Creating business calendars

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 6 minutes to read
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    Summary of Creating Business Calendars

    ServiceNow AI Platform allows you to create and managebusiness calendarsto schedule events and track time efficiently across applications. These calendars can represent various time periods including fiscal years, quarters, months, weeks, and days. The Business Calendar menu is the central place to define calendars, entries, filters, and associate calendars with specific functional areas or packages within the platform. Using business calendars replaces legacy scheduling functions and offers enhanced flexibility and integration.

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    Key Features

    • Business Calendar Definition: Create calendar records with reference names, labels, parent-child relationships, and time zones. Calendars can represent any time span such as fiscal years or work schedules.
    • Business Calendar Entries: Define individual time spans within a calendar (e.g., quarters, months, working days). Each entry specifies start and end dates and is stored in dedicated tables.
    • Filtering Options: Add date and time filters beyond standard platform filtering to provide users with more refined calendar views.
    • Pairing Calendars with Packages: Associate calendars with ServiceNow AI Platform packages (functional areas like HR Service Delivery or Customer Service Management) to enable calendar use within those contexts.
    • Script Includes for Calendar Spans: Use the BusinessCalendarGeneratorUtil script include to generate calendar entries programmatically across global and scoped applications.
    • Business Calendar Groups: Organize multiple calendars into groups for use in Performance Analytics and Reporting.
    • Legacy Calendar Support: Legacy schedules and fiscal calendars remain supported but it is recommended to transition to Business Calendar definitions for improved functionality and package association.

    Practical Examples

    • Fiscal Calendar: Create a Fiscal Year calendar with child calendars for quarters and periods, defining each time span explicitly. This enables structured tracking of fiscal timeframes.
    • Work Schedule: Construct a monthly work schedule with hierarchical calendars for weeks and workdays, excluding non-working days such as weekends and holidays.

    Key Outcomes

    • Enable precise time tracking and scheduling tailored to your organization’s business and fiscal requirements.
    • Integrate calendars seamlessly with ServiceNow AI Platform packages, enhancing functionality across HR, Finance, Customer Service, and other areas.
    • Replace legacy scheduling with a modern, flexible calendar framework that supports complex calendar hierarchies and filtering.
    • Facilitate reporting and analytics by grouping calendars and defining accurate business time spans.
    • Use script-based automation to efficiently generate calendar entries, ensuring consistency and reducing manual effort.
    • Maintain data integrity by consulting Performance Analytics administrators before modifying calendar time spans, as changes may impact analytics data.

    Create business calendars in the ServiceNow AI Platform so that you can schedule events for your users and track their time across applications. You define schedules and calendars of all types, including fiscal calendars, in the Business Calendar menu.

    Business calendar components

    Use the following forms when you define calendars and schedules in the Business Calendar menu:
    Business calendar definition record
    Identifies an individual business calendar where you can specify a reference name, labeling, parent business calendar (if any), and a time zone. A business calendar can represent any time period, and its definition record is saved in the Business Calendar [business_calendar] table.

    To learn more about creating a business calendar definition, see Create a business calendar.

    Business calendar entries
    Defines the individual entries that make up a business calendar, and saves them in the Business Calendar Entry [business_calendar_span] and Business Calendar Entry Name (business_calendar_span_name) tables. In contrast to legacy schedule entries, which have repeating and excluding time spans, you must create individual business calendar entries for all time spans in the calendar. You can also create business calendar spans across both global and scoped applications using the Script Includes BusinessCalendarGeneratorUtil. To learn more see Create a business calendar span using a Script includes.

    To learn more about creating entries for a business calendar, see Define business calendar entries and Create business calendar entry names.

    Business calendar filter options
    Defines the date and time filtering options for the business calendar that you’re creating. These filtering options are in addition to the standard date and time filtering in the ServiceNow AI Platform.

    To learn more about creating filtering options for a business calendar, see Create a business calendar.

    Calendars for package
    Pairs a business calendar with a ServiceNow AI Platform package so that you can enable the calendar for use in that functional area. A package is a collection of scopes and applications that make up a functional area, such as HR Service Delivery.

    To learn more about associating a business calendar with a package, see Pair business calendars with packages.

    Warning:
    If you are using Performance Analytics, use caution when changing time spans. Any change you make to the time span on a business or fiscal calendar can invalidate Performance Analytics data. Consult with a Performance Analytics administrator before making such changes.

    Fiscal calendar example

    In this example, you create a fiscal calendar with 4 quarters and 12 fiscal periods. Business calendar example
    • When you navigate to Business Calendar > Business Calendars, you create:
      • A business calendar with a title of Fiscal Year.
      • A calendar for quarters that belong to the fiscal year.
      • A calendar for periods with a parent of Fiscal Year or Fiscal Quarter.
      When you create the Fiscal Year Quarter child calendar, you designate that the Fiscal Year is its parent calendar. For the child Fiscal Year Period calendar, you designate a Fiscal Year Quarter as its immediate parent.
    • When you create each calendar, use the Business Calendar Entries related list, or navigate to Business Calendar > Business Calendar Entries to create business calendar entries for it. For each business calendar entry, create a reference name (for example, Fiscal Period 1) and designate start and end dates for each time span within the calendar.
      • For example, the parent Fiscal Year calendar has a business calendar entry for the time span of October 1, 20nn 12:00 through September 30, 20nn 23:59:59.
      • The child Fiscal Year Quarter calendar consists of four business calendar entries, each with the start and end dates of each quarter that makes up the fiscal year.
        Note:
        You can also create 13 period, 445, 454 and 544 types of fiscal calendars. To learn more about these types of fiscal calendars, see Defining fiscal calendars.
      • The child Fiscal Year Quarters calendar consists of multiple business calendar entries, with the start and end date times for each period in the fiscal year.
    • Use Business Calendar > Calendars for Package to pair the parent Fiscal Year 20nn calendar with ServiceNow AI Platform packages, such as HR Service Delivery or Finance Close Automation.

    Business calendar schedule example

    In this example, you create a work schedule for the month of December.
    • The work schedule consists of a parent calendar, a child calendar for the working weeks in December, and another child calendar for the working days in December.
    • The December Workdays calendar consists of business calendar entries for each working day. You don’t include non-work days such as Saturdays, Sundays, and company holidays.
    Business calendar schedule example
    • Use Business Calendar > Business Calendars to create a parent business calendar with a title of December Work Schedule, and a child business calendar for December work weeks. When you create the child calendar, you designate that the December Work Schedule is its parent calendar.
      Note:
      You can make the December Work Schedule even more granular by creating a subordinate child calendar for December workdays. In this case, its immediate parent is the December Work Weeks calendar.
    • When you create each calendar, use the Business Calendar Entries related list, or navigate to Business Calendar > Business Calendar Entries to create, at minimum, one business calendar entry for it. For each business calendar entry, you give it a reference name, and designate the start and end date times for each time span within the calendar.
      • For example, the parent December Work Schedule calendar is for a time span of December 1, 20nn 12:00 through December 31, 20nn 23:59:59.
      • The child December Work Week calendar consists of five business calendar entries. Each entry is for the start and end dates of each calendar week in December.
      • The child December Workdays calendar consists of multiple business calendar entries. Each entry is for the start and end date times for each working day in December. You don’t create business calendar entries for company holidays such as New Year's Eve or New Year's Day.
    • Use Business Calendar > Calendars for Package to pair the parent business calendar December Work Schedule with the appropriate ServiceNow AI Platform packages, such as Customer Service Management.

    Using business calendars in place of legacy calendar and schedule definitions

    The legacy functions that you may have used, on the System Scheduler > Schedules and Fiscal Calendar menus, to define schedules and fiscal calendars, continue to be supported. However, you should use the Business Calendar menu in their places to define calendars and schedules and then associate them with specific ServiceNow AI Platform packages.

    Note:
    For Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) applications, you must define Fiscal Calendars using the Generate a fiscal calendar feature.
    • If you use the legacy functions to create fiscal calendars and schedules, the resulting definition records are internally flagged as belonging to the legacy [cmn_schedule] table hierarchy. These records appear on the lists on the Business Calendar menu, as well as on the lists on the respective menus for the legacy functions used. For example, if you defined fiscal calendars using legacy fiscal calendar functions, the resulting records appear on lists on the Business Calendar Fiscal Calendar menus.
    • If you select a legacy fiscal calendar or schedule from these lists, you can only modify it using the legacy function that you originally used to create it. For example, if you select a legacy fiscal calendar, you can only modify it by using the functions on the Fiscal Calendar menu. You can't modify it with the Business Calendar menu functions.