Manage Booking Settings

There are a number of settings under the "Bookings" tab of the "Manage MIDAS" screen (accessed via the MIDAS Admin Options toolbar icon) specifically relating to handling of bookings within your MIDAS system. These settings are:

Booking Availability

Booking Alternatives

These settings allow MIDAS to offer alternative venues/times if the desired venue/times are unavailable.

Three main options are available:

Offer the desired times in an alternate venue

When selected and the desired venue is unavailable, MIDAS will offer alternative venues at the same times

Example: Room 1 is unavailable between 2pm-3pm, MIDAS will try to offer Room 2 between 2pm-3pm as an alternative

MIDAS allows you to control which venues each of your "Resources" are available to. As a result, when offering an alternative venue, any resources you may have assigned to the booking may not be available in a different venue. The "Ignore resource venue restrictions when offering alternate venues" option lifts this restriction, meaning that if you have a resource, for example "Digital Projector" that's only been made available to "Room 1", and an alternative venue to "Room 1" is "Room 2", the Digital Projector will also be available to Room 2 in such circumstances.

Offer an earlier time/day in the desired venue

When selected and the desired times are unavailable, MIDAS will try to offer an earlier time slot or the previous day in the same venue.

Example: Room 1 is unavailable between 2pm-3pm, MIDAS will try to offer Room 1 between 1pm-2pm as an alternative.

Example: Room 1 is unavailable between 2pm-3pm on Tuesday, MIDAS will try to offer Room 1 between 2pm-3pm on Monday as an alternative.

Offer a later time/day in the desired venue

When selected and the desired times are unavailable, MIDAS will try to offer a later time slot or the next day in the same venue.

Example: Room 1 is unavailable between 2pm-3pm, MIDAS will try to offer Room 1 between 3pm-4pm as an alternative.

Example: Room 1 is unavailable between 2pm-3pm on Tuesday, MIDAS will try to offer Room 1 between 2pm-3pm on Wednesday as an alternative.

An option to maintain a "gap" (spacing) when offering earlier/later alternative times is also available. For example, if set to 15 (minutes), then:

Example: Room 1 is unavailable between 2pm-3pm, MIDAS will try to offer Room 1 between 12:45pm-1:45pm as an earlier alternative.

Example: Room 1 is unavailable between 2pm-3pm, MIDAS will try to offer Room 1 between 2:15pm-3:15pm as a later alternative.

Account for Pending Booking Requests when checking Booking Availability

By default, when making bookings or booking requests, MIDAS doesn't take into account any outstanding Pending Booking Requests when checking Booking Availability. For example, if a booking request is currently "pending" for Room 1 on Monday from 9am-10am, whilst it remains "pending", other actual bookings or booking requests can still be made for this same venue/time slot.

To prevent any other bookings or requests from being made in slots where "pending" booking requests are still awaiting approval, select this option. MIDAS will then show "Unavailable" for subsequent bookings or booking requests that would conflict with outstanding booking requests.

Setup / Breakdown Times

These settings control how Setup and Breakdown times should be handled.

Times shown on Booking Availability screen should include Setup / Breakdown times

If enabled, then the times displayed on Booking Availability screen will include any setup/breakdown period. For example, if a booking is added from 10am - 11am with a 30min setup and 15min breakdown, with this setting enabled, the booking times will be shown as 9:30am - 11:15am on the Booking Availability screen.

With this setting disabled, times shown on the Booking Availability screen won't include any setup/breakdown times. (Note: This won't affect actual booking availability)

Setup / Breakdown times for bookings can overlap other bookings

These settings control whether setup and / or breakdown times should be taken into account when checking venue availability. If enabled, setup and / or breakdown periods can overlap with those of other bookings. If disabled, setup and / or breakdown periods cannot conflict with the setup/breakdown periods of other bookings.

Take for example an existing booking in a particular venue which ends at 11am, but which has a 15min breakdown period afterwards. The next booking has a 30min setup period.

With the "Setup / Breakdown times for bookings can overlap other bookings" options all disabled, the setup time for the following booking cannot start until 11:15am at the earliest (i.e. once the breakdown period of the previous booking has ended)

However, with the "Setup times for bookings can overlap other bookings" option enabled, the setup time for the following booking could start as early as 11am (i.e. at the same time as the breakdown period for the previous booking)

Setup / Breakdown times for resources can overlap other bookings

Similar to the above settings, however these settings apply when determining resource availability (rather than venue availability). If you allow resource overlapping, then the same resource can be allocated concurrently during one booking's breakdown period and the next booking's setup period.

Booking Spacing

The Booking Spacing settings enforce a "gap" (free space) in minutes before and / or after bookings which are added or modified. This ensures that there's adequate setup/clean up time between adjacent bookings, so that two consecutive bookings in the same venue don't take place back to back with no break in between.

You'll likely want to set both before and after settings the same, however, the two can be set to different lengths.

For example settings of "Maintain free space before each new booking of 60 minutes" and "Maintain free space after each new booking of 30 minutes" would mean that when you add a new booking it will only be "Available" if, A) any previous booking in the same venue finished an hour or more before the start of the new booking, and B) any subsequent booking in the same venue starts more than 30 minutes after the finish time of the new booking.

Miscellaneous

Enable Tentative Bookings

If selected, Tentative Bookings will be enabled, and rules for expiring tentative bookings will be automatically enabled.

If unselected, tentative bookings will be disabled and any further auto-expiration of any tentative bookings will be halted.

Prompt for detailed client information when adding bookings for new clients

If selected, then when adding a booking for a brand-new client, you'll be required to complete all client fields that have been set to be required.

"Send Booking Confirmation" Option

Sets the default state (on by default / off by default / always on) of the "Send Booking Confirmation" selector which is presented to users on the Booking Availability screen. The "Send Booking Confirmation" selector itself allows an automated confirmation email to be sent to a client when bookings are added/modified for them.