My company has switched to a **Windows 2012 Server** recently, and we faced **domains** for the first time ever (we were using workgroups prior to this change, with a plain old **Windows XP** serving some shared folders). With the new server, my boss wanted to also give each user a logged access level to some folders (which I expect to make them work), so we need to connect them and use the user's credentials. However, some clients are **XP**, and some other are **Win7**, so I guess the "domain" part is a little away from my power.

Is there something I missed, and could you guide me through the process on connecting these clients to the server? What are the steps to add them to the **Active Directory**? Should I (definitely) upgrade XP to at least Win7?