Intro
As organizations increasingly embrace digital transformation, the impending deprecation of Valo Intranet—scheduled for summer 2025—presents a critical opportunity for businesses to reassess their intranet solutions. With Valo no longer receiving updates, migrating to SharePoint Intranet is not just advisable; it’s essential for maintaining operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
The Case for Migration
Currently, many organizations utilize a SharePoint-based intranet within Microsoft 365, often enhanced by third-party solutions like Valo. However, since Valo’s introduction, Microsoft has significantly improved SharePoint, bridging many functionality gaps. As a result, the benefits of maintaining a third-party overlay are diminishing. The goal is to transition clients to a pure SharePoint solution, which will yield cost savings and improved reliability.
Key Benefits of a SharePoint Solution
Before we were informed of the End of life for Valo, these points alone were worth migrating for alone:
- Cost Efficiency: By eliminating reliance on Valo, organizations can reduce licensing and maintenance costs associated with third-party solutions.
- Enhanced Functionality: SharePoint now offers many features that were once exclusive to Valo, making it a more comprehensive solution for intranet needs.
- Improved Reliability: A native SharePoint solution ensures better integration and support, leading to enhanced operational stability.
My Migration Approach
Having successfully completed several migrations for previous Valo clients, I’ve established effective routines for replacing Valo functionality. My approach includes:
- Tenant Setup: We begin by reviewing the existing SharePoint and Azure configurations, ensuring consistency in user data to facilitate employee search capabilities – I check for any bumps in the road ahead.
- Microsoft Search Configuration: To empower employees to efficiently locate relevant content, I dedicate time to configure Microsoft Search, enhancing the overall search experience.
- Employee Search Implementation: Utilizing PnP Modern Search, I’ve created a flexible employee search that integrates with Entra ID, allowing users to find resources based on existing data.
- Template Distribution: I migrate desired page and news templates from the existing solution and create a Logic App or an Azure Runbook to distribute these templates across the intranet.
- Megamenu and Homepage Development: The Valo megamenu is replaced with Microsoft’s megamenu, creating a streamlined homepage with basic but well working functionality.
- FAQ/Valo Universal: I replicate the existing FAQ functionality using PnP Modern Search, ensuring that users can access frequently asked questions easily.
- Audience Targeting: Since Valo did audience targeting based on a field in the user profile and Microsoft uses security groups for the same functionality, we have a choice wether to embrace Microsoft’s way or continuing using the user profile parameter for this. Most of my customers end up using security groups, which also makes us able to target several of our web parts.
- News Area Establishment: To manage news publication effectively, we recommend mapping the existing News site into an Org News Site. I also try to reuse and account for any tagging or customization in the intranet news process.
- Viva Connections Customization: We tailor Viva Connections to display the intranet within Teams, optimizing the dashboard for mobile use.
- Valo Deinstallation: Finally, we ensure the secure removal of Valo-specific components and registrations in SharePoint, Azure, and Entra ID.
Conclusion
As we approach the end-of-life for Valo Intranet, the urgency to migrate to Out Of The Box SharePoint Online is clear. By acting now, organizations can secure a more efficient, cost-effective, and reliable intranet solution. If you have questions or need assistance with your migration journey, please reach out. If you want to do it yourself, take a look at more of the posts on this very blog for suggestions and idéas how to get started.
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