Posts Tagged: v4.11

MIDAS v4.11 Now Available!

Happy New Year, folks!

We’re excited to tell you about our latest update to MIDAS – version v4.11 – which is available now and is bursting with brand new and improved features!
If you were an avid reader of our blog back in December, then you’ll already know about some of the great new features in this latest release of our popular web based scheduling software, but in case you missed it…

Here are the Key Features of v4.11:

10th MIDAS AnniversaryLast month we also celebrated our 10th Anniversary, so if you’re considering changing to a new scheduling system for your organization in 2016, make sure you choose one with a solid history that’s in active development… like MIDAS!
….and if you think changing scheduling systems would be a laborious task, it’s really easy to import existing data from other calendar/scheduling applications into MIDAS

How To Get MIDAS v4.11…

New Customers:

New customers can purchase v4.11 directly through our secure website at https://mid.as/pricing

Existing “Self-Hosted” Customers:

Existing customers running “self-hosted” editions and with a valid Annual Support Subscription may update to v4.11 from within the software right now by going to via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Update.

Existing “Self-Hosted” Customers:

Our existing customers with active cloud-hosted editions of MIDAS don’t need to do anything – we’ve already automatically updated you to v4.11!

Remember, if things look out of place or don’t function correctly, it’s likely that your web browser is still “caching” elements of the older version of MIDAS you were using – simply clearing your cache will resolve this.

We hope you enjoy the new & improved features of MIDAS v4.11, and we’d like to wish you all the very best for the New Year!
Stay tuned for more exciting updates throughout 2016…


Improved Client Selector

As the next update to our web based room booking and resource scheduling software fast approaches, we’re giving you a “first look” on our blog at some of the new and improved features you can look forward to in this next update to MIDAS v4.11…

We’ve overhauled the “client” field on the Add/Modify Bookings screen for v4.11:

The previous Client selector in v4.10
The previous Client selector in v4.10 and earlier
The new Client selector in v4.11
The new Client selector in v4.11

The improved client selector is easier to read, larger (making it easier to select clients on very small screens), and highlights in bold the parts of the search results matching the characters you’ve typed into the Client field.

The improved client selector is also better able to handle thousands of client records. In MIDAS v4.10 and earlier if you end up with thousands of clients in your database, the loading time of the Add/Modify Bookings screen could become degraded. The new client selector in v4.11 combats this, by loading searching results dynamically “on demand” if there are a significant number of clients in your database.

One of the reasons why your client database can become very large is if users failed to select an existing client when adding new bookings. We’re also combating this in v4.11.

Previously, on Add/Modify Bookings screen, users had the option to select an existing client from a drop-down list of clients which appeared when they begin typing into the “Client” field. However, if a user ignored the drop down list of existing clients, and completed manually typing a client name into this field, MIDAS would assume that you didn’t wish to use any existing clients and instead wished to create a new client.

This led in many cases to customer’s databases containing numerous entries for what was essentially the same client, simply because users failed to select from the list of existing clients each time they added a booking.

There’s been a “Merge Clients” tool within MIDAS for a while now to allow administrators to merge the bookings & invoices of clients they deem to be essentially “identical”, however, we hope the need to use this tool will be minimized with a new feature in v4.11.

In v4.11 if you fail to select an existing client from the drop-down list of suggestions, and manually complete typing of a client’s name, MIDAS will check in the background whether there’s already one or more existing clients in the database that match the name you’ve manually typed into the client field. If there is, MIDAS will display of list of these clients, prompting you to “Use” one of these existing clients:

Prompt to use an existing client
Prompt to use an existing client

If, however, you really do want to create a new client, you can simply click dismiss this prompt to continue adding your booking with the new client.

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?

Activity Logging Improvements

The next update to our web based room booking and resource scheduling software is fast approaching, and throughout this month we’re giving you a “first look” at some of the new features and improvements coming in MIDAS v4.11…

Perhaps one of the most powerful, yet overlooked, tools in MIDAS for administrators is the Recent Activity Log.

The Recent Activity Log records all recent actions that have taken place within your MIDAS system. It records the date, time, IP address and user who initiated the action.

We’re making a couple of improvements in this area for v4.11 to help you better understand and keep track of how your scheduling system is being used.

In v4.11, the Recent Activity Log now also records all failed login attempts, including those on locked or suspended user accounts:

Audit Log - Failed Login Attempts
Audit Log – Failed Login Attempts

Additionally, as the Recent Activity Log can become large, we’ve added a filter so that you can quickly filter the log by different event categories. The 8 categories available cover the following areas: Bookings, Clients, Email, Invoices, Printing, Settings, System, and Booking Requests.

For example, filtering the Recent Activity Log to only show events in the “Bookings” category will then only show log entries relating to the addition, modification, deletion, and restoration of bookings. Similarly, filtering the log by the “System” category will only show system-related log messages, including successful & failed login attempts, password changes, logouts, backup generation and system updates.

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?

Improved Session Control

The next update to our web based room booking and resource scheduling software is fast approaching. Throughout this month we’re giving you a “first look” at some new features and improvements coming in MIDAS v4.11.

We take a pro-active approach to security here at MIDAS, so we’re excited to provide you with greater control over your sessions in v4.11.

If the multi-session (Allow Multiple Logins By Users) feature has been enabled for your MIDAS system, you’ll be able to log in to your scheduling system from multiple devices simultaneously.

If this option has been enabled on your system, then whenever you log in, you’ll be able to click your name near the top of your screen to see a list of all devices/browsers you’re currently logged in from:

Session Control

The list will show when the last activity in MIDAS occurred from each device, as well as indicating the device’s IP and Browser/OS. The highlighted entry denotes your current session.

You can remotely log out any of these sessions by clicking/tapping the device’s adjacent “x” icon.

Other session improvements

We’ve also made a couple of other improvements in relation to sessions for v4.11:

Firstly, when changing your password, all other active sessions you’re currently logged into will automatically be logged out. This takes place across all your devices.

Secondly, we’ve provided a new administrative setting to force accounts to be logged out if they’ve been logged in for a lengthy period of time. This will happen regardless of whether any recent account activity took place. This setting complements the existing setting which allows sessions to automatically log out if they become “idle”. The new additional setting can be useful to combat situations where a user can effectively remain logged into MIDAS “indefinitely”. This can happen if they’re running a browser extension/addon which regularly refreshes their browser window. With this new setting, even if a user’s browser window is regularly refreshing so that they never hit the idle timeout period, the new “Always force logout after X hours” setting will still force their session to timeout if it’s been logged into for more than 1-24 hours.

This new setting can be accessed via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Security. For more information, please see: Manage Security Settings

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?