Custom calendars

Custom calendars arrange days, weeks, and months based on business needs separate from the default Gregorian arrangement.

Medallia Experience Cloud uses the Gregorian calendar by default, so time periods you create on the Timeperiods screen are based on that calendar. However, many businesses use custom calendars for various business needs.

Note: If your instance was created with a package installed, it might already include the Setup objects required for your company's custom calendar. Review the Setup pages described in the procedure below to determine whether you need to make any changes.

Retail example

To understand how a custom calendar might be used, consider the retail industry, for whom sales tend to be largest on weekends. With the Gregorian calendar the number of weekends in each month varies year-to-year, making trend reporting inconsistent and less useful. To remedy this, the National Retail Federation (NRF) maintains a 52-week calendar that provides more consistent and predictable sales periods than the Gregorian calendar.

The retail calendar standardizes the number of weeks in each month. Beginning with the first quarter in February, each quarter in the year includes a 4-week month, followed by a 5-week month, followed by another 4-week month, as shown in the following image:

The retail calendar standardizes the number of weeks in each month.

The calendar also groups months into seasons, with February through July as the Spring season, and August through January as the Fall season:

The retail calendar groups months into seasons, with February through July as the Spring season, and August through January as the Fall season.

Using this calendar retailers can compare sales across days, weeks, months, quarters, seasons, and years, knowing that holidays and weekends will not skew their comparative analysis.

Note: Because the retail calendar includes only 364 days, occasionally the NRF adds a 53rd week to the end of January to account for the days lost in previous calendars. For example, while January is usually a 4-week month, in 2018 (the end of fiscal year 2017) it is a 5-week month.

Setup objects needed for a custom calendar

Create a custom calendar using the following objects in Setup:

  • Groupings — Represent the types of time spans you want to track, such as weeks, fiscal years, weeks beginning on Monday, and so on. For more information, see Time groupings.

  • Intervals — Define the actual spans of time for each grouping. For example, you must define the start date and end date for each fiscal year. For more information, see Time intervals.

  • Custom time periods — Collections of intervals used to filter data when using the reporting application. Custom time periods appear in the Timeperiod dropdown in the Control Panel. For more information, see Custom time periods.