Since releasing MIDAS v4 last month, many of our customers have already updated their installation to this major new release of our web based room scheduling system.

If you’re an existing customer with a current Support Subscription, you too can update right now. You can do this from within the software via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Update.

As well as regularly updating our blog in recent months showcasing new features in v4, we’ve also been updating our Knowledge Base with new articles relating to the new version. We thought we’d take this opportunity to compile a list of common questions we’ve been asked about MIDAS v4. So what follows is a sort of “mini F.A.Q.” if you will!

If you’ve got questions about updating, or about some of the changes/new features in v4, you may find the following articles helpful:

Updating to MIDAS v4:

• Is my server ready for v4?
• MIDAS v4 – Why the database change?
• How do I update from MIDAS v3 to v4?
• When attempting to update to v4, I’m told there are duplicate entries whilst migrating users
• After updating, the layout appears wrong/some visual elements are missing

Using MIDAS v4:

• I used to log in with a username – Why do I now have to log in with an email address?
• Where’s the organization field gone in version 4?
• I can’t seem to access the multi-day view feature?
• My pending bookings screen’s empty, and I don’t get request notifications?
• Why is the “Auto send user their login details” option disabled?

We’ll keep this post updated each time we add new Knowledge Base articles that relate to MIDAS v4. If your question though isn’t answered here, please feel free to contact us.

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With nearly an hour of new tutorials, broken down into 8 new individual tutorials, the following topics are covered:

• Setting Up Your Venues
• Setting Up & Allocating Resources
• Add, Modify, and Delete Bookings
• Add, Modify, Delete, and Email Clients
• Invoicing
• Accept Booking Requests Online
• Control and Customize Booking Fields
• Messages, Notifications, Reminders, and Watches

If you’re an existing user of MIDAS, you’re sure to find these tutorials useful as you start exploring MIDAS v4. If you’re not a MIDAS user just yet, these tutorials will show you just how easy our software is to use, and provide an insight into some of the incredibly powerful and versatile features you can expect from MIDAS.

You can find this video tutorials at https://mid.as/tutorials as well as on our YouTube channel.

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New & Improved Features in MIDAS v4:

With much of the original code re-written from the ground up, MIDAS v4 is the culmination of over eight months development work, and is packed full of new and improved features.

MIDAS v4 also uses a faster, more efficient, database architecture than previous versions.

Here’s a little more insight into some of the new features in MIDAS v4:
→ MIDAS v4: A Fresh New Look
→ Weekly & Multiple Day Views
→ Invoicing Improvements
→ Improvements to Booking Requests
→ Do More Direct From The Booking Grid
→ New History Panel Showing Complete History For Each Booking

View the full changelog here

Existing MIDAS customers with valid Annual Support Subscriptions will be able to update to MIDAS v4 in the coming days as part of their ongoing subscription!

Customers who have their MIDAS “remotely hosted” by us have already been updated to MIDAS v4!

If you’re not yet using MIDAS, now’s the time to get your organization’s room scheduling in order!
Not convinced? Read what some of our existing customers say about our software and support

…and why not try MIDAS v4 out for yourself now in our free online public demo.

New & Improved Features in MIDAS v4:

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A lot has changed in this update and it’s packed full of new and improved features. It also uses a new database format, and has much of the original code re-written from the ground up!

Whether you’re an existing user or totally new to the MIDAS way of online scheduling, we need your help to “test” this new update. This allows us to help identify and fix andy issues before its public release!

Becoming a Beta Tester couldn’t be easier. It’s completely free, there’s nothing to download, and you don’t need any programming experience or knowledge! All you need is your web browser and a bit of spare time! So why not sign up right now!

The more people we have testing this pre-release “beta” version of our popular room scheduling software, the sooner we can release this exciting new update!

Click Here to try MIDAS v4 Now!

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Generate Invoices Directly from the Booking Grid!

Prior to v4, if you wanted MIDAS to generate an invoice for a booking, this had to be generated at time of booking. In v4, whilst that option still remains, you’ll also find a new icon when selecting a booking in the grid, which will allow you to instantly generate an invoice for that booking (provided one hasn’t been previously generated)

We’ve also further improved the invoicing capabilities for MIDAS v4, as it will allow you to…

Retrospectively Generate Invoices for Clients

In v4, you can select a client, and a date range, and MIDAS will generate a single invoice incorporating all that client’s bookings over the selected date range! …and what’s more, MIDAS will ignore any bookings for which invoices have already been created, meaning that you’ll never invoice for the same booking twice! You can also select the “All Clients” option, and MIDAS will generate a separate invoice for each client with bookings across the date range you select.

This feature will be ideal if you have one person adding bookings, and another looking after the invoicing side, as it will allow them to, for example, generate an invoice for a client one month at a time in arrears!

We’ve also added a couple of new invoicing settings:

“Include zero value invoice items?“ – If selected, venues and resources for which there is no charge will still be included on invoices for completeness and/or if you need to denote that the client is getting something free of charge. If this option is not selected, items who’s total charge is zero will not appear on generated invoices.

“Create invoices even if invoice total is zero?“ – If unselected, MIDAS will only generate invoices where the invoice total is greater than zero. If selected, MIDAS will generate invoices regardless of invoice total.

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First came CSV…

When development first started way back in 2005, MIDAS stored data in a series of “flat file” databases. These were essentially character-delimited data files (similar to the popular CSV (comma separated value) file format). As MIDAS developed and grew over the next couple years, this format for storing data become more and more restrictive to what we wanted to do with MIDAS. Consequently, an improved method for storing data was needed.

…followed by XML

A new database format was first introduced with MIDAS v3, in 2010, when we moved the data storage over to an XML based format. This offered a number of improvements, allowed for customizations, and was more “robust” than the previous “flat file” format

However, this XML based format does have some drawbacks. As the storage was still essentially file and disk based, the performance of MIDAS was dependent on the number and size of XML files MIDAS had to read from, process, and write to disk. Now, for the majority of our customers, this has never been an issue. However, for a very small number of customers – those with a very high number of venues/bookings/users, etc, – the file/disk based nature of the XML storage format, could impact on the speed and performance of MIDAS.

…and so that’s the primary reason why starting with MIDAS v4, we’ve moved over to a faster, and “industry-standard”, database format – MySQL.

Introducing MySQL

“If MySQL is so good, why hasn’t this been implemented sooner?”
Well, when MIDAS was originally created over 7 years ago, MySQL was in its infancy! At that time, few servers ran MySQL by default, and there were very few web applications around that used it. In those days, if you wanted to add MySQL support to your website hosting account, it would likely be an expensive “add on”.
For this reason, we initially took the decision not to rely on MySQL, as we wanted to make MIDAS as widely accessible as possible. This is why, for the last 7 years, you’ve only needed a web server running Perl to host MIDAS.

However, the Internet has come a long way in the last 7 years! These days, MySQL is common place. The vast majority of web servers/web hosting packages now have MySQL available and ready to use “out of the box”, and a very large number of websites and popular website software use MySQL databases.

When MIDAS v4 becomes available this Summer, if you wish to install/run this new version of our scheduling software on your own web server, MySQL 5.1 (or later) must be available. So check your server now, so you don’t miss out!

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If you wish to run MIDAS v4 on your own web server, MySQL 5.1 (or later) is required.

Why MySQL?

MySQL, the world’s most popular open-source database, can be freely obtained from www.mysql.com

In addition, two Perl modules not previously required for MIDAS will be required for v4. These modules, “DBI” and “DBD::mysql”, may already be present in your Perl installation, but if they’re not, they may be freely obtained from the following links:

• DBI – Database independent interface for Perl (Get it here)
• DBD::MySQL – A MySQL driver for the Perl5 Database Interface (Get it here)

If you’re unsure whether these Perl modules are already available on your server, our updated Server Readiness Tool will tell you!

Once your server is ready, our How do I update from MIDAS v3 to v4? guide will help you update your MIDAS installation.

If you’re currently running MIDAS v3 on your own server and are unable to use MySQL, you can carry on using version 3. However, v3 will continue to receive critical fixes only. Alternatively, you can have your MIDAS v4 “cloud hosted” by us instead.

If we already “Cloud Host” MIDAS for you, you don’t need to do anything to be ready for MIDAS v4! – Our servers are already prepared for MIDAS v4!

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The previous “Default” theme: (MIDAS v3)

The new “Default” theme: (MIDAS v4)

The new “Metro” inspired default theme that will ship with MIDAS v4 will feature slightly larger icons than previous themes – the reasons behind this are two-fold;

1) Larger Screen Resolutions

Firstly, screen resolutions are generally getting larger – for many years the most common screen resolution was 1024 x 768 pixels. A recent study found that currently the most common screen resolution in use is 1366 x 768. As people choose screens with higher and higher resolutions, graphical items appear comparatively “smaller” on screen.

2) Touch Screens

Secondly, touch screen devices (such as tablets and iPads) are now common place, and with the eagerly anticipated release of Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system later this year (which is very much geared towards touch screen devices), we expect the number of touch-enabled devices to increase dramatically.

If you’re familiar with touch screen devices, you’ll know it can sometimes be frustrating trying to accurately “tap” a very small target area on screen.

Microsoft have conducted extensive research on fingers and touch screens. They discovered that the average width of a human finger is 11mm. As targets for tapping get larger, the percentage of accidental missed taps drops off quickly. Therefore, ideally, a tap target should be at least 11mm (about 40px) in size.

“Add Bookings” icon (MIDAS v3) 30 x 30 pixels	“Add Bookings” icon (MIDAS v4) 40 x 40 pixels

In the previous “default” theme for MIDAS, the main toolbar icons were 30 x 30 pixels in size. In the new “default” theme, toolbar icons are now 40 x 40 pixels in size.

Notifications have also been made more prominent on toolbar icons for MIDAS v4:

Buttons in MIDAS v3	Buttons in MIDAS v4

We’ve also increased the size of other buttons and some text elements – all in an effort to make MIDAS more accessible to tablet, iPad, and other touch screen users, and those using higher resolution screens!

We hope you’ll like the new look for MIDAS v4, but if you don’t, no problem! – There will be a version of the previous MIDAS v3 default theme available for v4 as well!

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Prior to v4, only two pieces of history information were saved for each booking. These were the original booking creation date/time and the user who created the booking, and the date, time and user who last modified the booking.

The new history tab improves on this, as it will now display a complete history trail for each new booking.

Every update that is made to a booking will be logged, together with the user who made the update and the date and time the update occurred.

The history panel will also log details if a booking is deleted, an invoice is generated for a booking, and indicate whether the booking resulted from a booking request!

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Until now, if you needed to move a booking to a different venue, or perhaps postpone it until the following week, you’d have to click on the booking in the grid, select “Modify Booking”, then manually change the venue/dates/times on the “Modify Booking Form”. After that you’d have to proceed through the “Booking Availability” check before the booking is finally rescheduled – all in all requiring half a dozen or more mouse clicks and at least a couple of minutes as you went through the various steps.

In MIDAS v4 you can reschedule bookings in seconds…
…simply “drag and drop” the existing booking to a new venue/time slot!

Display pending/provisional and deleted bookings in the grid!

Moving bookings is not all you can do from the improved booking grid in v4! You can now also show pending booking requests as well as recently deleted bookings in the booking grid too!

Pending booking requests can then be approved/queried/modified/rejected/locked direct from the booking grid with just a click:

..and deleted bookings can be restored in the same way too:

Generate Invoices directly from the grid!

Don’t want to generate an invoice when making a booking? No problem! In MIDAS v4 you can click a booking in the grid and instantly generate an invoice for that booking!

These exciting new improvements to the booking grid in MIDAS v4 will undoubtedly improve your productivity by streamlining the process of rescheduling bookings, approving requests, and recovering erroneously deleted bookings!

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