Over the last couple months, Microsoft has heavily promoted the release of Windows 10. The upgrade is free for the first year and available to Windows 7 and 8.1 system users. Windows is a client-side OS, running on desktop, laptop, and mobile forms. The official release date for the upgrade is July 29th. Workforce Central users may be affected by this upgrade as some Kronos versions do not support Windows 10.
To conduct the upgrade to Windows 10, users must first check if their organization's IT department has blocked or disabled the automatic update so they can toll it out to all employees in a controlled manner. If you are a large organization, Windows 10 will most likely not cause any issues. If you are a small-to-medium-sized business, however, the best method may be to let individual users upgrade to Windows 10 via this automatic process.
If you are currently using Windows 7-8.1 on a personal laptop or desktop, there will be a small Windows logo that appears on the Windows Taskbar on the lower right corner of your computer screen. The icon is delivered by Windows Update utility and automatically delivers the upgrade software and security patches to your computer. If the icon is not visible, it may mean that you have disabled the automatic updates.
To upgrade to Windows 10, simply click on the Windows icon in the Windows taskbar. It will then ask if you would like to register for a free upgrade to Windows 10. Clicking yes and accepting the agreement will allow Microsoft to automatically download the Windows 10 upgrade to your computer, if you are connected to the Internet. You will be notified of the successful download process via a prompt after July 29th. After you recieve the prompt, you can select "yes" to start the upgrade process, which takes approximately 2 hours.
What this Means for Kronos Users:
“For Workforce Central v8, Kronos has completed preliminary testing using pre-release builds of Windows 10. Initial results reveal no significant issues with Windows 10 using either Internet Explorer, which is still supported and shipped with Windows 10, or Microsoft’s new Edge browser, a lighter weight, faster web browser that Microsoft has introduced to compete with Google Chrome. Note that these results are preliminary. Kronos will repeat its testing soon after Microsoft releases the official General Availability build on the 29th."
"For Workforce Central v6.3 and v7, Kronos Engineering will conduct testing of these versions after the General Availability version of Windows 10 is released. Kronos discourages WFC v6.3 and v7 users from upgrading their user environments to Windows 10 until Kronos conducts the testing."
"For Workforce Central v6.2 and earlier versions, Windows 10 is not a supported platform.”
In the beginning of 2015, Microsoft’s executive vice president announced an initiative called “Windows as a service plan.” The new program focuses on operating system upgrades for all users who have upgraded to Windows 10. Windows 10 will be kept current for the supported lifetime of the device, meaning Microsoft will automatically download and install all mandatory software updates for Windows 10. The automatic updates protect users from any detected security vulnerabilities as well as fixes software or drivers that are outdated.
You can read more information on Windows mainstream support offers here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/lifecycle
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