Manage Public Settings

The following settings (accessed via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Public) control the public "Web Request" and "Web Booking" interfaces for your MIDAS, allowing non-MIDAS users to check your room availability and make booking "requests" or actual bookings online.

Public Booking Requests

Enable Public Booking Requests

Turns the public "Web Request" interface on or off.

Bulk Approval Order

MIDAS allows administrative users to quickly approve all approvable booking requests. This setting controls the order in which booking requests are approved in such instances, as the order in which requests are approved may subsequently affect the availability of other booking requests.

Options are:

• Earliest Requested First - Booking requests will be approved in the order in which they were received, with the earliest received approved first
• Latest Requested First - Booking requests will be approved in the reverse order in which they were received, with the most recent received approved first
• Earliest Commencing First - Booking requests will be approved in the order in which the requested booking would start, with requests for the nearest start times approved first
• Latest Commencing First - Booking requests will be approved in the reverse order in which the requested booking would start, with requests for the furthest away start times approved first

Auto-Approve Booking Requests

These options allow MIDAS to automatically approve booking requests (availability permitting) as soon as they are received, without requiring approval by an administrator first.

The available options are:

• All - All booking requests received will attempt to be automatically approved by MIDAS.
• For these email addresses / domains - Booking requests received from email addresses or email domains matching this field will attempt to be automatically approved by your MIDAS system. This field accepts a comma separated list of full or partial addresses or domains. For example, a value of "hotmail.com,outlook.com" would mean that any booking requests submitted under @hotmail.com or @outlook.com email addresses would be auto-approved. All other booking requests received would instead require manual approval from an appropriate venue manager.
• For these booking types - All booking requests received that match one of the selected booking types will be automatically approved.

Public Web Booking

Enable Public Web Booking

Turns the public "Web Booking" interface on or off.

Payments must be completed within

Before an individual can complete their web booking, they need to pay for their booking. Prior to the payment stage, a temporary "tentative" booking is added for the individual, which is converted to a "confirmed" booking once payment has been made. If payment has not made within the specified time frame (determined by this setting), then the tentative booking will be removed from the system and the individual would need to re-book.

Automatically create invoices and mark them as paid

With this setting enabled, whenever an individual makes a web booking and associated payment, an invoice is automatically created and marked as paid for their payment.

Shared Public Settings

The following settings affect both Public Requests and Public Bookings...

Venue selection

This setting controls how individuals select a venue (or venues) to request/book.

Options are:

• Individual / Manual - The individual selects from a list of individually publicly accessible venues.
• Automatic / From Group - The individual selects from a venue group, MIDAS then automatically selects a suitable publicly accessible venue from within the selected group.
• Floorplans / Maps - The individual selects venues from a graphical floorplan, map, schematic of your facilities. See Floorplan / Map Editor.

Auto Venue Selection

(Only with Automatic/From Group venue selection)
This setting controls how MIDAS should select a suitable venue when automatic venue selection is in use.

Options are:

• Random - MIDAS will attempt to select an available venue at random from the all public venues within the selected venue group
• Venue Order - MIDAS will attempt to select the next available venue from the all public venues within the selected venue group, based on the order your venues are configured to appear within MIDAS
• Least Used (Number of Bookings) - MIDAS will attempt to select an available public venue from the selected venue group with the least number of existing bookings in it
• Least Used (Venue Utilization) - MIDAS will attempt to select an available public venue from the selected venue group with the most free time in it (i.e. the least utilized venue)

Requests/Bookings must be made at least X days in advance

Prevent users from making last minute booking requests or public bookings by insisting that all requests/bookings are made in advance by a minimum number of days you specify.

Requests/Bookings may not be made more than X days in advance

Prevent users from requesting/booking too far in advance by restricting the number of days ahead you will accept booking requests or public bookings for.

Requests/Bookings cannot be made past

Specify an absolute date past which booking requests and public bookings will not be allowed.

Show on blocks

(Only with Individual/Manual venue selection)
When checking venue availability, if you don't want public to see who's already booked, set "Show on blocks" to "Unavailable". Public will then only see that a venue is unavailable, but won't see who's actually booked it. Alternatively, you may wish to display the name of the client, organization, or type of booking instead.

Block color

(Only with Individual/Manual venue selection)
Change the appearance of booking blocks when public check your venue's availability.

Show Hours of Operation

(Only with Individual/Manual venue selection)
If selected, a visual indication of each selected venues hours of operation will also be shown on the Web Request screen.

Show Venue Capacities

(Only with Individual/Manual venue selection)
If selected, the maximum capacity (occupancy level) for each venue will be indicated when selecting venues on the Web Request screen.

Only allow public requests/bookings from these email domains

This option allows you to restrict public booking requests and public bookings to individuals with certain email addresses. For example, if you were to enter "yourdomain.com" in this field, public booking requests and / or public bookings can only be made by persons entering a "@yourdomain.com" email address. So, if you only wish to accept booking requests and / or public bookings from people within your own organization, this setting can be used to filter out any third party requests/bookings.

Allow client record updates

When a public web request/booking is made, MIDAS will attempt to match the person making the request/booking against an existing client in the database. With this setting enabled, if an existing matching client is found, then the client record will be updated with the new client details the requestor/booker has entered. With this setting disable, if an existing matching client is found, existing details held in the database for that client will be used, and any changes the requestor/booker enters into client fields on the public web request/booking screen will be disregarded.

Account for multiple clients/organizations sharing the same email address

In instances where there is already a single existing matching client record in the database when a person makes a public web booking/request (based upon the email address they've entered), MIDAS will associate the booking/request with that existing client record.

If the same email address is used for multiple clients or organizations, enabling this setting will create additional client records for each variant using the same email. This is useful, for example, in the case of individuals who may making bookings for more than one organizations but use their personal email address each time.