Holidays and Exceptions
Exceptions handle the days that do not follow the weekly pattern.
Where to find it
Architect Panel → Data:
- Business Hours Calendars — working hours and exceptions
An exception can go either way
Each names a date and says whether it is a working day. So the same list handles a closure — a public holiday, a shutdown, a training day — and extra opening, such as a Saturday you are unusually working.
A working exception can carry its own times, so a half day before a holiday is a working exception ending at one o’clock rather than a closure.
Write a note on each
Six months later, an unexplained closure on a Tuesday in March is a mystery somebody has to resolve. The note takes five seconds and answers it.
Load a year at a time
The single most useful habit here. Public holidays for the coming year, the Christmas period, any planned shutdown — entered in one sitting each January.
The failure mode is never a wrong exception; it is a missing one. And a missing holiday means every target that crosses it is measured wrongly, silently.
Remember the regional differences
Holidays differ between countries and often within them — Scotland and England do not share every bank holiday, and many countries have regional ones. A calendar for a team is a calendar for where that team is.
They apply to their own calendar
Exceptions belong to one calendar, so a public holiday affecting three teams needs entering three times. That is tedious and it is correct — a 24-hour service does not stop for a bank holiday, and its calendar should not say it does.
Half days are the ones people forget
Christmas Eve, the day before a shutdown, an afternoon closed for a company meeting. These are working exceptions with shorter hours, and they are the ones that get missed because they are not obviously holidays.
Check next month
A quick look at the coming month’s exceptions, once a month, catches what was missed when the year was loaded. It takes a minute.
Emergency closures need entering too
A day lost to weather, a system failure or a building problem should be recorded, or the day’s service levels are measured as though you were open.
Worked example
An organisation loads each calendar’s exceptions every January, with notes, including half days on Christmas Eve and before its summer shutdown. Its Scottish team’s calendar carries different holidays from its English one. Exceptions for the coming month are checked at each month end.
Recommendations
- Load a year ahead in one sitting.
- Note the reason on every exception.
- Half days are working exceptions with shorter hours.
- Enter emergency closures as they happen.