Posts Tagged: email

Client Notification Improvements

We believe in giving your clients control over the automated email notifications and reminders they may receive from your MIDAS system. To that end, we’re making some improvements in this area for v4.25.

Improved Client Email Notification Settings

Previously, each client in MIDAS could be set to receive the following email notifications:

  • None – Client isn’t sent any automated reminders.
  • Bookings – Client is sent automated reminders about their upcoming bookings.
  • Invoices – Client is sent automated reminders about their upcoming invoices.
  • Bookings + Invoices – Client is sent automated reminders about their upcoming bookings and upcoming invoices.

Automated client email notification from your MIDAS system included an unsubscribe link. This allowed clients to opt out of receiving further automated notifications from your MIDAS system. Effectively, the client’s “E-Mail Reminders” setting reverts back to “None”.

For v4.25, we’re extending the automated client notification email options. These now include:

Improved Client Email Reminder/Notification Options in v4.25
Improved Client Email Reminder/Notification Options in v4.25
  • Bookings (Upcoming) – Client is sent automated reminders about their upcoming bookings.
  • Bookings (Recently Ended) – Client is sent automated follow-up emails after their bookings.
  • Invoices (Upcoming) – Client is sent automated reminders about their upcoming invoices.
  • Invoices (Overdue) – Client is sent automated reminders about their overdue invoices.

Clients can also unsubscribe from each notification type, rather than blanket unsubscribing from all notifications.

Easier For Clients To Unsubscribe From Notifications

MIDAS v4.25 now includes a “List-Unsubscribe” header in automated email notifications to your clients. This can make it even easier for them to opt-out of receiving further automated notifications from your MIDAS system.

Email software which support the “List-Unsubscribe” header may show a bar/banner at the top of emails, which users can click to opt-out of similar emails.


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 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!


In this blog post, we’ll take a look at SPF and why its important in ensuring email from your MIDAS room booking system is reliably delivered.

SPF stands for “Sender Policy Framework” and its purpose is to prevent unauthorized people from forging your e-mail address and pretending to be you. SPF has been around for a number of years now, but in recent times has been growing in popularity as more and more websites and email providers start enforcing it.

As our MIDAS web based room booking systems are capable of sending email on your behalf, it’s important to understand how SPF works and how it can help solve email delivery issues in MIDAS.

Take for instance the following example Scenario:

  • Your MIDAS system is running on domain “A” (i.e. your-organization.mid.as)
  • Your MIDAS system is configured to send emails to appear as though they are sent from an email address belonging to domain “B” (i.e. your-organization.com)
  • An email is sent from your MIDAS system to a recipient with an email address on domain C

In the above example, the receiving mail server for domain C queries the SPF record on domain B to check whether domain A is authorized to send mail on behalf of domain B. If it isn’t the email is rejected.

An SPF record is simply a TXT record in a given domain’s DNS, and a simple example may look similar to this:

v=spf1 +a +mx ~all

The format of an SPF record begins with a version number; the current SPF version is “v = spf1”.
Following the version string, any number of expressions may be included which are evaluated in the order they appear. These consist of an optional “qualifier” (+, -, ~, or ?) and a “mechanism” (all, a, mx, ip4, or include). The first mechanism that is matched in the SPF record determines the result of the entire valuation of the SPF record.

Qualifiers:

QualifierResultDescription
+PassDefines an authorized sender
(If no qualifier is specified, + is assumed)
FailDefines an unauthorized sender
~SoftFailDefines an unauthorized sender
(however it may not notify the sender that their email failed)
?NeutralDefines a sender whose legitimacy isn’t determined
(In such instances, sending is allowed)

Mechanisms:

MechanismApplies if…
allalways
aAn A (or AAAA) record of the polled (or explicitly specified) domain contains the IP address of the sender
mxAn A (or AAAA) record of the polled (or explicitly specified) domain contains the IP address of the sender
ip4The specified IPv4 address is the IP address of the sender or of the specified IPv4 subnet which contains it
includeAn additional SPF request for the domain specified in the include statement contains the IP address of the sender

SPF records cannot be over 255 characters in length and cannot include more than ten “include” statements.

Example SPF record:

v=spf1 +a +ip4:1.2.3.4 -ip4:5.6.7.8 +include:somedomain.com ~all

In the above example:

  1. Email delivery will be allowed if it originated from the same domain it was sent (+a).
  2. Email delivery will also be allowed if it originated from the specific IP address 1.2.3.4
  3. Email delivery will be rejected if it originated from the IP address 5.6.7.8.
  4. Email delivery will be allowed if it matches the rules defined in the SPF record on “somedomain.com”
  5. All other email sources will be softly rejected (~all)

Bringing it back to MIDAS…

If you run a cloud-hosted MIDAS system at the domain “your-organization.mid.as”, your organization’s own website is “your-organization.com”, and you wish to allow your MIDAS system to send email on behalf of addresses @your-organization.com, then you should setup/modify an SPF record on your-organization.com.

This SPF record would authorize your hosted MIDAS system to send email on behalf of your organization. Failing to correctly set an SPF record for your domain may mean that emails sent from your MIDAS system may not reach recipients.

For our hosted customers, you can simply include “include:_spf.midas.network” in your-organization.com’s SPF record. Your new/modified SPF record may then look similar to this:

v=spf1 +a +mx include:_spf.midas.network ~all

In the above example:

  1. Email delivery will be allowed if it originated from the same domain it was sent (+a).
  2. Email delivery will be allowed if it originated from the same mail server as it was sent (+mx)
  3. Email delivery will be allowed if it matches the rules defined in the SPF record on “_spf.midas.network”. This will allow your hosted MIDAS system to become an authorized sender of email for your domain.
  4. All other email sources will be softly rejected (~all)

Remember, SPF records are simply TXT records within your domain’s DNS. If you’re not sure how to set/modify DNS records for your own domain, you’ll need to defer to the domain’s administrator, registrar, or hosting provider who should be able to assist in making the necessary adjustments to your domain’s DNS record

Further reading from our Knowledgebase:.


When adding new bookings to MIDAS (or modifying existing ones) if there’s an email address on record for the client that you’re making/modifying bookings for, then MIDAS will offer a “Send Booking Confirmation?” tick box on the Booking Availability screen. Selecting this option will send an automated booking confirmation notification by email to the client when the bookings are made.

Sometimes, you may wish these booking confirmation notifications to go to multiple recipients in addition to the primary client that the bookings are for.

That’s why MIDAS (v4.19 and later) automatically detects any email addresses added to the standard “Booking Notes” field, or any text custom booking fields, and offer these as additional “CC” email addresses for the booking confirmation notification to also be copied to.

Here’s an example to illustrate:

Detect email addresses entered into booking fields

Two email addresses have been added to the “Booking Notes” field for the above booking. When “Check Availability and Book” is clicked, the following “Booking Availability” screen is shown:

Offer additional recipients for booking confirmation notification

Notice how MIDAS has detected these email addresses and offered each as an optional “cc” recipient for the booking confirmation email to the client.

Please Note: Cloud-hosted editions of MIDAS will detect a maximum of 5 additional email addresses in booking fields when MIDAS is configured to send via an external SMTP server, or a maximum of 2 additional email addresses when configured to send via the Sendmail option. There are no limits imposed in self-hosted editions.

MIDAS can be configured to send outgoing email via SMTP/Sendmail via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Email. For more information, please refer to the “Manage Email Settings” documentation.

This isn’t the only new feature to be added in v4.19. There are a number of other new & improved features in MIDAS v4.19 too!