Definition
Holidays is a Setup page where administrators define organization-wide or business-hours-specific holiday dates. When a holiday is associated with a Business Hours record, Salesforce excludes that day from entitlement process calculations, case escalation timers, and milestone countdowns, ensuring SLA calculations accurately reflect non-working days.
Real-World Example
The admin at QuickAssist Insurance creates Holiday records for all US federal holidays and associates them with the "US Business Hours" record. When Christmas Day falls on a Wednesday and a Case is created the day before, the SLA clock pauses for the holiday and resumes on Thursday, preventing agents from being penalized for holidays.
Why Holidays Matters
Holidays in Salesforce are administrator-defined records that mark non-working days, and they directly impact how the platform calculates time-sensitive business processes. When a Holiday record is associated with a Business Hours record, Salesforce automatically pauses SLA clocks, entitlement process timers, case escalation rules, and milestone countdowns for that day. This ensures that service teams are not penalized for response times during periods when the office is closed. Without properly configured Holidays, a case created on December 24th could trigger a missed SLA violation on December 25th even though no agents were working, leading to inaccurate metrics and unfair performance evaluations.
As organizations expand globally, Holiday management becomes significantly more complex because different regions observe different holidays. An org supporting US, UK, and Indian operations needs separate Business Hours records, each associated with their region-specific holidays. Failure to maintain accurate Holiday records leads to cascading problems: false SLA breaches fill dashboards with misleading data, escalation rules fire inappropriately on non-working days creating unnecessary urgency, and entitlement milestone calculations become unreliable. Best practice is to review and update Holiday records annually before the start of each calendar year, accounting for floating holidays like Easter and regional observances.
How Organizations Use Holidays
- QuickAssist Insurance — QuickAssist Insurance creates Holiday records for all 11 US federal holidays and associates them with their 'US Business Hours' record. When Thanksgiving falls on a Thursday, the SLA clock on any open case pauses for both Thursday and Friday (the company observes both days), ensuring agents returning on Monday are not flagged with SLA violations for the break period.
- GlobalServe BPO — GlobalServe BPO operates service centers in Manila, Dublin, and Toronto, each with different national holidays. They maintain three separate Business Hours records, each linked to their respective country's Holiday records. When a Philippine holiday occurs, only the Manila team's SLA calculations pause, while Dublin and Toronto timers continue running since those offices remain open.
- PeakHealth Medical — PeakHealth Medical uses Holidays to manage their 24/5 urgent care support line. They configure Holiday records only for Christmas and New Year's Day when the clinic is fully closed. Their Business Hours reflect Monday-Friday extended hours, and the two Holiday records ensure entitlement milestones pause only on those two days, keeping SLA tracking accurate for the remaining 363 days.