Automatic Migrations – Frequently Asked Questions
Program Works is not supporting nor providing access to WorkSchedule.Net Version 8 beyond May 1, 2024. Therefore all company accounts not already migrated will be automatically migrated to Version 9 after that date. This is because the technology is becoming outdated, both in terms of the application itself, the hardware and operating systems it runs on, and the legacy network. It is also not feasible to support the two systems any longer, considering that Version 9 provides essentially all the same functionality as Version 8, but with major improvements in ease-of-use, a full-featured mobile app, better security, availability, speed and much more.
An automatic migration is a last resort to migrate companies that have not scheduled a live migration with their Customer Success Manager for this year. It will create a version 9 account for each customer, move their data into that account, give access to the new account, and shutdown the Version 8 account. The date of this migration is scheduled by Program Works.
We very strongly recommend contacting your Customer Success Manager (via the Migration Dashboard accessible from your Home Page as an administrator) to schedule a planned migration and avoid automatic migration, if you have not already done so.
We do not advise that. The automatic migrations are intended as a last resort only. We strongly recommend that you setup a brief 15-minute consultation with your Customer Success Manager and look over the streamlined YouTube migration tutorials soon. You should also look over the listed potential migration issues we may have found (if any) from analyzing your usage, on your Migration Dashboard, available from your Home Page when logging in as an administrator, in addition to the short list of additional potential migration issues here.
If you do choose to simply wait for the automatic migration to occur, without planning a migration beforehand with your CSM, you need to be aware of the following risks:
- You may lose access to some features that you use. A few features have been dropped, and a few are not available in Version 9 yet.
- You will forfeit your opportunity to take a test drive of the new system and to receive any training on Version 9 before you migrate. Your admins and other users may not be familiar with the new interface. Most features work a little differently in Version 9.
- You will have no control over the date and time of the migration. Though you can request a change to the automatic migration date, that cannot be guaranteed.
- Any users without a valid email address on file will not be able to access the system until you assign them in their user records.
- You may have the wrong administrator designated as the Main Account Contact, without us able to confirm that information from you.
- You may have the wrong local time location configured, without us having that information from you.
- You may not retain the needed historical information for your schedule and attendance, if you need to keep that information from before January 1, 2020, without us knowing your desired cut-off date.
At about 4:00 pm Eastern time on the date of your scheduled automatic migration, if your account has not already been migrated, we will begin the migration and email the top administrator a notification that the migration is starting. At that time all users will still have access to the Version 8 account, but changes to any data in the Version 8 account after that time will not be migrated to Version 9, and therefore will not ultimately be saved. We recommend notating any changes to the schedule or attendance to manually re-enter after the migration is complete, or simply asking users to refrain from making any changes or change requests during this time period. Read-only actions like viewing the schedule should generally not be problematic, though records of employees viewing their schedules during this time will not be retained.
The following information, required for any migration, will be determined by Program Works if not provided by you:
- Main Administration Contact: Program Works will pick the user with “Administration” permission that appears to be the top administrator as the Main Account Contact, who will have final and top authority on the company account.
- Time Zone Location: Program Works will take our best educated guess at which location you want to use for local time based on your listed address with us, if we have it, and potentially other sources such as geo-IP.
- Historical Schedule and Attendance: All your historical time block information, going back to January 1, 2020, will be migrated for both the Current Schedule and Attendance.
The migration process will run as long as necessary, potentially overnight. Most migrations take a few hours. Users will still have access to their Version 8 accounts while this process executes, but changes will be lost.
At some point the next morning (normally scheduled to be a weekday, non-holiday) the following finalization will occur:
- The Main Account Contact will be sent a password reset email, which will initially setup the new password for that user in Version 9.
- All users with a valid email address will be invited to the new system via email. Users will need to go through a very brief 3-step wizard to enter their new username and password, optionally setup their mobile phone number for SMS notifications, and agree to the current version of the terms of service for Version 9.
- Your Version 8 company account will be permanently closed. All users must access the system through Version 9 after this point in time.
- The Main Account Contact will be notified of the completed migration by email. Support will be available to help with any issues you may encounter as you start to use Version 9.
These are unlikely but possible scenarios:
- If an error occurs in the migration process, we will notify you, and will likely reschedule your auto-migration for a future date.
- If the migration of the data takes longer than 17 hours, a greater possibility with accounts that have over 200 users, the finalization may be delayed until later in the day or whenever the migration is completed.
No. Even with a planned migration date scheduled with your Customer Success Manager, the automatic migration date still stands just in case the planned migration does not occur. Only when the live migration is fully completed will the automatic migration be cancelled.
Closer to the end of the year we will begin showing you your scheduled automatic migration date in the Migration Dashboard, accessible from the Home Page as an administrator. You will be able to request a change of your automatic migration date by contacting your Customer Success Manager, but we cannot guarantee it can be changed. Your automatic migration will not occur before March 2, 2024.
Generally, not without a current agreement. If you use custom features, it is most likely you will no longer have access to those features in Version 9 without a current agreement with Program Works in place for usage of the features. In some cases custom features have become standard, in which case the features could be available in version 9, but we cannot guarantee that. We highly recommend scheduling a consultation with your CSM.
No, you will no longer have access to your Version 8 account after an auto-migration, though virtually all your version 8 data will be moved to Version 9. This is why we want to ensure you are ready for the migration. Our support team will be ready to assist in any issues you have with Version 9 as you get used to it.
