Overview
This article explains the “Holidays Configuration” setting, found under Main Settings > General Settings > Localization Settings > Time & Days. Unlike most settings in this section, it is not a simple on/off switch or a dropdown – it is a shortcut that opens the dedicated Holidays management screen, where the institute’s non-working days, breaks, and holiday periods are created and maintained. The individual holidays defined there are what actually change how the system behaves; this article explains both the shortcut itself and the behavior of the holidays it leads to.
What This Setting Does
Clicking “Holidays Configuration” takes the user straight to the Holidays management page, where every holiday defined for the current school year/term is listed. From this page, an authorized user can:
- Create a new holiday
- Edit an existing holiday
- Delete a holiday that is no longer needed
- Copy one or more holidays to another Company (school/branch) or to another school year/term, so recurring holidays don’t have to be re-created every year
Each holiday record that is created or edited includes the following information:
- Description – a short, required label for the holiday (for example, “Founders’ Day”)
- Date type – either a Specific Date (one single day) or a Date Range (several consecutive days)
- Valid For Location – which Locations the holiday applies to (left empty, it applies to all Locations)
- Valid For Grade – which Grades the holiday applies to (left empty, it applies to all Grades)
- Timetable Categories – an optional further filter on which timetable categories the holiday affects
- Comment – free text, for any extra notes about the holiday
- Functions Applied – a list of the specific system functions that should treat this date as a holiday (see Business Logic / Behavior below)
- Show in Calendar – a switch that decides whether the holiday is displayed in the institute’s calendar views
Because “Holidays Configuration” itself has no value to turn on or off, it is always available in the settings list to users who have the right permissions; what changes system behavior is the holidays that are actually created through it.
Where It Is Used
- Configuration entry point: Main Settings > General Settings > Localization Settings > Time & Days > “Holidays Configuration.”
- Holidays management page: the list and form reached by clicking this setting, where holidays are created, edited, deleted, and copied between Companies or school years/terms.
- Calendar views: any holiday with “Show in Calendar” turned on appears as a calendar entry wherever staff, Students, or Parents view an institute calendar.
- Every function selected under “Functions Applied” for a given holiday, automatically and without any further setup.
- Session and timetable creation
- Homework due dates
- Attendance recording
- Assessments and exam scheduling
- Parent/Student Meetings scheduling
- Timetable category week planning
- Internship / Thesis related attendance and activity logging
Business Logic / Behavior
Confirmed behavior:
- A holiday must have a Description and a date (specific date or date range) before it can be saved.
- If no Locations or Grades are selected for a holiday, it is treated as applying institute-wide, to every Location and every Grade.
- When Locations and/or Grades are selected, the system displays a note next to those fields explaining that this filter is “used only in Sessions/Timetable/Homework.” In other words, narrowing a holiday down to specific Locations or Grades only narrows which Sessions, Timetable entries and Homework are affected – it does not narrow Attendance, Assessments, Meetings, or Internship/Thesis logging, which apply (or don’t apply) based only on the Functions Applied list, regardless of Location or Grade.
- Timetable Categories act as a further filter, but – as explained by the help text shown next to that field – this filtering “only applies to the session creation, attendance entry and where the timetable category option is displayed,” so it does not restrict every function either.
- The Functions Applied list is what actually decides which parts of the system are affected by a given holiday: Sessions, Homework, Attendance, Assessments, Parent/Student Meetings, Timetable Category Weeks, and Internship/Thesis logging. Only the functions that are ticked for that specific holiday are affected; any function left unticked is expected to continue operating normally on that date.
- “Show in Calendar” only controls whether the holiday is visually displayed in calendar views. It does not, by itself, block or allow any activity – that is controlled entirely by Functions Applied.
- Holidays can be copied to other Companies or other school years/terms, so a yearly recurring holiday only needs to be entered once and then copied forward.
- Only users with Administrator, Owner, or Secretary-level access can open Holidays Configuration and manage holidays.
Assumption: when a function is left unticked on a holiday, the system is expected to treat that date as a normal working day for that specific function only – for example, if “Assessments” is not ticked, exams could still be scheduled on that date even though the day is otherwise marked as a holiday.
Example(s)
Example 1 – Institute-wide closure
“Willowbrook Elementary School” needs to close for a national public holiday, “Founders’ Day.” The Administrator opens Holidays Configuration, selects Create, enters the Description “Founders’ Day,” chooses “Specific Date” and picks the date, leaves Valid For Location and Valid For Grade empty so the holiday applies to the whole institute, and under Functions Applied selects Sessions, Attendance, and Homework. “Show in Calendar” is switched on.
As a result, no new sessions can be scheduled for that date, attendance is not expected to be taken, and no homework can be due that day, while the date also shows up on every calendar. Since Assessments and Meetings were not selected, those remain technically possible to schedule on that date if ever needed.
Example 2 – Narrow, Higher-Education example
“Meridian State University” wants a one-week “Winter Recess” that only affects its Downtown Location and only its first-year Grade. The Administrator creates a holiday named “Winter Recess,” selects “Date Range” for the week, selects the Downtown Location under Valid For Location, selects the relevant Grade under Valid For Grade, and under Functions Applied selects Sessions, Homework, and Internship/Thesis (so internship and thesis-related activity logging is not expected during the recess) – leaving Meetings unticked so that advising meetings can still be booked if needed. “Show in Calendar” stays on so Students and Teachers see the break on their calendars.
When to Use
- Whenever the institute needs to record a day, or a range of days, on which normal academic activity should pause or change – national or religious holidays, institute-wide closures, mid-term or seasonal breaks, exam blackout periods, or a closure that only affects certain Locations or Grades.
- At the start of every school year/term, to review and set up (or copy forward) the holidays that will apply for that period, since holidays are tied to a specific school year/term and are not created automatically.
- Whenever only part of the institute is affected (a single Location, specific Grades, or specific Timetable Categories) or only some functions should be paused (for example, pausing Sessions and Attendance but not Assessments) – the combination of scope fields and the Functions Applied list makes it possible to express both a full closure and a narrow, targeted exception with a single holiday record.
Notes
- No other setting has to be configured before Holidays Configuration can be used – it has no prerequisites.
- Holidays Configuration works the same way for every type of institution; there is no separate enabled/disabled mode that switches the system between a Higher Education mode and a K-12 mode. In practice, the main difference between institution types is simply which Functions Applied options get used day to day – Higher Education institutions are the ones most likely to use the “Internship/Thesis” option, since that concept does not typically apply in K-12 schools.
- The exact wording shown for Student, Teacher, Parent, Internship, and Thesis in the Functions Applied list and elsewhere on the Holidays page automatically follows whichever terminology the institute has chosen for these entities.
