Calendar configuration

Calendars within Blue Prism represent the concept of the working day. They exist to allow schedules, configured in Control Room, and processes, using the internal Calendars business object, to check if a particular day is a working day according to the rules configured in the calendar.

In order to facilitate this, calendars can be created and configured to specify which days are considered working days and which are not.

Calendar - Click for a larger image

A calendar brings together 3 main concepts:

  • Working Week – The days of the week which are considered working days for the calendar
  • Public Holidays – The public holidays, considered non-working days, which apply to the calendar.
  • Other Holidays – Other holidays which are to be considered non-working days in the calendar.

Thus a calendar's working days consist of any dates where:

  • The day of the week is specified in the 'Working Week' and
  • The date is not a public holiday specified in the 'Public Holidays' and
  • The date is not a holiday specified in the 'Other Holidays'.

If any of these tests fail for a given date, then the date is not considered a working day according to the calendar.

Default Calendar

When Blue Prism is first installed, a calendar is created called "Working Week / No Holidays" which has a "Working Week" of Monday to Friday (inclusive), and specifies no holidays, public or otherwise.

Creating a calendar

Clicking on the 'New' button causes a new calendar to be created.

Before the calendar is created, an input box is displayed requesting the new name for the calendar.

Creating a calendar

Calendar names must be unique – if the name entered already exists, an error is displayed and a new name requested.

If the calendar name input box is cancelled, the calendar will not be created.

Configuring a calendar

Working Week

The working week of a calendar is defined by the days which are generally considered working days within the week.

The days in the working week are chosen by checking the appropriate checkboxes.

Configuring the working week

Public Holidays

Blue Prism supports public holidays lists, grouped by country. Currently, the public holidays in the following areas are directly supported:

  • England and Wales
  • Northern Ireland
  • Republic of Ireland
  • Scotland
  • Canada
  • France
  • Germany
  • USA
  • Japan
  • Hong Kong
  • China

Selecting the public holiday group will cause the appropriate public holidays to be populated into the Public Holidays list.

A public holiday is enabled in a calendar, ie. it will cause a day to be treated as a non-working day within a calendar, by ticking the checkbox adjacent to its entry in the list.

You can quickly tick all the listed public holidays by clicking on 'Select All'. Likewise, you can untick all listed public holidays by clicking 'Select None'.

Configuring the public holidays

Other Holidays

Any other days to be treated as non-working days can be specified in the 'Other Holidays' list.

To add a holiday, select the appropriate date and click "Add"

To remove a holiday select the date in the list and click "Remove"

Saving a calendar

Clicking on the 'Save' button will cause the calendar to be saved to the database.

Deleting a calendar

Clicking on the 'Delete' button will cause the current calendar to be deleted.