How to Update Holiday Rules

These are the instructions for updating your holiday rules if you are managing them in the Natterbox Routing Policies. We recommend that you update your holidays for the entire year at the beginning of January each year. Additionally, it is advisable to review holidays as you approach Christmas, New Year, Easter, and any public holidays.

1. Navigate to the Routing Policies by searching in the Salesforce app launcher.

2. Determine a routing policy that checks your holidays (you might need to review all policies to find all places).

3. Now, try to identify in the policy where the Holiday rule is. You are looking for an Action Container with a Rule app. It is likely to be titled 'Holidays' or a similar designation.  Please note: holiday rules are usually at the beginning of the policy near the working or office hours check but this is not always the case if multiple teams have different holidays, for example teams in multiple countries.

4. You may choose to implement a single rule app for all holidays with a general holiday message, or you may opt for multiple holiday rules, each accompanied by specific holiday messages. For instance, on December 25th, you might utilize a tailored message such as, “Thank you for calling. We are currently closed for Christmas Day. Please call back tomorrow. Merry Christmas.” It is essential to take this into account when updating holiday rules.

   1. If you have a single holiday message, please ensure that you add each holiday as an additional ‘OR’ condition. It is important to avoid using ‘AND’, as this would result in the conditions never being met. Consequently, no holiday messages would be read, and calls would be processed as if the office were open.

      
      
      

   2. If you have multiple holiday messages, it is necessary to create a rule app for each one. Each holiday rule will direct to a speak app (in a new action container). This setup enables the inclusion of custom holiday messages, such as adding ‘Happy New Year’ to the message.

      
      
      

5. When updating the dates, times, or weekdays, please consider the following best practices:

   1. Holiday checks use the ‘Time of day’ rule type.

   2. Please note that you can incorporate multiple types of rules within the same Rule App. However, if you configure them without careful consideration of the underlying logic, you may inadvertently create a set of conditions that are either impossible to satisfy or only occasionally achievable.

      For instance, if you use Number match to block a number (Caller Number = XXXXXX…) and incorporate the Christmas Holiday hours, this will only activate (return true) if the 'blocked caller' calls during the Christmas closed hours. It will not block the caller in most instances, nor will it close the phone lines for all other callers. We recommend that these rules be separated into two distinct rule apps.

      1. To determine the number of rule types present within a single rule app, please refer to the numbers positioned alongside each type:  

   3. Picklists that are greyed out (or uneditable) are not in use, and the dates are irrelevant; only picklists that are white (editable) are utilized.

      In this situation, the rule will be activated between 24-26 December. The specific hours are not relevant, as it will apply throughout the entire day.

   4. If you are uncertain about the day of the week on which the holiday occurs, please check all the boxes:  

   5. Remember to change the Timezone!

   6. When adding multiple Time of day rules within the same app, please verify whether you have selected Add Rule (OR) or Add Rule (AND).

      

      If you select AND when adding the public holidays in the same rule, the rule will not activate. This is due to the fact that it is not possible for it to be both 25 December and 1 January simultaneously.

   7. Please ensure to click SAVE on the policy. The system does not autosave, and any changes made will be lost if the policy is not saved.

If you would like to watch a video walkthrough on establishing holiday rules, please visit our LMS (learning courses). You will need to have login credentials for the Natterbox Help Center or use the SSO. The course is titled Setting Up Holidays, and you must 'enroll yourself' before you can access the course.

If you are unable to login to the Help Center, please contact your Natterbox administrator and share this guide: How can I access the Help Center or LMS?