--- title: "How to Add Public Holidays" description: "How to add public and company holidays to Vitextra Absence & Coverage: the Holidays list, one row per day, how holidays change the working days of a request, how they are shaded in the Team Absence Calendar, the Upcoming public holidays block in My Absences and yearly maintenance." url: https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10354 language: en published: 2026-10-28 modified: 2026-10-28 products: - "Absence & Coverage" author: "Lidija Reising" tags: ["add public holidays", "Holidays list", "holidays not counted as working days", "SharePoint absence calendar holidays", "company holidays", "upcoming public holidays", "working days calculation holidays", "Vitextra Absence & Coverage"] --- # How to Add Public Holidays How to add public and company holidays to Vitextra Absence & Coverage: the Holidays list, one row per day, how holidays change the working days of a request, how they are shaded in the Team Absence Calendar, the Upcoming public holidays block in My Absences and yearly maintenance. ## Overview A public holiday is not a day off that an employee has to request. If a vacation from Monday 9 to Friday 13 November 2026 contains a holiday on Wednesday 11 November, the employee should use four days of the balance, not five. Vitextra **Absence & Coverage** handles this with the optional `Holidays` list on the product site. Every row is a day that is not counted as a working day. Holidays have three effects: - they are left out when the working days of a new request are counted; - they are shaded in the Team Absence Calendar, with the holiday name in the tooltip or in the day cell; - they appear in the **Upcoming public holidays** block of My Absences. There is no import of national holiday calendars in this version, so HR enters the days once a year. --- ## Columns of the Holidays list | Column | What to enter | |:---|:---| | `Title` | The name of the holiday, for example "Independence Day" | | `HolidayDate` | The day (date only) | --- ## Add holidays 1. Open the product site and go to **Site contents**. 2. Open the `Holidays` list. 3. Add a new item for each holiday: type the name in `Title` and pick the date in `HolidayDate`. 4. Repeat for every day of the year that should not count as a working day. One row stands for one day. A holiday that lasts three days needs three rows. A holiday is always a full day; there are no half-day holidays. ![The Holidays list with entries for the end of 2026](https://static.vitextra.com/articles/10354/holidays-list-en.png) *The Holidays list with entries for the end of 2026* ❗ **Important** Enter each date only once. Two rows for the same day do not change the counting, but the day may appear twice in the Upcoming public holidays block. --- ## Effect on working days When an employee fills in a request, every day of the period counts as a working day if its weekday belongs to the working week and the date is not in the `Holidays` list. A holiday inside a vacation is therefore not deducted, and a request that consists only of holidays and weekends has no working days and cannot be submitted. The working week itself is defined in the `Settings` list ([KB10355. How to Set the Working Week](https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10355)); the full counting rules and worked examples are in [KB10326. How Working Days Are Calculated in Absence Requests](https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10326). | Request (Vacation) | Holidays list | Working days | |:---|:---|:---| | Mon 9 Nov – Fri 13 Nov 2026 | none | 5 | | Mon 9 Nov – Fri 13 Nov 2026 | Wed 11 Nov | 4 | | Tue 24 Nov – Mon 30 Nov 2026 | none | 5 (the weekend is not counted) | | Sat 14 Nov – Sun 15 Nov 2026 | none | 0, the request cannot be submitted | The number is calculated when the request is submitted and stored with it. Adding a holiday later does not change the days of requests that already exist, and the balance of the employee stays as it was. If a request has to be corrected, cancel it and submit it again — see [KB10358. Why You Should Edit Absences in the Web Parts and Not in the List View](https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10358). 📝 **Note** When the **New absence request** panel counts days, it knows the holidays from 1 January of the year shown in My Absences to 31 December of the following year. Keep at least the current and the next year in the list. --- ## Where holidays are shown **Team Absence Calendar.** On the timeline the column of a holiday is shaded and the holiday name is in the tooltip of the day; in the month view the name is written in the day cell. The shading is controlled by the **Show public holidays** option in the property pane of the web part, which is on by default. Turning it off changes only the display; holidays are still left out of the working days. **My Absences.** The **Upcoming public holidays** block lists the next four holidays from today. It is controlled by the **Show public holidays** option of the My Absences web part and is hidden when there is nothing to show. ![A public holiday on the Team Absence Calendar timeline](https://static.vitextra.com/articles/10354/holiday-on-timeline-en.png) *A public holiday on the Team Absence Calendar timeline* ![The Upcoming public holidays block in My Absences](https://static.vitextra.com/articles/10354/upcoming-holidays-en.png) *The Upcoming public holidays block in My Absences* --- ## Regional and company days, yearly maintenance - **Company days.** A day off that applies to the whole company, such as a company anniversary, is entered like any other holiday. - **Several countries.** The list belongs to the product site, and one site has one set of holidays and one working week. If your locations have different holidays, use a separate product site for each of them and select the matching site in the web parts of that location's pages. - **Once a year.** Add next year's days before December, so that requests for January are counted correctly. Past rows may stay in the list. - **Many rows.** Adding a long list is no different from any SharePoint list; use the list features you know for entering many items at once. 💡 **Tip** To see how the shaded days look in the calendar, read [KB10341. How to Read the Team Absence Calendar: Colors, Hatching and Marks](https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10341). For all lists of the product, see [KB10351. Absence & Coverage Lists: What Is Stored Where](https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10351).