Sunsetting legacy platforms

1. What does sunsetting mean?

Sunsetting is the retiring of a piece of software or technology. In the case of Helio, we are sunsetting legacy political intelligence platforms – this includes DeHavilland PeoplePoint, DeHavilland EU, Dods EU (including Dods People EU), and Forefront.

We are sunsetting these platforms as we have built Helio, our AI-powered political intelligence platform which provides clients across the UK and EU a single place to access the tools and services they need to execute on their public affairs strategy end to end.

To ensure a smooth and seamless transition to the new platform, we have enlisted a phased roll out of Helio to existing clients and will be transferring over data from legacy platforms to the new Helio environment ensuring clients have a complete overview of activity, contacts, and output when you transition fully over to the new Helio platform.

2. How will this impact clients in the UK?

We will begin the official process of sunsetting our legacy DeHavilland PeoplePoint platform on 1 April. This will be a phased process and will include:

• 9 April: We will begin transferring over data from the legacy platform into the new Helio solution. This includes output, activity and contacts. This process should be completed by 13 April.

• 10 April: We will stop updating data on legacy platforms. From this date we strongly encourage using the Helio platform exclusively as this is where the most up to date, and accurate data will be stored.

• 10 April: All monitoring emails will be delivered exclusively via the Helio platform. This incudes Bulletin Only clients, who will begin receiving Helio monitoring emails with AI summaries.

• 30 April: Will be the final day of access to the legacy platform. After this date you will no longer be able to log into DeHavilland PeoplePoint.

3. How will this impact clients in the EU?

We will begin the process of sunsetting legacy EU platforms on April 1. For legacy Dods clients, on this date access to the Dods platform will stop – instead they are required to continue logging into the Helio platform for access to their political intelligence tools and services.

For Dods People clients, you will no longer be able to access People data through the Dods EU platform as of this date. Instead, you will be able to log into the Helio platform for access to our Stakeholder Relationship Management tool. We will also continue to provide access to full data sets via email until the full data sets exist in the new Helio platform.

For DeHavilland EU customers, we will follow a phased approach to sunsetting – all monitoring updates and data have fully transitioned over to the new Helio platform. We will sunset the legacy platform on 30 April.

4. How will this impact Forefront clients?

We will sunset the legacy Forefront portal at the end of April – the last date you will be able to access the platform will be 30 April 2026. There will be no impact to your current Forefront service, all Notes are accessible on the new Helio platform and we stopped uploading content to the legacy platform at the end of December 2025.

5. What will happen to any data I have on the old platform? (UK)

We are actively transferring over all data from legacy platforms into the new Helio platform. We expect the transfer of data to be complete by 13 April, this data transfer includes created contacts, output and activity.

6. Can I export my data in the same way on the Helio platform? (UK)

You can still export your activity data in CSV format, allowing you to manipulate, analyse, and share the data internally to help quantify output.

The Engagement Dashboard also provides a visual overview of this data, with filters and built-in graphs to help demonstrate activity. While the dashboard itself cannot be downloaded, it can be easily shared with team members during presentations or via screenshots to support data visualisation.

7. What functionality is not being carried over into the Helio platform?

Helio is a next-generation AI-powered political intelligence platform that provides public affairs and markets teams with access to the tools and services they need to execute strategy from a single source.

Most critical functionality from previous platforms has been carried over. To ensure this, we spoke directly with clients to understand the most used and essential features, and these have been transferred into Helio. We’ve also invested in new developments based on client feedback to enhance workflows.

Some features are still in development and will be available in the platform in the coming months:

• Mail merge enhancements: In April we recently released enhancements to the mail merge features which now supports salutations, aliases and the ability to CC contacts.

• Procedure tracking (EU only): The ability to ‘follow’ and track specific legislative procedures.

• Forefront Events: The ability to view upcoming events in Helio.

The platform remains in beta until the end of April while we complete the sunsetting process, ensuring there are no gaps in service. After this, Helio will continue to iterate and enhance features based on client needs.

8. Will the Helio platform remain in beta once legacy platforms are sunset?

Once we sunset the legacy platforms at the end of April, the Helio platform will transition out of the beta phase. However, as we continue to iterate on existing functionality and develop new features, some elements of Helio will continue to move through beta, as is typical in platform release processes.