Reserving Meeting Rooms in CS - With Cows
Introduction
COWS is the UC Davis Community Web Scheduler.
This system provides a new way to schedule and market events on the UC Davis campus. Departments are able to create a dedicated site with information specific to their community. Departmental administrators can create rooms, schedule events, and publish calendars. Community members are then able to view all events in a variety of mechanisms including Google Calendar, Outlook, or an interactive website. Community members can also reserve meeting spaces based on business rules developed within the department.
The Community Web Scheduler also integrates with external systems to provide a seamless experience for end-users. Departmental websites and digital signage systems can leverage the information in the Community Web Scheduler to provide an integrated system for application specific information.
How to Get to COWS
COWS is found at https://cows.ucdavis.edu/engr
To get on the site:
In order to create or edit requests in COWS, you will need to log on.
The Log On control is in the upper-right corner of the page. COWS will
redirect you to the UC Davis CAS authentication page, which requires
your campus Kerberos credentials.
Cows Main Toolbar
The COWS main toolbar always appears at the upper left corner of the
page. The toolbar may show or hide some of its buttons depending on
what page you are viewing, whether you are logged in, and what rights
you have.
The + symbol is most important!. ‘Tis is how you create an event.
Reserve a Room
Reserving a room changes a few form fields as shown at right. A room
must be selected from the Room dropdown. This room will be checked for
conflicts at your requested event time. You can also pick a display
time for your event that differs from the reservation time. Change the
display times if you want to reserve setup or teardown time in the
room, but display only the publicized event time. In the example at
right, the event will display as 8-9am, but the room is reserved 1/2
hour before and after those times.
Reserving a room also displays the event schedule grid at the bottom
of the page (seen below). The grid displays rooms and times and what
events are already scheduled or requested so you can select an
available time. The grid can also be filtered to display only the
rooms that are appropriate for your event. If you can't find an
available time on the current day, you can browse forward or back a
day using the arrow buttons to the left and right of the day title
above the grid.
When you are reserving a room for an event, the Buildings widget on
the left sidebar filters the rooms that display in the schedule grid.
The schedule grid at the bottom of the page shows selected rooms and
what events are scheduled for the selected day. Check or uncheck a
building to show or hide those rooms in the grid.
Filtering to choose rooms that fit your criteria
The Room Attributes widget filters the schedule grid for rooms that
match the attributes you check. Leave all attributes unchecked to
display all rooms. Room attributes may also contain a number value you
can change to further filter the rooms. For example, a Capacity
attribute would allow you to type a number of people you want to fit
in the room. Rooms with the desired capacity will display, and smaller
rooms will hide. After updating the capacity filter, hit tab or
otherwise exit the field to refresh the grid.
The Room Types widget filters the schedule grid for rooms that match
the selected type or types.
Filters from all of the above widgets are combined to customize the
schedule grid to match just the rooms you want. In the example filters
shown at right, the schedule grid will show rooms in Haring, King
Hall, and TB30 that will hold at least 100 people.
For Further Assistance
For help with COWS within the CS department, please contact Brenda Loud.