Well, seeing as it’s Valentine’s Day today, and we know you love MIDAS – we thought it would be a good opportunity to share with you some of the exciting new features and improvements we’re busy working on for our next release of MIDAS, version 4.02…
More Versatile Options For Booking Times
In previous versions of MIDAS, when specifying the times that bookings take place, you were presented with options to set a start and finish time:
We wanted to make specifying booking times even easier and more flexible, that’s why v4.02 will introduce two new time field options: “periods” and “durations“.
Predefined Time Periods
If you only wish your users to book in predefined time slots (“periods”) during the day, this option is just what you need!
You can set up a list of predefined periods of time, with each “period” having it’s own name.
For example, let’s say you’re running MIDAS within a school or other educational environment. In v4.02 you’ll be able to add your school day as a list of predefined time periods, for instance:
This way, instead of previously having to manually select a start time of 11:15 and a finish time of 12:15 on the booking form if a user wanted to book during “Lesson 3”, with this option those fields will be replaced with a simple drop-down list from which they can easily pick “Lesson 3”!
There are no limits on the number of predefined “period” lists you can set up. What’s more you can also specify on a per-user basis which particular list of time “periods” is shown!
Start Time + Predefined Duration
If all your bookings (or appointments) should be of a standard, predetermined length, this new option will be ideal for you!
MIDAS v4.02 will allow you to set up a list of predefined booking durations (in Minutes) that will replace the original “finish” time field. That way, users can simply select a start time for their booking, and a duration.
As with the “period” lists, you can set up multiple lists of booking durations and specify which list should be shown to which user!
As these three booking time options (Start + Finish, Start + Duration, and Periods) can be specified on a per user basis, the flexibility this gives is unmatched! These powerful new booking time options make MIDAS an even better scheduling choice for schools, as well as for businesses that need to schedule appointments!
Monthly Repetitive Booking Generator
MIDAS already includes a quick way to generate dates for repetitive bookings i.e. “every Monday for the next 6 weeks”, etc.. but many users have asked for a quick way to generate dates for monthly recurring bookings, say on “the 2nd Thursday of every month”, etc… so we’re giving you just that in v4.02!
Approve/Reject Booking Requests “Silently”
When you approve or reject a Booking Request, MIDAS automatically sends an email notification to the original requester informing them that their booking request has been either approved, or rejected (together with a reason for the rejection).
In MIDAS v4.02, we’re including a simple way to override the sending of these notifications so that you can approve/reject requests “silently” without the original requester being informed of your action.
Send “Booking Reminders” to your external calendar (Outlook, Lightning, etc)
The “Booking Reminder” feature currently allows you to quickly add a reminder for any booking to your “My Messages” screen within MIDAS. In v4.02, we’re also introducing the ability to have these reminders emailed to you as calendar events. That way, if your mail client has an associated calendar application (such as Outlook, or Lighting (for Thunderbird)) you can quickly add these events to your external calendar with just a single click!
Other new features in v4.02:
- The Monthly Overview can now be printed via the “Print” toolbar icon
- New option to only accept booking requests from certain email domains
- Norwegian translation
MIDAS v4.02 is expected to be available to Beta Testers later this month, with a full release shortly after.
If you’d like to help us test this new version, why not become a Beta Tester?
In the meantime, as it’s Valentines Day and love is in the air, why not help us spread the love and take a moment to share MIDAS with your friends and colleagues on your favorite social networking sites