Archive for November, 2014

Reporting Improvements in v4.08

MIDAS v4.08 is approaching, and we’re giving your a sneak preview of some of the new and improved features you’ll be able to find in this forthcoming update to our Room Booking and Resource Scheduling Software.

In this article we’ll take a look at a new report coming to the Statistics generation capabilities of MIDAS…

MIDAS is already capable of generating a wealth of graphical statistics and reports into your bookings, clients, invoices, resources, and venue usage, not to mention you can also export data in a range of formats for further analysis/report generation in 3rd party applications (such as Excel).

Following customer feedback, we’re adding a new “Potential Income” report to the Venue Statistics screen for v4.08.

Potential Income Report
New “Potential Income” report in MIDAS v4.28

This brand new report outlines the potential income you can expect to receive from each venue over any given date range based on current bookings. The report takes into account any booking type discounts, and provides a complete break down of potential income to provide separate projected income amounts for venue hire, equipment usage, consumables usage, and staffing costs.

With this new “Potential Income” report, you’ll be able to compare your venues and resources to see which are performing best and which are under performing. As this report can also be generated for dates in the future, you can also use this report to gain a clear idea of what future income is likely to be.


Invoicing Improvements in v4.08

MIDAS v4.08 is on the horizon, and as is becoming tradition we’re giving readers of our blog a sneak preview of some of the new and improved features you’ll be able to find in this forthcoming update to our popular Web Based Room Booking and Resource Scheduling Software.

In this blog post we’ll take a look at some of the improvements coming to the invoicing capabilities of MIDAS…

Cancellation Fee Invoices

Generate Invoice For Late Cancellations
Generate Invoice For Late Cancellations

MIDAS v4.08 introduces the ability for your booking system to automatically generate invoices if a booking is cancelled at short notice. You can set the generation of these invoices to trigger is a booking is deleted less than a specified number of days or hours before the booking was due to take place. These “Cancellation Fee” invoices can be configured to charge the client a fixed amount for a late cancellation of their booking, or as a percentage of the total cost of their original booking.

Cancellation Invoices also have their own customizable “template” (MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Templates) allowing you to customize their appearance separately to your regular invoices.

Automatically Send Invoices

Automatically Send Unsent Invoices
Automatically Send Unsent Invoices

Building upon the automated Scheduled Task features introduced in our previous update, v4.08 introduces an additional option to have the system automatically send any unsent invoices at a specified time each day.

In earlier versions, invoices would remain “unsent” until manually actioned by a user. This new feature gives you the option to automate this process!

Prevent Invoice Deletion

Back in MIDAS v4.03, we introduced a setting to prevent an invoice from being deleted after sending, until the invoice was paid in full. Following customer feedback, we’re now extending this in v4.08 to give you the option to prevent invoices from ever being deleted/removed from the system.

Re-Email Invoices

Previously, once an invoice had been partially paid, or when payment was overdue, it was no longer possible to re-email the invoice to the client again. This restriction has been removed for v4.08.


Digital Signage Addon Improved!

Digital Signage The Digital Signage addon for our room booking and resource scheduling software is a feature-rich signage solution offering real-time display of your room bookings on TV screens around your site! Whether you’d like to display today’s bookings to visitors in your reception area, or have an individual screen outside each room just showing what’s currently taking place in that one room, our optional Digital Signage addon is for you! Find out how it works in this Video Tutorial.

Digital Signage Booking System

Today we’ve released an update to the Digital Signage addon.

The v1.09 update features better handling of server connection errors. Our Digital Signage addon has always allowed you to configure on a per-screen basis how often data on the screen should refresh. The default interval is every 5 minutes. This means every 5 minutes the addon needs to connect to your MIDAS server to retrieve the most up-to-date information to display on your screens.

No more Unable To Connect ScreensIn previous versions, if the addon was unable to connect to your MIDAS server for whatever reason, your signage screens could then display an ugly browser “Web page not available”-type screen. This would then require a subsequent manual refresh in order to display data again.

We’ve massively improved this for v1.09 of the addon! Now, if the addon is unable to connect to your server for any reason, it will simply retain the last known data on screen. At the same time, a small indication in the lower left corner indicating that the connection to the server has been lost will show. MIDAS will then keep attempting to automatically re-establish a connection to your server, and will update your screen(s) once the connection can be re-established.

We’re sure this update with meet with the approval of administrators, especially those running multiple screens around their site. Now there’s no need to manually refresh all screens after a server reboot or loss of internet connection!

The other notable improvement for v1.09 is in the way screen refreshes and transitions occur. Now the current screen will now smoothly “fade out” and then “fade in” the next screen.

You’ll find complete implementation, usage documentation and live examples of our Digital Signage at mid.as/digital-signage

How to Get The Digital Signage Addon For MIDAS:

Our Digital Signage addon v1.09 is available as a FREE update to customers with a previous version of the addon and who have a Support Subscription valid for MIDAS v4.07.

Customers may update their addon via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage Addons → Addons Ready To Update

Customers who don’t already have the Digital Signage addon for their MIDAS can add it by upgrading

Customers who don’t yet have MIDAS can purchase MIDAS together with the optional Digital Signage addon here

You might also be interested in:
Case Study: Read how The Livingston Centre in Ontario, Canada use the Digital Signage Addon at their venue..