Bah Humbug! No holidays for you. (None of our projects have holidays)

Tim Starkey

I need a sanity check. I just found out I know nothing about how holidays function in Smartsheet. My education came about I was making a "simple company calendar" for our intranet. And now I am facing some problematic implications. Please confirm my understanding below.

Situation:

1. We use control center to provision projects from a template that includes a work plan (schedule)
2. Currently, we have over 600 active projects from this template
3. We set up the holidays schedule in the admin center in 2021. I assumed (incorrectly) that it would automatically update that holiday to recur every year. (Holidays tend to happen every year)
4. None of our existing projects, existing support sheets or any new sheets currently being created include holidays past 2021.
5. As such, durations are not skipping holidays.

The required "fix" to my situation.

1. Update our account level holidays. To future proof, I should make a comma separated list going out maybe 10 years. (We have some projects that span at least 5 years)
2. Set a reminder to update the account holidays annually.
3. Go into the template and update the holidays for future projects. (Existing sheets do not update the holidays when the account level is updated)
4. Remember to go into the template and update it when I update the account holidays
5. Go into the 600 existing projects and update the holidays. (Sheets take on the settings of the template. But, existing sheets do not update based on either the template OR the account level)
6. Remember which projects have extended beyond the account level holidays programmed in, and then update those annually. Hopefully not 600 each time.

Am I understanding this correct? Any other suggestions? I am basing this on searching I have done in the community and help desk.

• How to set holidays: Define working days, non-working days, and holidays on a project sheet | Smartsheet Learning Center (Unfortunately, this page has no advice on adding future years)
• Other users asking about it:
  • Recurring holidays — Smartsheet Community
  • Designate Holidays for Multiple Years — Smartsheet Community
  • How do I set up dates to include holidays and carry from year to year? — Smartsheet Community
  • Company Holidays — Smartsheet Community
  • Holidays not showing — Smartsheet Community
  • Public Holidays — Smartsheet Community
  • Global Holiday settings — Smartsheet Community
  • Holidays for 2019 not working — Smartsheet Community

Apparently other have complicated work around with "holiday" columns or sheets?

• Networkday counting excluding holidays — Smartsheet Community
• Statutory Holiday — Smartsheet Community

Regardless, if you are using a report, it won't show holidays?

• Can I highlight non-working days and holidays in report based gantt charts? — Smartsheet Community

Curious... does anyone have a comma separated list of standard American holidays already prepared that goes through maybe 2040 that you would like to post here? :)

adp_cl

Hello Tim. Your proposed solution, to my understanding, would be the solution.

I appreciate you sharing this, as I need to incorporate #4 (Set a reminder to update the account holidays annually). I'm going to add an automation now to one of my core sheets to remind me to do this each year.

adp_cl

Hello Tim. Your proposed solution, to my understanding, would be the solution.

I appreciate you sharing this, as I need to incorporate #4 (Set a reminder to update the account holidays annually). I'm going to add an automation now to one of my core sheets to remind me to do this each year.