Nov. 6, 2024 – Bo – Microsoft 365 Business Consultant
Every Valo customer knows it by now; Valo intranet is end-of-life. The development of Valo has been discontinued and customers will no longer receive support as of July 31, 2025. This means that Valo users may run into problems such as reduced security and functionality as early as the short term. Waiting to switch is therefore not an option if you ask us, because an outdated intranet can have negative consequences for your organization.
When choosing a new intranet, it’s important that it fits your organization’s specific needs, and with the rise of AI, it’s also important to choose one that supports these developments. Fortunately, we’ve already figured this out for you. As a proud partner of Fresh Intranet, we are convinced that Fresh is the best choice to replace Valo. In this blog, we tell you all about Fresh Intranet and how to make a smooth transition from Valo to Fresh.
Valo Intranet is currently in maintenance mode. This means that new features, enhancements or innovations are no longer being developed. Support is greatly diminished, and after July 2025, Valo will be left as an outdated and unmanaged intranet, which may pose security risks and even stop working unexpectedly. For Valo customers with subscription licenses, the intranet becomes unusable when the license server closes. There will also be increasing security and compliance risks for customers with other types of licenses due to updates in the Microsoft platform, which can lead to broken functionality and incompatible components.
Fresh Intranet offers several key advantages that make it an ideal successor to Valo:
1. Valo user in mind: Designed specifically with Valo users in mind, the platform offers many familiar features such as breadcrumb navigation, announcements and the People Finder. This makes the transition much easier for former Valo users.
2. Valo employees at Fresh: There are several former Valo employees at Fresh who are familiar with the product’s architecture and philosophy, further simplifying the transition.
3. Stability& security: Fresh was developed in 2015 and is a product of Advania Group, a large IT consulting company based in Northern Europe. Advania uses, sells and implements Fresh intranet for its own clients.
4. New features: Fresh is always coming up with new features, on top of already existing ones such as a news feed, (push) notifications, custom branding and styling options, integrations with Viva Connections and Viva Engage and soon an editorial calendar.
5. Gain insight: Various analytics capabilities, including integration with Google Analytics, provide insight into intranet usage. In addition, Fresh document governance offers webparts for content management.
5. Get more out of Microsoft 365: Fresh takes full advantage of the power of Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Teams and Viva and runs on your organization’s Microsoft environment, giving you full control at all times.
6. Get more out of Microsoft 365: Fresh is also at the forefront of AI innovations thanks to the integration of the AI tool FreshMind, provides advanced search and content management options without the need for a separate AI license.
Fresh has extensive experience in guiding Valo customers to their new intranet environment and offers partners such as I4-YOU support with scripts and detailed instructions for a smooth migration. In addition, Fresh has listened carefully to the needs of Valo customers, resulting in many similarities between the products. Users will recognize Valo’s functionalities in Fresh, which is sure to make adoption of the new intranet easier. In addition to these features, Fresh also offers more than 70 webparts and extensive personalization and AI capabilities.
Especially for Valo customers, Fresh offers attractive switching discounts, namely an immediate 20% discount when switching before December 31, 2024, and if you want to purchase licenses for 3 or even 5 years, a nice additional discount is added. This makes the switch not only technically but also financially attractive.
Of course we understand that you have questions. Switching to a new intranet isn’t nothing, especially if you’re happy now. Fortunately, at Fresh you don’t have to worry about this, and of course we are here to take care of everything for you. To give some more clarification, we have answered the most frequently asked questions for you:
1. How do we make the transition easy and smooth?
Fresh has experience migrating Valo customers and provides specific scripts to easily convert webparts. Content, such as news items and photos, can remain in the current location, requiring little migration. Both intranet solutions work within SharePoint, making the transition easier.
2. Fresh licenses are more expensive than Valo licenses. But what is the added value?
Although Fresh licenses are slightly more expensive than Valo, they offer much more functionality and flexibility. Fresh includes advanced AI capabilities and in addition, you can provide feedback through us, so Fresh continues to evolve based on your needs and experiences.
2. How much time does the transition take for the customer?
The installation of Fresh and deinstallation of Valo takes three to five days. Next, the webparts must be converted, depending on where they are all used. In addition, of course, this is the perfect time to review the intranet. In fact, Fresh looks slightly different (also in terms of design) and has more features, which can give new insights for layout when transitioning. To make it easier for you, we will of course help you with this. We take stock of your requirements in advance, which allows us to get to work on the layout quickly after the transfer, which saves a lot of time.
If you would like to see Fresh in action or learn more about the switch from Valo to Fresh, sign up for our webinar on Nov. 21, where Valo and Fresh expert Jarbas Horst & our Business Consultant Bo will show you step by step what this switch will look like for you and we will answer all your questions. In this webinar we will discuss:
This is your chance to ask questions and discover why Fresh is the solution for your organization. Sign up via this link:
(This webinar will be partly in English)
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