Table of contents

MIDAS Documentation v4.35

Manage Email Settings

The email settings screen may be accessed via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Email, and contains a number of settings relating to email functions within MIDAS:

Send outgoing emails using

Choose whether MIDAS should send emails via the server's built in "Sendmail" program (if available), or via an external SMTP relay.

Important: Incorrect settings here will prevent email from being sent from your MIDAS system

Sendmail
If "Sendmail" is selected, you must specify the location of where Sendmail resides on your server, for example /usr/sbin/sendmail

If Sendmail is not available on your server, you should choose the SMTP option instead for sending outgoing email from your MIDAS.

SMTP
If "SMTP" is selected, you will need to specify your organization's SMTP host (i.e. smtp.yourdomain.com). Additionally, if your SMTP host requires a username/password for authentication, you can specify these credentials.

By default, connections to the specified SMTP server will be made on Port 25. To use a different port, append the port number to the end of your SMTP host (i.e. smtp.yourdomain.com:port)

If your SMTP server requires an SSL connection, select the SSL option. This will then attempt to securely connect to your SMTP host on Port 465. To use a different port, append the port number to the end of your SMTP host preceded by a colon character.

If your SMTP server requires a TLS connection, select the TLS option. This will then attempt to connect to your SMTP host on Port 587. To use a different port, append the port number to the end of your SMTP host after a colon.

If your SMTP server requires a STARTTLS connection, select the STARTTLS option. This will then attempt to connect to your SMTP host on Port 587. To use a different port, append the port number to the end of your SMTP host after a colon.

MIDAS Generated Emails Appear From

Important: An incorrectly formatted/missing email address in this field will likely prevent email from being sent from your MIDAS system

This is the email address from which any outgoing system initiated (as opposed to user initiated) e-mails will appear to be sent from.

For example, a password reset request, or notification of a submitted booking request would appear sent from this address. Whereas a booking confirmation or an emailed invoice would appear from the email address associated with the account of the user who confirmed the booking/emailed the invoice.

Whilst this setting doesn't have to be a real email address (i.e. you could use a generic [email protected] address for example), it does need to be a properly formatted email address. If this email address is blank, or improperly formatted, MIDAS may be unable to send automated emails and/or they may not reach their intended recipients.

Use this address for all outgoing email?

When this option is selected, all outgoing email from your MIDAS system will appear sent from the address specified in the "MIDAS Generated Emails Appear From" field above.

When this option is unselected only system-initiated email notifications will appear sent from the address specified above (i.e. booking reminders, password reset requests, etc). All other user-initiated notifications will appear sent from the email address associated with the user account which performed the action (i.e. booking confirmations, invoices, etc).

Leaving this box unticked is recommended and is the default setting. If you have multiple user accounts setup in your MIDAS system, leaving this box unticked will help your clients know which particular user approved their booking requests, or added bookings for them, etc rather than all such notifications coming from a single generic email address.

Reply To

Specify a "Reply To" email header to be included in all outgoing email. If specified, then when a recipient clicks reply on an email from your MIDAS system, their reply will be composed to the address specified here, which may be different from the address the email originated from.

For instance, you may have specified all outgoing email from your MIDAS system to be sent from a "no reply" address, but you can use the "Reply To" field to specify an alternate email address for recipients to contact with queries.

BCC Outgoing Email

MIDAS provides the capability to have certain types of outgoing email from your MIDAS system automatically BCC'd (Blind Carbon Copied) to a predefined email address. This setting may be of use to administrators to keep track of outgoing e-mails, or for archiving purposes.

You can choose which types of emails are BCC'd to this address from the "Email types to BCC" list.

It is recommended however that you think very carefully as to which types of emails you select to be BCC'd, as for larger MIDAS systems this can result in a significantly higher volume of outgoing email traffic.

For this reason, the extended "Email types to BCC" options for "cloud-hosted" MIDAS system are only available if your MIDAS system is configured to send outgoing email via an external SMTP server/relay. If you have a cloud-hosted MIDAS system that is configured to send email via the internal "Sendmail" option, the extended BCC email options are not available, and only basic BCC capabilities (i.e. generated notifications are excluded from BCC'ing) are available. This restriction does not apply to self-hosted MIDAS systems.

Advanced Settings

Attempt to reduce email volume by automatically combining similar emails?

If selected, MIDAS will attempt to collate multiple outgoing email notifications for any given client which are similar in nature. For example, if you were to "Bulk Reject" a series of booking requests, instead of each requestor being sent an individual email notification per booking request of theirs that's been rejected, MIDAS will combine all these notifications into a single email notification to the requestor.

Please note: If your MIDAS is cloud-hosted and also configured to send outgoing email via the "Sendmail" option, MIDAS will always automatically attempt to combine similar emails where possible

Send invoices as PDF attachments

If this setting is enabled, any invoice you send to client via email from within MIDAS will be sent as a PDF attachment. With this setting disabled, the contents of an invoice will instead be included within the main body of any such email (rather than as a PDF attachment).

NOTE: Self Hosted customers may first need to install additional components. For more information, please see: How to install prerequisites for PDF generation support

Send invoices in compatibility mode

Some mail clients don't yet support displaying modern email layouts. This can cause invoices emailed through your MIDAS system to display strangely for some recipients. You can resolve this by enabling this option. With this option enabled, MIDAS will send emailed invoices using traditional HTML tables rather than more modern CSS layouts.

MIDAS » Documentation » Manage Email Settings