Posts Tagged: v4.13

MIDAS v4.13 Out Now!

This year we’re celebrating our 10th year developing MIDAS, our Web Based Room Booking and Resource Scheduling Software!

With exciting new and improved features being added to MIDAS several times each year, we’re pleased to tell you about our latest update – v4.13 – which has just been released!

New & Improved in 4.13:

How To Get MIDAS v4.13…

New To MIDAS?

We are committed to keeping our pricing fair and accessible to organizations of all sizes and budgets. Unlike many of our competitors who don’t publish their prices, we’re totally upfront and transparent about our pricing structure and clearly display prices on our website.

You can view pricing, find out more, and purchase MIDAS securely at https://mid.as/pricing

Existing “Self Hosted” Customer?

Self-Hosted customers with ongoing Annual Support Subscriptions may update to v4.13 right now! It only takes a couple of clicks – simply log in to your MIDAS system and go to MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Update

Existing “Cloud Hosted” Customer?

Cloud-Hosted customers don’t need to do anything! – All our active Cloud-Hosted MIDAS customers will be automatically updated this weekend to the latest version of MIDAS!

Help Improve MIDAS!

We’re able to bring you exciting updates like v4.13 thanks in part to our Beta Testers – many of whom are just every day MIDAS users!

Our Beta Testers get early-access to upcoming releases to explore and provide feedback on, allowing us to make changes and address potential issues before each new version is publicly released.

We also reward Testers for their contributions with discounts against the cost of purchasing MIDAS, or which can be used against upgrades & renewals for an existing MIDAS system!

We’re always on the lookout for additional testers to help shape future versions of MIDAS. It’s free to get involved and you don’t need any previous experience.

Find out more, apply now, and help shape future MIDAS releases


If you have any questions about MIDAS, why not drop us an email, or reach out to us through social media – We’d love to hear from you!



Security Enhancements in MIDAS v4.13

If you follow our blog, then you’ll know we’ve been busy putting the finishing touches to the next update to MIDAS. Whilst each new version of our world class room booking and resource scheduling software includes exciting new and improved features and functionality, we’re also proactively committed to providing a secure scheduling solution for your organization.

To that end, MIDAS v4.13 includes a number of security enhancements which we’ll explain below…

15-Point Security Audit

We’re including an on-demand security audit with v4.13. Administrators may access this audit via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Security. When run, the audit will test a number of key metrics of your MIDAS system. This includes your MySQL setup, MIDAS files, and recommended MIDAS settings. A detailed report is generated with appropriate advisories for improving and hardening the security of your MIDAS system:
15-Point Security Audit

Password “Block list”

MIDAS v4.13 includes a list of passwords that are considered “banned”. Banned passwords cannot be used by users when setting a new password or changing an existing password. By default, the block list contains the Top 1000 most common passwords of 2016. Passwords such as “123456”, “password”, “qwerty”, etc are included.

For our self-hosted customers, the list of banned passwords is also editable allowing you to add/remove banned passwords. You’ll find this within within the a file named “bannedpw.dat” within your MIDAS installation.

Improved clean-up of Temporary Logs

MIDAS has included a “Keep temporary logs for x days” setting for many years. This setting has previously defined how long entries persist in the “Recent Activity” log (an audit log which records all user activity within MIDAS). For v4.13 we’ve extended the functionality of this setting to also cover the persistence of log files which MIDAS may create from time to time. For instance, a log file is created if there are issues upgrading MIDAS from a previous version, or issues when importing data from another application, or when logging of API calls is enabled, etc. Whilst these log files would be retained until manually removed, the “Keep temporary logs for x days” setting will now ensure that these files are also removed after a specific period of time.

“Minimum” Minimum Password Length

MIDAS has also included a “Minimum password length” setting since its inception. This setting allowed administrators to set a minimum password length for all user passwords. Starting with v4.13 it will no longer be possible to set this value less than 5 characters.

Password Strength Indicator

Password Strength IndicatorOur password strength indicator has been a feature for administrators creating new user accounts since v4.07. For v4.13, we’ve also made this useful visual indicator available whenever an end-users changes their password. The visual indicator classifies the password as either “Very Weak”, “Weak”, “Fair”, “Good” or “Strong” as you type, with a corresponding color to match (i.e. Red = Very Weak, Orange = Fair, Green = Strong). This classification is based upon a number of factors including the length of the password, the presence of upper and lower case letters as well as numbers and special characters, and whether the password has been banned.
We hope the addition of this visual indicator for end-users will help promote the use of strong passwords.

MIDAS v4.13 is expected to be made available to Beta Testers in the next few weeks, with a general release shortly after. We’re always looking for additional testers to help test and provide feedback/bug reports on pre-release versions of our software, like v4.13. Becoming a tester is free and no experience is required, and what’s more we’ll reward you for your participation! Find out more about becoming a MIDAS Beta Tester here.

If you would like to be notified when v4.13 is fully released, then why not join our Mailing List?

Invoicing Improvements in MIDAS v4.13

With development on the next update to our room booking and resource scheduling software, MIDAS nearing completion, we’re shedding a little light here on some of the new and improved features coming in v4.13.

v4.13 includes a sprinkling of small improvements to the already extensive invoicing capabilities of MIDAS. These include…

Option to automatically mark invoices totaling zero as paid

MIDAS already provides options to only generate invoices if the invoice total is non-zero, or generate invoices regardless of the invoice total.

In v4.13 we’re adding an additional setting to control what happens in the event that a zero total invoice is generated. When enabled, any invoice generated that has a total of zero will automatically be marked as “Paid in full”.

You’ll find this new setting via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Invoicing.

Option to generate an invoice when directly approving booking request

Previously, if you wanted to generate an invoice from a booking request you were about to approve, you would either need to firstly approve it and then separately generate an invoice, or modify the booking request and tick the “Create Invoice” box when approving.

We’re making it even easier in v4.13 to generate an invoice at the same time as approving a booking request. At the bottom of your “Pending Booking Requests” screen, there’s now an “Generate Invoices when approving requests” tick box. Selecting this option before you approve booking requests will automatically generate invoices accordingly.

Note: This option will not be available if your user permissions don’t allow access to the invoicing capabilities of MIDAS.

%PAIDON% Receipt template placeholder variable to denote date invoice was paid in full

We’re also introducing a new placeholder variable for the “Invoice: Receipt” template.

The new %PAIDON% variable will be automatically substituted for the date the corresponding invoice was paid in full on.

Templates (including the “Invoice: Receipt” template) can be viewed and modified via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Templates.


With development nearing completion on the next update to our room booking and resource scheduling software, MIDAS, we’re shedding a little light here on our blog on some of the new and improved features to look forward to in v4.13…

When a new booking request or message is received or a new “watch notification” triggered, MIDAS alerts the user by subtly changing the relevant toolbar icon to denote the number of new booking requests or messages requiring your attention. Users can also optionally choose to see a list of these requests/messages each time they login in.

Furthermore, a user can optionally choose to be sent email notifications upon each new booking request, message, or watch notification.

With the upcoming new addition of Desktop Notifications in v4.13, which enables more prominent on-screen alerts to logged in users upon new booking requests, messages,or watch notifications, we’ve added a useful new option to v4.13..

Suppress New Booking Request Email NotificationsSuppress New Message/Watch Notification Emails
Suppress new Booking Request email notifications whilst logged inSuppress new Message/Watch notification emails whilst logged in

The new settings will allow a user to suppress receiving such notifications in their email inbox whilst they are currently logged in to MIDAS, so they’ll only be sent during those times they’re away from their computer, laptop, tablet or mobile device, and logged out.

We believe these new per-user setting will help to reduce the number of redundant email notifications from your MIDAS system, but of course, because this setting can easily be toggled on/off by users at any time – if you do still want to receive an email notification on every new request/message, even when you’re logged in you’ll still be able to do so!