Workday/Holiday Exclude/Exemption

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1

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day (ex: Columbus Day)!

This morning, I found that the workday sensor believed our office was on holiday, because the second Monday of October is a holiday in our region. However, unless you’re a US bank, your office is probably still in operation today. I also found that there wasn’t an easy way to exempt a holiday from the workday sensor. So I had to build a template in the condition that unlocks/locks our office door. Hopefully this will help someone else who runs across this problem. The python holiday code is really nice otherwise.

  condition:
    condition: and
    conditions:
      - condition: state
        entity_id: switch.front_door_maglock_power
        state: 'on'
      - condition: or
        conditions:
          - condition: state
            entity_id: binary_sensor.workday
            state: 'on'
          # Indigenous People's Day, still a workday
          - condition: template
            value_template:
              "{{ now().weekday() == 0 and now().day > 7 and now().day < 15 and now().month == 10 }}"
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2

One of my biggest complaints about the workday sensor is the fact that you have to restart HA every time you add/remove a holiday. Plus, as you said, excluding holidays is a pain.

I have this type of thing coded into NodeRed as well using the Calendarifc API (https://calendarific.com/api-documentation) that I can single out holidays for and then set a global var to true/false based upon that.

Well done and I think I’ll incorporate your logic into a couple of my automations.

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3

I’ve since moved this to its own binary_sensor to make things simpler in multiple automations.

binary_sensor:
  - platform: workday
    name: python_workday
    country: 'US'
    province: 'UT'

  - platform: template
    sensors:
      workday:
        value_template: >-
           {{ is_state('binary_sensor.python_workday', 'on')
             or (now().weekday() == 0 and now().day > 14 and now().day < 22 and now().month == 1)
             or (now().weekday() == 0 and now().day > 7 and now().day < 15 and now().month == 10)
             or (now().weekday() < 5 and now().day == 11 and now().month == 11) }}
  # Holidays that are not office closings
  # MLK day
  # Indigenous Peoples' Day
  # Veterans Day
4

This continues to evolve. Needed something for the day after Thanksgiving, which is not a holiday in my state, but is also not a workday for my office.

binary_sensor:
  - platform: workday
    name: python_workday
    country: 'US'
    province: 'UT'
  
  - platform: template
    sensors:
      workday:
        value_template: >-
          {# MLK day, office open #}
          {% if now().weekday() == 0 and now().day > 14 and now().day < 22 and now().month == 1 %}
            {{ true }}
          {# Indigenous Peoples' Day, office open #}
          {% elif now().weekday() == 0 and now().day > 7 and now().day < 15 and now().month == 10 %}
            {{ true }}
          {# Veterans' Day, office open #}
          {% elif now().weekday() < 5 and now().day == 11 and now().month == 11 %}
            {{ true }}
          {# Day after Thanksgiving, office closed #}
          {% elif now().weekday() == 4 and now().day > 22 and now().day < 30 and now().month == 11 %}
            {{ false }}
          {# Python holiday via workday sensor #}
          {% elif is_state('binary_sensor.python_workday', 'on') %}
            {{ true }}
          {%- endif %}
5

Personally I created just a regular sensor, suppose it could be a binary_sensor as well…

    date_workday:
      value_template: >
        {% set ct = states('sensor.date_time') %}
        {% set ct = as_timestamp(strptime(ct,'%Y-%m-%d, %H:%M')) %}
        {% set date = states('sensor.date') %}
        {% set holidays = {
        '2020-01-01' : '1',
        '2020-05-25' : '1',
        '2020-07-03' : '1',
        '2020-09-07' : '1',
        '2020-11-26' : '1',
        '2020-12-24' : '1',
        '2020-12-25' : '1'} %}
        {% if 'Saturday' in ct | timestamp_custom("%A") %}
          off
        {% elif 'Sunday' in ct | timestamp_custom("%A") %}
          off
        {% elif holidays[date] == '1' %}
          off
        {% else %}
          on
        {% endif %}

Still needs a restart to update dates, but I like the cleanliness of the array for adding new dates.

6

It’s even cleaner with the add_holidays attribute of the workday binary_sensor; see https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/workday/ and the standard holidays are already in there, so they don’t need yearly updating for new year and christmas like yours.

7

Yes and no.

The holidays that are added with add_holidays are not necessarily days that our office is OPEN / CLOSED - which is the point of my sensor - to know specifically if it’s a workday or not. Would be bad for my office to not have the coffee maker turn on for Columbus Day or one of the non-out-of-the-office holidays… :wink:

8

Add/remove_holidays doesn’t work on “3rd Thursday of November”. Those dates would have to be looked up and the sensor regularly maintained.

9

Yes; I think your solution is an elegant addition to it. I was just pointing out to Markus that the add_holidays parameter is a more elegant way to add non-standard holidays, and would also handle some of the hardcoded holidays he added for 2020 on a yearly basis, needing less maintenance.

I’m not sure I’m following Markus99’s counterpoint - seems like remove_holidays would handle the days where he wants the office to be open?

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