user group permissions.

While this new feature may not be all that significant for customers with only a handful of user accounts, larger organizations with several hundred users will benefit greatly from the ability to modify user permissions in bulk.

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These allow the creation of anything from fully privileged administrative accounts to ones with very limited “view only” permissions, and everything in between.

To provide administrators with even greater control, we’ve extended the range of available permissions for MIDAS v4.42 to now include 14 additional administrative permissions.

These new permissions replace the previous “Can Manage MIDAS” permission. This generic permission controlled whether a user was able to access the “Manage MIDAS” configuration screens.

Over time the “Manage MIDAS” screens have grown to include a vast array of options and settings. These screens allowed users to change email settings, update templates, configure scheduled tasks, tweak invoice or database settings, and much more.

For v4.42, we have split up the old “Manage MIDAS” screen into separate sections. Access to each section is now controlled by its own dedicated permission. This means, for instance, that you can grant permission to a user to be able to modify your templates, but not allow them to adjust the email settings of your MIDAS system.

The 14 new administrative permissions added in v4.42 are:

• Can Manage Appearance Settings
• Can Manage Booking Settings
• Can Manage Database Settings
• Can Manage Email Settings
• Can Manage Fields
• Can Manage Invoice Settings
• Can Manage Miscellaneous Settings
• Can Manage Print Settings
• Can Manage Public Settings
• Can Manage Safety Settings
• Can Manage Scheduled Tasks
• Can Manage Security Settings
• Can Manage Templates
• Can Update Software (Not applicable in cloud-hosted systems)

When updating from an earlier version to v4.42, any user account which held the “Can Manage MIDAS” permission will automatically be granted all 14 of the new administrative permissions during the update.

Administrators can then refine access for each user account via MIDAS Admin Options → Users.

These changes, together with the ability to make bulk permission changes, provide administrators with significantly greater flexibility and control over who can access specific system settings.

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The ability to send email is essential for any booking system.

From booking confirmations and reminders, to invoices, notifications, and password resets, booking and scheduling systems rely on email.

MIDAS naturally supports the sending of email, but we’ve made some exciting and significant improvements to email sending for our cloud-hosted customers for v4.42.

But first, let’s look at the existing ways in which MIDAS can send email.

Until now, the sending of email by MIDAS has been through a choice between “Sendmail” or “SMTP”.

What is Sendmail?

Available on Linux-based servers, Sendmail is a built-in server application for sending email directly from the server itself. Read more about Sendmail.

What is SMTP?

SMTP (or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the standard language used by computers to send emails across the internet. Read more about SMTP.

Sendmail vs SMTP

Both Sendmail and SMTP options have been available in both our cloud-hosted and self-hosted editions.

“Sendmail” has long been the default ‘out of the box’ email transport setting for cloud-hosted customers. However, we’ve always encouraged customers to move over to SMTP as soon as possible.

That’s because generally email deliverability rates are substantially higher when MIDAS is configured to send email through a customer’s own SMTP server, than if instead sent directly through our own servers.

Whilst Sendmail is configured to work ‘out of the box’ for cloud-hosted customers, SMTP requires a little more configuration.

To configure MIDAS to send email via SMTP, you will need:

• The address of your SMTP server
• The correct port number
• The SMTP username and password
• The correct SSL, TLS, or STARTTLS encryption method setting

You will also need to ensure that your SMTP server accepts connections from your cloud-hosted MIDAS system. In addition, your organization’s domain must be configured to allow MIDAS to send email on behalf of your domain.

This requires significant configuration and setup. We want to simplify this for our cloud-hosted customers. That’s why we’re introducing cloud email sending.

Introducing “Cloud Sending”

For MIDAS v4.42, we’ve introduced a new “Cloud” option for sending email. This new option is available to all cloud-hosted customers, and replaces the previous “Sendmail” option. (Sendmail continues to remain an option for self-hosted customers).

With the new cloud email option selected, you won’t need to specify an SMTP host, or enter credentials or specify ports – MIDAS will take care of all of that!

We have partnered with a dedicated transactional email provider specializing in high-deliverability email delivery services, to provide efficient and reliable email delivery for cloud-hosted customers who select the “Cloud” email sending option.

Zero Configuration Email Sending

To complement our new “cloud” email offering, we’ve also included a “Zero Configuration” option.

With this option enabled, MIDAS and Mailgun will seamlessly handle email delivery for your MIDAS system. You won’t need to configure an outgoing email address, nor will you need to update your organization’s domain’s SPF (Sender Policy Framework) DNS record – email will just ‘work’ right out of the box.

Of course, if you wish to customize the “send from” or “reply to” addresses, you can untick the “Zero Configuration” option and change those settings.

But in its simplest form, our new “cloud” email sending and “Zero Configuration” options mean that brand new cloud-hosted email systems can now reliably send email right from the outset.

Migrating from Sendmail to Cloud email sending

For our existing cloud-hosted customers, if you’re currently using the “Sendmail” option in your MIDAS system, you’ll be automatically migrated to “cloud” sending soon after we update you to v4.42.

If you do not wish to use the new “Cloud” sending option, you should update your MIDAS settings to instead send email via SMTP.

You can change your MIDAS email settings via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Email.

If your cloud-hosted MIDAS system is currently configured to send email via SMTP, this setting will be unaffected when we update your booking system to v4.42. Of course, you can then always change over to use the cloud email sending option at any time.

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The “Print” icon in the MIDAS toolbar allows for quick printing of bookings shown in the current booking grid.

Right-clicking (or long-pressing on touch devices) this icon opens an advanced print dialog.

From this dialog, you can customize the booking printout in a number of ways:

• Change the layout
• Set the date range
• Restrict to certain times
• Restrict to certain rooms
• Restrict to certain booking types
• Filter bookings based on advanced criteria

We’ve improved the date range customization section in MIDAS v4.42 to now also allow selection of specific days of the week across the selected date range.

Previously, selecting a date range would simply include bookings for each and every day in the range. Now you can limit this to only include bookings on certain days of the week.

For instance, if you’re only interested in printing bookings that take place on Saturdays and Sundays over the next three months, you can now do so.

This makes it easier to generate focused and concise booking printouts without unnecessary information.

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