A holiday is a period of time during which your regular schedules can be overridden to either prevent user access entirely or allow access under adjusted hours. There are certain holidays each year where your users may not need access to your property, such as on Christmas or New Years Day. You might want to block user access entirely to prevent anyone from accessing your property, or you may only want to allow them in on adjusted hours.

Additionally, if you have doors that unlock on regular schedules, you will not want this schedule to turn on when no one is in the office. To prevent this from occurring, you can apply a holiday exception to the door, overriding its regular schedule to keep your property locked and secure.
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To create holidays:

1. Go to the admin dashboard and navigate to Access Control > Holidays > Holidays. Click on the 'Add Holiday' button.
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Single/Bulk custom Holidays : With Genea, you can also create your own custom holidays, such as a company retreat or a special party.

2. To create a single holiday, enter the custom holiday name, provide an optional description, and choose the holiday's start and end dates. If the holiday occurs on a single day, select the same start and end date.

If your custom holiday recurs annually on the same date, check the 'Repeat Every Year' option, as depicted below.

Save your custom holiday by clicking the 'Save and Close' button.
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3. For creating multiple custom holidays, utilize our bulk holiday upload form. Enter the details in the Excel form and click on Save.
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4. Pre-defined holidays:
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By default, your system comes pre-loaded with a list of the most common holidays from various countries, including Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's. The advantage of these pre-defined holidays is that you won't need to update the dates in your system every calendar year. For instance, Thanksgiving is consistently observed on the fourth Thursday of November, though the exact numerical date varies each year. Genea has already set these common holiday dates, eliminating the need for you to manually add them to the list annually.
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Choose the pre-set holidays from the list of respective countries and click on Save.
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IMPORTANT NOTE: Please note that this list of holidays is nothing more than a list. These holidays must be applied to the holiday groups before they will override your regular access.

Holiday group servers serve the purpose of categorizing holidays. For instance, one group can be created containing all national holidays, while another group can include all office event holidays. These different groups can then be assigned to schedules to manage access for various groups of people within the organization. By default, Mercury controllers support 8-holiday groups. Holidays can be defined under the holiday groups.
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To create a holiday group:
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1. Access the admin dashboard and go to Access Control > Holidays > Holiday Groups. Then, click on the 'Add' button.
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2. Enter the holiday group name and description. Choose the previously created holidays from the list to include in the group, and then click Save.

​Once the holidays are added to a holiday group, your regular schedules will be overridden to prevent user access to the premises. If you wish to allow access on holidays, see the next section.

Holidays added to any holiday groups are immediately applied to the regular schedules and users are prevented to access the property on the specific holidays.

However, if you would like to place any exceptions on the holiday group, then that can be done by associating the holiday groups to the schedule and adding an exception time to them. For example, your users may usually be granted access to your office from 9 AM to 5 PM on a regular day, but on a given holiday you would only like to allow them to access your office from 9 AM to Noon. You can accomplish this by adjusting the hours associated with the holiday exception to 9 AM to Noon. Keep in mind that whatever times you set for a holiday exception, between these times your users will be able to access your property.

To apply a holiday group exception to a schedule, proceed as below:
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1. Navigate to the 'Access Control' tab in your Genea admin dashboard. Under the 'Access Policies > Schedules' tab, click 'Edit' on the schedule to which you would like to apply the holiday exception.

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2. When within the schedule form, scroll down to Intervals section and click on '+ Add Holiday Exemptions'.
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3. Select the holiday group(s) you would like to attach to the schedule and input the temporarily adjusted schedule times. Click "Save". Once saved, the holiday group exception(s) will be applied to the schedule and your regular schedule will be overridden accordingly.
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IMPORTANT: Holiday exceptions will only override access on the given schedule to which they have been applied. If your system utilizes multiple schedules, you will need to apply holiday exceptions to each individual schedule if needed.

If you are utilizing Mercury hardware, you can leverage the schedule modes to customize holiday management based on your specific use case. The schedule mode determines how the weekday and holiday exemption intervals will behave, consequently affecting user access. Mercury offers the following schedule modes :
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1. Honor Holiday : In this mode, priority is given to holiday intervals, rendering weekday intervals inactive when both are configured. This serves as the default mode for any schedule. If you prefer not to explicitly add holidays to your schedules and wish for access to be automatically denied on recognized holidays, this mode will be advantageous.
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When a schedule is configured in 'Honor Holiday' mode, applying a holiday group exemption to the schedule and assigning 'No Access' is equivalent to not including the holiday group in the schedule at all. In this mode, by default, all schedules will deny access to users associated with the specified schedule during holidays. Exemptions should be added only when access is needed for a specific time period on holidays.
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2. Honor Day : This mode prioritizes weekday intervals, ensuring that the schedule remains active when both holiday and weekday intervals are configured. It's the preferred choice when you need to extend the schedule's duration during holidays.
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Consider a scenario: you operate a retail store with a schedule configured for a weekday interval of 9 AM to 5 PM, Monday to Friday, for your employees. During Thanksgiving holidays, you aim to extend the store hours from 9 AM to 9 PM. In such a case, you may opt to switch the schedule mode to 'Honor Day.' Without modifying the weekday interval, you can then add a holiday exemption and assign the exemption period as 5 PM to 9 PM.

3. Always ON : Schedule that is always active, regardless of the time intervals specified or the holidays in effect as long as it is within the schedule’s validity.
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This mode is particularly handy for temporary scenarios, enabling 24/7 access without altering the schedule's inherent intervals. Switching the schedule mode back to "Honor Day" or "Honor Holiday" returns it to its regular operation, adhering to weekday intervals once more.
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4. Always OFF :A schedule that is always inactive, regardless of the time intervals specified or the holidays in effect.
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Much like the "Always ON" mode, "Always OFF" instantly deactivates the schedule. The key distinction is that a schedule set to "Always OFF" remains inactive, even overriding the schedule's designated validity period.
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​If you need assistance setting up a holiday schedule, or if you have any questions, please reach out to Genea Support Team at acsupport@getgenea.com.
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