Holidays are stand-alone records you create once, then link to one or more Business Hours. They pause SLA timers and milestone clocks on those days. Salesforce ships no holidays out of the box — you create them per region, including recurring annual ones.
- Open Setup → Holidays
Setup gear → Quick Find: Holidays → Holidays.
- Click New
Top-right of the list.
- Set Holiday Name and Description
Conventions: "US - Independence Day," "UK - Boxing Day," "Christmas Eve."
- Pick Recurrence Type and Date
One Time: pick a specific date. Recurring: pick a recurrence pattern (Annual / Last Monday of May / etc.).
- Save
Holiday record exists but does nothing yet — it has to be linked to Business Hours.
- Open the relevant Business Hours → Holidays related list → Link
Setup → Business Hours → click into the Business Hours → Holidays related list → Add Holidays. Multi-select.
- Save
From now on, the Business Hours pause on the linked holidays. SLA timers freeze; escalation rules don't fire.
One Time (specific date) or Recurring (annual pattern, weekday-of-month).
Annual on a specific date / Annual on a specific day of week / etc.
A holiday can be linked to many Business Hours; a Business Hours has many holidays.
- Holidays don't auto-link to Business Hours. Adding a holiday is two steps: create the holiday record, then link it to each Business Hours record that observes it.
- Recurring holidays don't add themselves to Business Hours created after the holiday. If you add new Business Hours later, you have to manually re-link the existing recurring holidays.
- Half-day holidays (e.g. Christmas Eve, half-day off) aren't supported. Either treat as full holiday or don't link it — there's no "close at noon" option.