Archive for March, 2020

MIDAS v4.24 Out Now!

We’re all experiencing unprecedented times with the global Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Firstly, if you’re an existing customer whose business is currently affected by the situation, we want to reassure you that we’re here to help! For more information, please see our recent blog post: 3 ways we’re supporting customer’s businesses affected by Coronavirus.

Now, here at MIDAS as we are a small and agile online business, and as such our operations haven’t been significantly affected at this time. For all intents and purposes, it’s “business as usual” here at MIDAS. Our sales team is still available online (via email or Live Chat) to answer any pre-sales questions you may have. Our support team is still providing prompt assistance to customer’s support queries (you can view our latest response times on our dedicated Service Status site).

As such, we’ve decided to press ahead with the release of our next update to MIDAS, v4.24, which is available now.

Highlights of MIDAS v4.24 include:

  • New: Support for multi-select custom list fields
  • New: Post booking email option – send clients an automated email after their bookings have taken place
  • New: “Can Bypass Venue Blocks” user permission (disabled by default)
  • New: Optional “Reviews” addon – automatically collect feedback, ratings, and reviews from your customers
  • Improved: List of organizations in drop-down on Invoicing screen now limited to organizations with invoices
  • Improved: BCC to me option when emailing an invoice/receipt now remembers user’s previous setting
  • Improved: Individual client statistics now include count and sum of outstanding invoices and client’s current credit
  • Improved: When assigning the “Can Process Booking Requests” permission, MIDAS will indicate if the user isn’t currently a manager of any venues
  • Fixed: Cumulative roll-up of various fixes for issues discovered since v4.23

How To Get MIDAS v4.24…

New To MIDAS?

We are committed to fair and accessible pricing for all organizations regardless of size. We’re totally upfront and transparent about our pricing structure, and you can purchase MIDAS v4.24 securely through our website and be up and running in no time!

“Self Hosted” Customers:

Self-Hosted customers with ongoing Annual Support Subscriptions will be able to update to v4.24 in the coming weeks. It only takes a couple of clicks – simply log in to your MIDAS system and go to MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Update.

If no update is available, please check back again in a few days time, as we are staggering updates for self-hosted customers over the next few weeks.

“Cloud Hosted” Customers:

Cloud-Hosted customers don’t need to do anything! – All our active Cloud-Hosted MIDAS customers have now been automatically updated to this latest version of MIDAS

Thank you for your continued support of our software during this unprecedented period of global uncertainty. Please remember if you’re an existing customer affected by the current situation, that we’re here to support you!


The Coronavirus (COVID-19) is arguably the largest global health threat in modern times. Now classified as a “Pandemic” by the World Health Organization (WHO), and predicted to last for many months. It is having far-reaching consequences for organizations and businesses around the world.

We want to do our best to support our MIDAS customers in affected businesses however we can. That’s why today we’re announcing a package of support measures for affected businesses;

COVID Support Measure 1

Firstly, and exclusively for our customers in Medical/Healthcare organizations. We recognize the unprecedented demand that there is – and will be – on your services over the coming weeks and months. If your MIDAS subscription is shortly due for renewal, we will allow an extra “grace period” for you to complete your payment without risk of your MIDAS access becoming suspended. It’s more important for your focus right now to be on helping those impacted by the Coronavirus in your care than on paying bills. Therefore, we are happy to defer any upcoming renewal payment for your MIDAS service for up to six months. [1]

COVID Support Measure 2

Secondly, we want to support our customers in businesses and organizations which may have to temporarily close and suspend their operations as a result of Government guidance or restrictions put in place in response to Coronavirus. If your business/organization has suspended its operations, you’ll likely not be using your MIDAS system for a some weeks. We don’t feel it’s fair you should continue to pay for a service during such a period it would be redundant. If you’re in this situation, please contact us. We’d be happy to put a temporary suspension on your MIDAS system for a length of time you wish. Once access is re-instated, we’ll be happy to extend your current subscription period by the same length of time your system was suspended for. For example, if your school is forced to shut for two months, we can suspend your MIDAS system for this period. We’ll then extend your next subscription renewal date by two months. This ensures that you’ll effectively not be paying for your MIDAS system during the period your organization/business closes. [2]

COVID Support Measure 3

Thirdly, we recognize that many employees are now encouraged to work from home by their employers or government to reduce their risk of exposure to and fight transmission of Coronavirus. We also know that in many of our customer’s organizations, multiple personnel may share the same user account in their MIDAS system. This is often the case, for example, in part-time or job share situations. With more people now working remotely from home, you may feel that the current user limit on your MIDAS license makes it difficult for all your staff to still be able to access your MIDAS system remotely and effectively work from home. Therefore, we’re offering temporary user license increases for up to six months for organizations this would benefit. These license increases will enable more of your workforce to work remotely from home. [3]

We’re Here To Help!

If any of the above measures could support your operations during this challenging time, please contact us and we’d be happy to assist.

UPDATE: If you’re now beginning to restart your suspended operations, see 6 Ways MIDAS Can Help Your Business Adjust To COVID-19

Notes:
[1] Applies to both self-hosted and cloud-hosted MIDAS customers in medical/healthcare related organizations only.
[2] Applies to cloud-hosted MIDAS customers only whos business operations have temporarily ceased as a result of government restrictions or other officially recognized guidance. Temporary suspensions won’t be “back dated” and will only come into effect once requested by contacting us.
[3] Applies to cloud-hosted MIDAS customers who wish to enable more of their staff to work from home and still access their MIDAS system in response to the Coronavirus. After six months, the customer has the option to retain the new user license level by purchasing the license upgrade. Alternatively, they can revert back to their previous license level. In the case of opting to revert, any additionally added user accounts over the previous license level would be removed.

T&Cs:
Please note that the support measures outlined herein are discretionary. We will assess eligibility on a case-by-case basis, taking into account – but not limited to – the above notes. The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented and rapidly changing, fluid situation. Therefore, we reserve the right to refuse, revoke, or amend any support measure outlined herein at any time without prior notice.


New Reviews Addon

With the latest update (v4.24) to our MIDAS web based room booking and resource scheduling software fast approaching, we’ve been introducing some of the highlights of the new update over the past few blog posts.

In our previous post, we revealed a new editable “Booking Feedback” template and options to allow your MIDAS system to automatically send clients a post-booking follow-up email. This could be used, for example, to thank them for their recent visit and to encourage them to use your facilities again soon.

To further enhance and extend this new feature, we’re also introducing a new optional “Reviews” addon, which works in conjunction with this feature. This addon allows you to automatically collect feedback, ratings, and reviews of your facilities/business on leading independent review sites, such as Trustpilot.

Initially, the new optional “Reviews” addon supports four leading independent review platforms;

Collect Reviews
https://collect-reviews.com
Reviews.io
https://reviews.io
Trustpilot
https://trustpilot.com
TrustSpot
https://trustspot.io

How It Works

The “Reviews” addon works by automatically notifying an independent review collection platform after a client’s booking has taken place at your facilities. The review platform then in turn sends out a review invitation by email to your client asking them to leave a review or rating of your business on their website.

Here’s how the process works:

  1. A client’s booking in MIDAS takes place.
  2. Shortly thereafter, MIDAS automatically sends the client a post-booking email (the content of which is customizable via a template)
  3. When this email is sent, it is also transparently BCC’d (Blind Carbon Copied) to your chosen review collection platform
  4. The review platform in turn sends your client an invitation to rate/review your business on their independent review platform

What you’ll need

In order to be able to take advantage of the functionality the optional “Reviews” addon offers, you’ll need the following:

  • MIDAS v4.24 (or later)
  • A valid account with a supported review platform (see above for a list of currently supported review platforms)
  • Your MIDAS system correctly configured to send email
  • Scheduled Tasks correctly configured to run in MIDAS, and the new Post-Booking email notification option enabled.

Complete documentation for the new Reviews addon is available online.

Once MIDAS v4.24 is released, new customers will be able to purchase the “Reviews” addon through our secure site.

Existing customers with valid subscriptions running MIDAS v4.24 may add the optional “Reviews” addon to their system by upgrading.

Are there any other review platforms you’d like to see included in this addon in the future? Let us know!


New Booking Feedback Email & Template

Over the past few articles, we’ve unvailed some of the new features in the next update (v4.24) to our MIDAS room and resource scheduling software.

In this article we’re revealing a new email notification. This notification can be configured to automatically send to your clients shortly after their bookings have concluded.

Those familiar with the extensive email notification capabilities of MIDAS will know that you can already configure MIDAS to automatically send clients a variety of notifications. These include; booking confirmations, reminders of their upcoming bookings, invoice payment reminders and more. In fact there are no fewer than 10 different email notification types available in MIDAS. Each of these may be individually customizable through the use of templates.

Send a post-booking email to your clients

For v4.24 we’re adding in an additional email notification template to the list – for “Booking Feedback”. The idea behind this is as follows. A short time after a client’s booking has taken place, MIDAS can automatically send them a courtesy follow-up email. This could simply thank them for their visit. It could also invite them to leave feedback on their room hire experience at your organization.

New Booking Feedback email template in MIDAS
New “Booking Feedback” email template in MIDAS v4.24

As with all other editable templates in MIDAS, the new “Booking Feedback” template may be modified and customized to your particular requirements. Templates are accessed and modified via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Templates. Your templates may be customized to include simple HTML code and placeholder variables.

As a side note, eagle-eyed viewers may also note from the above screenshot that we’ve also now made the Template Preview and Template Code areas vertically resizable! Previously these were both a fixed height.

Once you’ve customized your “Booking Feedback” email template, you can then enable it. You can set how long after a client’s booking has concluded MIDAS should wait before sending the email. These settings may be configured via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Scheduled Tasks.

Enable a Scheduled Task to automatically send an email to a client after their visit
Enable a Scheduled Task to automatically email a client after their visit

For these post-booking emails to be automatically sent, you’ll need to have Scheduled Tasks configured on your server. If Scheduled Tasks are correctly configured, the “Last Run” time indicated in the above screenshot should show a time within the last 60 minutes. All our cloud-hosted customer’s MIDAS systems are pre-configured to run scheduled tasks. For self-hosted customers, if you’ve not yet configured Scheduled Tasks on your server, please refer to our KB article: How to configure your server to run Scheduled Tasks.

We hope our customers will appreciate this new notification and template addition to the forthcoming v4.24 update. In our next article, we’ll look at how the functionality of this new feature can be further enhanced with a brand-new optional addon. So stay tuned to our blog to discover more in the coming days!