Posts Tagged: custom fields

Custom Validation For Required Fields

MIDAS ships with a set of standard booking and client input fields. These input fields allow you to capture specific details about a client and their bookings.

Standard Input Fields In MIDAS
Standard Input Fields In MIDAS

Now some of these fields will always be required. For bookings, a minimum of a date and a venue (room/bookable space) is required. All other booking fields can be set to be optional. Likewise, for clients, a minimum of the client’s name is required. All other client fields can be set to be optional.

Here’s a list of the standard fields which are included in MIDAS by default:

Default Booking FieldsDefault Client Fields
DateClient
Times (Booking)Organization
Times (Setup / Breakdown)E-mail Address
VenueMailing Address
Client / OrganizationTelephone Number
AttendeesFax Number
Booking TypeCell/Mobile Number
Booking NotesClient Notes
Resources

MIDAS also allows you to “turn off” fields that you don’t need. So if you don’t need to capture a client’s fax number, you can disable that field.

But that’s not all – in addition to the standard “default” fields, you can create additional custom booking or client fields in MIDAS.

Adding Custom Fields

A range of different types of custom fields can be created, including:

  • Checkbox – A “tick box” field.
  • File – Allows uploading/attaching of files and documents to bookings or client records (self-hosted systems only)
  • List (Single Select) – A drop-down list of pre-defined items from which a single item may be selected.
  • List (Multi Select) – A drop-down list of pre-defined items from which multiple items may be selected.
  • Number – A field that will only accept numerical input.
  • Range – A “slider” control allowing selection of a numeric value within a defined range.
  • Text – A single-line text field.
  • Text Area – A multi-line text field.
  • URL – A navigable web link to an external resource.

As with standard fields, custom fields can also be set to be “required”. This means that an input is required in the custom field each time it’s shown.

New Validation Feature

For MIDAS v4.34, we’re extending the capabilities of marking custom number, text, text area, and URL fields “required”.

Let’s take the example of a custom single-line text field. Marking this as a required field would ensure that a user would enter something into the field. However, MIDAS wouldn’t check what they’d actually entered. Just entering a single character, or gibberish would be enough to allow you to proceed.

From v4.34 onwards, when setting a custom number, text, text area, and URL field as “required”, you can instruct MIDAS what values are considered “valid” for the field. A user would then need to enter a “valid” value in order to proceed.

Custom Field Validation Using Regular Expressions
Custom Field Validation Using Regular Expressions

A Simple Example

As an example, you could make it so that a user has to enter the word “YES” into a custom text field in order to proceed. If the custom field doesn’t contain the word “YES”, the user will be prompted to correct their entry:

Require Valid Entries In Custom Fields
Require Valid Entries In Custom Fields

The Power Of REGEX

Regular Expressions (REGEX) can be used to create more complex validations for your custom fields too. We’ll cover REGEX in more depth in a future article. In the meantime, as a brief introduction, here are a few simple yet useful REGEX’s for validating entries into your custom fields:

DescriptionREGEX
Value must start with the letters “BOOK”^BOOK
Value must end with the letters “ING”ING$
Value must contain “BOOKING”BOOKING
Value must be exactly “BOOKING”^BOOKING$
Value must contain a number (digit)\d
Value must not contain a number (digit)\D
Value must be exactly “BOOK”, followed by two single digit numbers^BOOK\d\d$

You’ll find further examples together with detailed explanations in our KB article: How to use Regular Expressions for custom input validation.

How To Use

Custom field validation can be setup via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Fields.

On any custom number, text, text area, or URL fields, right-click (or long press on touch screens) on the field’s “Required” box.

You’ll then be able to set or modify the Regular Expression that should be used to validate entries to the field.


Custom Field Improvements

For v4.25, we’ve made a few improvements to custom booking and client fields. These include..

Custom Fields Can Now Include A Descriptive Explainer

When creating a custom field in MIDAS, it may not always be clear precisely to end-users what the field is for. Or, there may be additional information you’d like to present along with the field itself.

That’s why for v4.25 you may also set a description for each custom field. These descriptions are shown to users just above the field, so they’ll know exactly what the field is for.

What’s more, these descriptions may also include simply HTML, allowing for instance the inclusion of a link.

Here’s an example of a custom field without a description:

Custom Checkbox Field
Custom Checkbox Field

Here’s the same field, but this time with a description, including a clickable link:

Custom Checkbox Field with additional descriptive content
Custom Checkbox Field with additional descriptive content

Enforce a Maximum Input Length in Custom Text Fields

When creating a custom text field, you can now limit the maximum number of characters users may enter into the field:

Control the maximum input length of custom text fields
Control the maximum input length of custom text fields

Control How Many Options Are Displayed At Once In Custom List Fields

When creating a custom single select or multi select drop-down list field, you may now indicate how many items from the list should be displayed at any one time. Typically, browsers default to showing 1 item at a time in a single-select list, and 4 items at a time in a multi-select. You can now override this default behavior for each list field:

A custom multi-select list, showing a maximum of 5 items at any given time
A custom multi-select list, showing a maximum of 5 items at any given time

These are just a few of the new and improved features for MIDAS v4.25. Please see this post for details of other new features you’ll find in v4.25.

Reddit You can also ask questions and discuss the new features of v4.25 over on Reddit.


New Multi-Select Custom List Fields

The new decade has gotten off to an unusually windy and wet start here in the UK. We’ve taken a bit of a battering from Storm Ciara and Storm Dennis in quick succession. It’s not been very nice weather to go out in at all! So instead, we’ve been spending a lot of time indoors working away at the next update to our MIDAS web based room booking and resource scheduling software.

Our first update in 2020 includes a host of new and improved features, which we’re going to give you a look at in the coming blog posts.

In this post we’re going to cover the first of these new features coming in MIDAS v4.24:

Multi-Select Custom List Fields

One of the reasons our room bookings software is so flexible and versatile is that we allow you to create your own bespoke booking fields, and more recently your own bespoke client fields too!

The types of custom booking/client fields you can create in MIDAS are as follows:

  • Checkbox – A “tick box” field
  • File – (self-hosted editions only) Allows uploading/attaching of files and documents to client records
  • List – A drop-down list of pre-defined items
  • Number – A field that will only accept numerical input
  • Range – A “slider” control allowing selection of a numeric value within a defined range
  • Text – A single-line text field
  • Text Area – A multi-line text field
  • URL – A navigable web link to an external resource

Documentation on how to create and use custom fields in your MIDAS system may be found here. We also have a short tutorial covering custom fields too:

TUTORIAL: How to Control & Customize Fields in MIDAS

Until now the custom “List” field allowed users to select a single item from a list of pre-defined values created by an administrator, and assign the selected item to the booking or client record.

For v4.24, we’re expanding the custom “List” field options to additionally include a “multi select” list option. Administrators can now also create drop-down lists from which users may select multiple options.

Administrators will of course also be able to select which option (or options) in the list are selected by default, and also control whether the list is visible to all users, or restricted to just certain users:

Multi-select custom drop-down field in MIDAS booking systems
New multi-select custom field option in MIDAS v4.24

We’re excited about the new custom “multi-select list” field option coming in v4.24. Once again, this has been implemented as a direct result of customer feedback. Remember, we love feedback and feature requests from our customers, so do vote and let us know what you’d like to see in future updates to our software.


Custom Client Fields

Things are hotting up here in Europe – and we don’t mean Brexit! A heatwave is currently engulfing parts of the continent with temperatures hitting a whopping 40°C in Paris. Across the Channel here in the UK the temperature is far more bearable, and so we’ve been busy working away on development on the next release of our leading web based room and resource scheduling system, MIDAS.

We’re excited to announce that the forthcoming v4.22 update will include the often requested feature of “custom client fields”, including the ability for self-hosted MIDAS customers to attach documents (i.e. insurance certificates, contracts, etc) to client records.

Similar to the “custom booking fields” feature first introduced way back in 2010, which allows administrators to add additional booking fields to their MIDAS system on top of the standard booking fields, the new custom client fields feature will provide similar functionality to client records in your MIDAS database.

Prior to v4.22, the standard client fields in MIDAS were fixed and allowed you to capture the following items of data for each of your clients/customers:

  • Client name
  • Organization
  • E-mail address (or addresses)
  • Postal address
  • Telephone number
  • Fax number
  • Mobile/Cell number
  • Notes

The introduction of custom client fields gives you even more flexibility! Now you’ll be able to add additional fields to capture other client information that you wish to collect, for example you could add a “Salutation” list field (Mr, Mrs, Ms, Miss, Rev, Dr, etc), or a file upload field to capture an insurance document from your clients..

A custom “Salutation” client field in MIDAS v4.22
A custom “Salutation” client field in MIDAS v4.22
A custom "Insurance Document" upload client field in MIDAS v4.22
A custom “Insurance Document” upload client field in MIDAS v4.22

The types of custom client fields that may be added are the same as those available for custom booking fields, namely:

  • Checkbox – A “tick box” field
  • File – (self-hosted editions only) Allows uploading/attaching of files and documents to client records
  • List – A drop-down list of pre-defined items
  • Number – A field that will only accept numerical input
  • Range – A “slider” control allowing selection of a numeric value within a defined range
  • Text – A single-line text field
  • Text Area – A multi-line text field
  • URL – A navigable web link to an external resource

Both custom booking and custom client fields may be managed via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Fields

Custom client fields in MIDAS v4.22
Custom Client Fields in MIDAS v4.22

From this screen you’ll also be able to control which client fields (both standard and custom) should be included on printouts, in search results, and on public booking/request screens. You’ll also be able to re-order client fields as well as selectively hide them from individual users too!