Internal calendar notes: public holidays, school holidays and your own notes in the calendar

Above your occupancy calendar you can show a bar with public holidays, school holidays, your own notes and subscribed calendars. That way you see when holidays, public holidays or trade fairs are coming up while you plan prices, minimum stays and staff. The bar is only for you and your team; guests see none of it.

Switch it on

The bar is off at first. You switch it on under Settings, Internal calendar notes (Open calendar notes): switch on “Show in calendar”. As long as the switch is off, your calendar looks exactly as before.

Public holidays and school holidays

With “Add region” you choose country and region, for example Germany and Bavaria, and whether statutory public holidays, school holidays or both should appear. Under “Applies to” you set which units the region applies to; if you have units in two states or countries, you create two regions. Xentra suggests the countries in which your units are located. If you choose “Whole country”, only the nationwide public holidays appear; school holidays exist only per region. Available are Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy.

The dates come from OpenHolidays (openholidaysapi.org), a public directory. Xentra loads them itself for each year, up to three years ahead; you do not have to maintain anything. They are suggestions: check important dates with the responsible authority. A public holiday that does not interest you: click it in the bar and choose “Hide”.

Your own notes

Trade fairs, city festivals, construction sites or company holidays you enter with “Add note”: title, From and To, color, a text and the units it applies to. With “Repeat every year” it appears on the same days in every year, for example for a city festival. It is faster in the calendar: click a day in the Notes bar or drag with the mouse across several days, and the window opens with those days already filled in. A click on a note shows its text and “Edit”.

Import calendars

Under “Import calendar” you have two ways:

• “Subscribe to calendar”: a calendar via iCal link, for example a trade fair calendar or your Google Calendar. It stays up to date on its own: if you open the calendar and the last sync is older than a day, Xentra fetches it anew. You cannot edit these entries in Xentra; they show which calendar they come from.
• “Import ICS file”: takes over a file once. The entries become normal notes, which you then edit one by one. If you import the same file again, Xentra skips what is already there.

How it looks in the calendar

In the grid, the Notes bar sits below the dates. It is collapsed at first and only shows the count and small coloured lines; a click on “Notes” expands it, and Xentra remembers that for your login. Statutory public holidays colour the date at the top red. In list view and on the phone, the entries appear as a row above the list.

Team members

Whoever may see the calendar also sees the bar; whoever may edit the calendar can create and change notes and regions. If a team member is restricted to certain units, they only see the entries that apply to their units. Owners see the entries of their units but cannot change anything.