Setting Up Holiday Skip Dates
This documentation is for RollCall version 4.
What is a Holiday Skip Date?
Whether the holiday is a national holiday or one that impacts only your organization, it is useful to tell RollCall to avoid scheduling classes on days you are not teaching. A Holiday Skip Date is a record that you create to specify the date on which class session records will not be created.
Before you Set Up Your Skip Dates
RollCall provides automatic scheduling of courses based on the schedule you set up during course creation or edit.
Like everything else in RollCall, we work to protect sessions and attendance records in the past. The holiday functionality is meant to be proactive - you should set up your schedule before creating courses that are impacted by the holiday.
The holiday functionality does not remove existing sessions if you've already scheduled them.
Each date in a range must have its own skip date! If your program is closed from May 1 - 8, you would need 7 separate skip records (one for 5/1, one for 5/2, for 5/3, 5/4, etc).
Bulk Upload Skip Dates (Recommended)
This is the recommended way to work with RollCall Holiday records. It is far easier to create a spreadsheet and upload it once than to create individual records.
These instructions assume you have permission to click the “Import” button in Lightning.
If you are using Classic, or do not see the button referenced in the instructions below, this is due to your Salesforce setup (it is not related to RollCall). Ask your systems administrator for assistance.
The spreadsheet should contain the following fields (download the template here)
Name - the name of the holiday. This field cannot be blank.
Date - the date of the holiday. This field cannot be blank.
Skip? - TRUE if you want RollCall to not create classes on this date.
Notes - any notes you’d like to add about this holiday.
(1) Change to the RollCall Admin app from your App Picker
(2) Click the “RollCall Holidays” tab.
(3) Click “Import”
Important note: if you have difficulty with the following steps, it is unfortunately not a RollCall issue. Clicking “Import” moves you into a Salesforce-native function to allow bulk importing. Please check with your Salesforce systems administrator if you encounter difficulty after clicking “Import.”
(4) Click on the “RollCall Holidays” option under “Custom” in the left-most column.
Make sure there is a green checkbox next to it.
(5) Click “Add new Records” in the middle column under “What do you want to do?”
Leave all of the options un-set, as shown in the image below.
(6) Drag a CSV-formatted file of holidays into the 3rd column under “Where is your data located?”
Create your own file or download one of ours. Downloads are in the “Holiday Files for Download” section below. If you are using one of our files, choose “comma” under “Values separated by,” otherwise ask your Salesforce systems administrator for assistance.
(7) Click “Next” at the bottom of the screen.
(8) Confirm that the fields from your spreadsheet are mapped correctly.
If you are using our template or one of the provided .csv files, your screen should automatically look like the image below. If it does not, please confirm that your spreadsheet field headers match the template exactly.
(9) Click “Next” at the bottom of the screen.
Make sure your selections are “RollCall Holidays” and “Add new Records” in the left-most part of the screen. Then click “Start Import”
Click “OK” on the popup that appears. Your data will be loaded, usually within a few minutes. You will receive an email when your data has imported successfully.
A note for our non-US clients: The data uploads are all in US date format, and many bulk uploaders expect dates in US format. You may need to reformat the dates if needed.
Holiday Files for Download
Help us serve our communities better! If you have a list of holidays that are commonly skipped by you and your peer organizations we would be happy to provide them here to make holiday management easier for the whole RollCall community. Contact us for more information or to provide a calendar upload.
US Federal Holidays (2020 - 2024) as a .csv
UK National Holidays (2020 - 2024) as a .csv (note: US date formatting!)
Jewish Holidays (US date formatting) as a .csv here (2017 - 2027, source)
Create A New Skip Date - One at a Time
(1) Change to the RollCall Admin app from your App Picker
(2) Click the “RollCall Holidays” tab.
(3) Click “New”
(4) Enter a name for the holiday, the date, and, if you like, a note about the holiday. Then click “Save.”
The “Skip?” checkbox is checked by default. It is designed to allow you to un-check, and therefore not skip, holidays uploaded via a bulk upload process. Most people leave this box checked.
The “Notes” field is for you, the systems admin. It does not currently show up anywhere else and it has no impact on scheduling.
