Setting up public holidays

Troubleshooting

Custom public holidays

FAQs

Once public holidays have been set-up for your organisation, you'll be able to see which days are public holidays when rostering, enabling your rostering staff to make more informed choices.

Lookout has two options for assigning public holidays to your Helpers. You'll find these options in the settings area under Rostering > Public holidays. The settings area can be accessed by clicking the three dots next to your name:

In the public holidays settings page you'll find two options:
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To enable this option, select the 'All Helpers use the same public holiday state', select your state or territory from the dropdown list and press the 'Save choice' button.

Once saved, all Helpers will automatically be assigned the public holiday list for this state.

This option works a bit differently from the first option.

Lookout has created pre-made public holiday communities for each state and territory in your account. These pre-made communities are archived, to begin with, and can be unarchived to activate.

These communities automatically add Helpers based on their region, as specified on their Helper profile.

To enable this option, select the "Helpers use different public holiday states" option and click the 'Save choice' button. This option is now enabled, but there is one extra step. In the table below the 'Save choice' button, you'll see the list of pre-made public holiday communities.

In order to start using a public holiday community, it needs to be activated. To do this, click on the community you wish to activate. In this case, we'll click on the blue "Public holiday set: NSW" link, which will take us to the community page.

On this page, click on the "Unarchive this community" button. This will activate the community:

All public holiday communities have a rule applied that allows for the right Helpers to be assigned to this community. You can see these rules by clicking on the "Edit helper rules" button:

For example, the community "Public holiday set: NSW" has a rule to automatically include all Helpers in the region of NSW:

Leave these rules in place: they will ensure the right Helpers are assigned to the community and associated public holidays.

That's all you need to do! From now on, any Helpers with the NSW region will automatically be added to the NSW public holiday community.

Repeat these steps for each state and territory communities you wish to use.

I expected to see a Helper in a public holiday community but they aren't showing up.
The community relies on the Helper's region on their profile to assign them to a community. Check that the Helper's region is correct by navigating to the Helpers page, clicking on the "Settings" link at the top, and then clicking "Public holidays" in the sidebar. Check that the region is correct and has the correct spelling.

Alternatively, you can manually add the Helper by visiting the community and clicking the "Manually add helpers" button.

Some public holidays are specific to certain regions, such as the Royal Queensland Show, which is a public holiday for the Brisbane area only. These public holidays are not covered by Lookout. You can add these holidays using the custom holiday feature.

To create a custom public holiday, click the "Custom public holidays" button in the settings area under Rostering > Public Holidays:

Next, click the "Add custom public holiday" button:

Name your holiday and select a date for it to be observed. Custom public holidays are controlled through communities. After selecting the communities to which the custom holidays are applied, any Helpers in this community will observe the custom public holiday.

In the below example, we have set up a custom public holiday for the Royal Queensland Show and assigned it to the Brisbane CBD community:

After saving:

If we take a look at the Brisbane CBD community we see the list of Helpers that will have this custom holiday applied. The community will also indicate that it is linked to a custom holiday:

If you want to check which holidays an individual Helper has assigned, you can do so by going to the Helper's page and selecting the "Settings" link at the top. Click on "Public holidays" in the sidebar, and there you'll be able to see the state/territory holidays assigned to this Helper, as well as any custom holidays they've been assigned to.