Posts Tagged: email

Booking Cancellation Notifications

The next update to our web based room booking and resource scheduling software is just around the corner, and so over the coming days on our blog we’re going to give you a first look at some of the new features and improvements you can look forward to in MIDAS v4.11..

The first new feature of v4.11 we’d like to unveil is the ability to send a “Booking Cancellation” to a client when their booking(s) are deleted from the system.

When bookings are deleted, users will now be presented with the option to send a booking cancellation notification, along with a brief reason why the booking has been “deleted” (canceled):

Send Booking Cancellation Notifications

This functionality is available when individual bookings are deleted, or when multiple bookings are deleted via the “Delete Similar Bookings” function.

Like other email notifications that MIDAS is capable of generating, you also be able to customize the content of the “Booking Cancellation” email template too.

MIDAS v4.11 will soon be generally available, however for now it is only available to Beta Testers. We’re currently looking for additional testers to help test and provide feedback/bug reports on this and future updates to our software before release. It’s free and no experience is required. Find out more here.

If you would like to be notified when v4.11 is fully released, then why not join our Mailing List?

Add Multiple Email Addresses For Clients

Multiple Email Addresses For ClientsThe next release of our web based room booking and resource scheduling software, MIDAS is just around the corner, and we’re giving you a “sneak peek” at some of the new and improved features coming with this next update!

Today we’re excited to tell you about an improvement coming to client records within MIDAS. Until now, it’s only been possible to associate a single email address with each client record. This has meant that booking confirmations and reminders as well as invoices can only be sent to the single email address on record for the client in question.

In MIDAS v4.09, you’ll now be able to specify multiple email addresses for each client record, and accordingly, email correspondence (such as booking confirmation/reminder notifications, and invoices, etc) can be automatically sent to multiple email addresses.

Why might this be useful? Well, we’ve had a number of requests from customers for such capability when it comes to client email addresses. For example, some customers have clients where the email contact for the booking itself differs from the email contact for invoicing. This new improvement to email addresses in MIDAS v4.09 will allow you to assign both the booking contact’s email address and the invoice contact’s email address to the same client record, so that all email correspondence from your MIDAS will go to both!

Similarly, if you have a booking for an external organization, for which there is more than one contact person, you could create a generic client for the organization, and add all their contact email addresses to it, thus ensuring that correspondence is distributed to them all.

Important information for our “Hosted Customers”:

  • Hosted customers who have their MIDAS system configured to send email via the built-in “Sendmail” option (MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Email) will be limited to sending email to a maximum of two email addresses per client record.
  • Hosted customers who have their MIDAS system configured to send email via the external “SMTP” option (MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Email) will be limited to sending email to a maximum of five email addresses per client record.
  • To avoid these limits, and be able to assign as many email addresses to an individual client record as you’d like, please consider switching to a self-hosted edition. These limits on the number of email recipients are not applied to self-hosted editions.

Template Improvements for v4.07

The next substantial update to our popular web based room booking and resource scheduling software is just around the corner, and so throughout this month, we’re outlining some of the new features and improvements you can expect to see in the upcoming v4.07 release….

This post covers some of the improvements coming to the customizable “Templates” within MIDAS.

A range of customizable templates has been available to administrators for some time (ever since v3.12, way back in May 2011) via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Templates. v4.07 sees a number of improvements to these templates…

New MIDAS Email Templates
New MIDAS Email Templates

More Flexible Email Templates

List of Templates In previous releases, there has been a single customizable email template which was applied to all outgoing emails sent through your scheduling system. For v4.07, we’ve extended the number of email templates to NINE!

You’ll now be able to modify separate email templates for booking confirmations, booking reminders, invoice reminders, invoice overdue notifications, booking request submitted/approved/rejected notifications, as well as the original “general” email template for all other emails.

You’ll also be able to customize the subject field of most of these emails templates too!

 


More Variables

To accompany the many new templates available in v4.07, we’re also introducing a range of new “variables” which can be inserted into your template code to provide even more flexibility.

For example, a new %CLIENT_FIRSTNAME% variable has been introduced alongside the previous %CLIENT% variable to allow your emails to be more informal by using the client’s first name instead of their full name.

A whole host of new invoicing variables have also been introduced including, %INVOICEDUEDATE%, %INVOICEDUEIN%, %INVOICEOVERDUEBY%, and %INVOICETERMS%, as well as new variables giving you far greater control over the “Invoice To” section of your invoices.

The previous %INVOICETO% variable (which includes the client’s name, organization, postal address and email address) can be broken down into smaller parts through the use of the new variables %INVOICETO_CLIENT%, %INVOICETO_ORG%, %INVOICETO_ADDRESS%, and %INVOICETO_EMAIL%


Visual Template Editing

The other big improvement for templates in v4.07 is the ability to edit your templates “visually” in the “Template Preview” area as well as manually in the “Template Code” area.

You can now type, copy, cut, paste, and move items around in the “Template Preview” area, and MIDAS will automatically generate updated template code from your edits.


Reset Templates

Messed up a template and want to start again? Each template within MIDAS can now be reset to its standard factory default.


Customize the Web Request and Pay Online templates further with your own .css Style Sheets

External Custom CSS We’re also giving you even more control over the “look and feel” of your “Public Booking Request” and “Pay Online” screens by allowing you to specify your own external .css Style Sheets that will override the default theme your MIDAS is running in when these pages are displayed.