Over the past month, we focused on making Vala more useful not only while preparing a claim, but across the entire lifecycle of the work surrounding it.
You can now track claim outcomes and organization-level performance, securely share clients with partner organizations, build more precise automations, work with messages directly from a claim, and search across historic claims and their underlying evidence.
We also continued expanding Vala's VA-specific intelligence, improving forms and QuickSubmit, strengthening client and family data, and making everyday team workflows more flexible.
We recently wrapped up NASDVA, where we had the opportunity to connect with state veterans agencies from across the country. Next week, we'll be in Indianapolis for NOVA, and we're looking forward to seeing many of you there.
Thank you, as always, for the feedback that continues to shape what we build.
Kyle, James, Justin, and Lenaire
Vala at NASDVA 2026 in Savannah
What Shipped
Track Claim Outcomes and Practice Performance
Vala can now capture what happened after a claim was filed, giving your team a clearer picture of outcomes across your practice.
You can now:
Record condition-level results including grants, denials, increases, deferrals, remands, withdrawals, and no-change decisions
Track resulting ratings and decision information
See outcome summaries directly on claims
Filter and review claims by outcome
View organization-level Claim Outcomes analytics
Track success rates and outcome trends over time
This closes an important part of the loop between preparing a claim and understanding what happened after VA made a decision.
Collaborate Securely Across Organizations
Vala's collaboration tools now extend beyond individual specialists.
Organizations can now establish partner relationships and explicitly share selected clients while maintaining clear ownership and access boundaries.
You can:
Invite another organization to collaborate
Share only the clients relevant to that relationship
See which organization owns each shared client
Manage sharing permissions and revoke access when needed
Work from a dedicated Shared Access workspace
Keep incoming shared clients read-only where appropriate
This builds on the specialist collaboration we introduced last month and creates a foundation for secure collaboration across the broader veterans benefits ecosystem.
More Powerful Automations
We significantly expanded what Vala workflows can respond to and automate.
You can now:
Trigger workflows when specific VA forms, representation agreements, or Library documents are uploaded or processed
Trigger workflows when specific Templates documents are returned signed
Assign multiple staff members to the same automated task
Prevent duplicate tasks when overlapping automations run
Apply more precise document and form targeting
See clearer workflow behavior around document-driven events
The goal is to let your team automate the repetitive coordination around a claim without losing control over when and why a workflow runs.
Keep More of the Claim in One Place
We expanded claim detail so your team can do more without jumping between different areas of Vala.
You can now:
View client-message activity directly from a claim
Open and respond to the client's message thread without leaving the claim
Search historic and closed claims by client, status, conditions, tags, and other details
Search a claim's evidence by document title or OCR content
Configure commonly used VA forms for faster access
Send generated forms directly to the client's portal
These improvements make the claim itself a more complete workspace for the people, evidence, communications, and forms surrounding it.
Better Client and Family Data
We continued improving how Vala turns intake and uploaded records into structured client information.
Updates include:
Capture multiple military service periods from questionnaires
Map maiden, former, preferred, service, and other names without changing the client's legal name
Capture a primary point of contact directly from intake
Sync spouses and adult children with related contacts while preserving minors as family records unless your team chooses to create a contact
Surface spouse and child information found in award prints, notification letters, and decision letters for staff review
This helps reduce duplicate data entry while keeping the underlying client record more complete.
Smarter Deadlines and Appeals
Vala now goes beyond standard appeal deadlines when processing proposed reductions.
When Vala identifies a proposed-reduction notice, it can create:
A proposed-reduction response deadline
A hearing-request deadline
Linked tasks and calendar events
30-, 7-, and 1-day reminders
Stage-specific entries in Appeals Due
Vala avoids inventing a deadline when it cannot determine the notice date, instead flagging the item for review.
More Flexible Forms and QuickSubmit
We continued improving the path from client information to a submission-ready form.
Highlights include:
More reliable QuickSubmit handoffs with a collapsible browser-extension control
Configurable signing order and improved signer handling
Improved 21-22a representative settings and Block 16B behavior
Configurable Item 21 defaults for 21-22a
Better handling of signatures, dates, and template placeholders
These improvements are designed to reduce the small manual corrections that can slow down an otherwise completed claim.
Better Messaging, Notes, and Team Coordination
We also shipped a number of improvements for everyday practice operations.
You can now:
Create reusable note templates for standardized updates
Preview messages and templates before sending
Build and review more precise broadcast audiences with per-recipient delivery results
Assign multiple staff members to shared deadline tasks
Use expanded Team Metrics for workload and case-ownership visibility
Generate filtered PDF reports from Notifications
Expanding Vala's VA Knowledge
We're continuing to build Vala's VA-specific research and intelligence layer.
This month we expanded Resources and the underlying reference infrastructure with additional trusted VA material, including educational content from trusted VA sources. We are also continuing work to make authoritative regulations, guidance, and BVA decisions easier to search and use alongside the claims workflow.
Educational reference material remains distinct from legal authority so your team can understand what type of source it is working with.
This work supports the longer-term direction of bringing claims analysis, evidence, forms, workflow, and VA-specific reference material into a single environment.
Security and Reliability
We continued strengthening Vala behind the scenes as the platform supports larger and more complex organizations.
This month's work included safer deployments designed to minimize service interruptions, stronger privacy controls, continued security hardening, and additional improvements to data isolation and access controls.
Our SOC 2 monitoring period is underway, with completion targeted for October.
What We’re Building Next
Deeper Cross-Organization Collaboration
We're already building the next phase of Shared Access.
We're working on:
More granular permission bundles
A unified workspace for external organizations
AI and document access scoped to exactly what has been shared
More flexible client transfers between organizations
The goal is to make collaboration across firms, VSOs, specialists, and other trusted organizations feel as natural as working with someone on your own team, while preserving clear data boundaries.
A Deeper VA Research Library
We're continuing to expand Resources into a first-class VA research environment.
We're working on:
Broader 38 CFR access
Expanded BVA decision coverage
Better search across VA-specific reference material
Clear separation between legal authority, official guidance, and educational resources
Deeper integration between research and the claims workflow
Smarter Claims Intelligence
We're continuing to improve the intelligence behind claim review.
We're working on:
Better condition discovery using synonyms and common abbreviations
Better handling of residual conditions
Continued improvements to citation accuracy and source grounding
Specialized claim workflows, including SMC
Better connections between evidence, conditions, decisions, and claim opportunities
This remains aligned with Vala's longer-term product direction of moving from assisted claim preparation toward identifying opportunities and producing more complete claim-ready outputs.
Ask
Many of these releases came directly from conversations with customers, so keep the feedback coming. You can now find Send Feedback directly under Resources in Vala, or reply to this email and tell us what would save your team the most time.
Where We’ll Be
September is a busy month for the Vala team, and we’d love to connect if you’ll be nearby.
We’re at NABVETS in Portland this week, with several more stops ahead this month.
September 8–13: NABVETS in Portland
September 16–18: NOVA in Indianapolis
September 19–22: Military Ball and onsite with Lorain County Veterans Service Commission in the Cleveland area
September 23–25: Chicago
September 28–October 1: Onsite with Colorado DMVA (Denver)
If you’ll be at one of these events or in any of these cities, let us know. We’d love to meet.
Colorado Pilot
We’re also preparing to begin our pilot with Colorado DMVA on September 28 as Colorado evaluates Vala across its veteran-services workflow.
We’re welcoming state and county veteran-service organizations interested in observing the pilot and learning how another public-sector organization is evaluating and implementing Vala.
Outside observers will have opportunities to see the platform in practice and learn from the implementation as it progresses.
If your state or county would like to participate as an observer, reply to this email and let us know.
Friends of Vala Dinner
We’re also hosting our Friends of Vala Dinner on Thursday, September 17 at 7:30 p.m. during NOVA in Indianapolis. If you’ll be there, we’d love to have you join us.
We’re always looking for ways to help you serve more veterans while spending less time on administrative work.