PORTIA Workspace provides optimum workflow and navigation by allowing asset managers to link a series of activities together and create custom workflows that can be run and monitored directly from the front end. Along with a number of functional enhancements, the resulting innovative portfolio accounting solution includes customizable navigation, advanced workflow management, and robust activity monitoring and management capabilities.

To design the new PORTIA Workspace, Thomson worked closely over a six month period with designers and programmers at Microsoft Technology Center in Waltham, Massachusetts. The new PORTIA Workspace was created using the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0. and Windows Vista, providing advances for building rich, interactive client applications, communication and workflow. These new technologies are designed to help developers build Web services and connected, service-oriented applications that deliver the levels of security, reliability and differentiation that business and consumers expect.

"PORTIA Workspace delivers an innovative approach to interacting with the Thomson PORTIA Portfolio Accounting platform, supporting even more automation of day to day people and system activities," said Christy Bremner, president, Thomson PORTIA. "By supporting user driven navigation and the automation of workflows, we've eliminated many steps, allowing asset managers to achieve optimal efficiency and dramatically reduce operations risk, or the risk of human error," said Bremner. "We are pleased to take advantage of Microsoft technologies to deliver innovative solutions to our customers. The capabilities of the Microsoft .NET technologies and Windows Vista are helping us to deliver greater value and efficiencies to asset managers in allowing them to define their own workflows," said Bremner.

"Thomson Financial and Microsoft are meeting the wealth management and investment management markets' need for modern, high performance and cost-effective financial management solutions," said David Vander, managing director, Worldwide Financial Services Industry, Microsoft Corp. "Working closely with the Thomson PORTIA development team, we helped them design the next generation portfolio management solution in rapid time to market while leveraging their existing technology investments."

New Thomson PORTIA features include a NAV Manager screen that allows clients to calculate and store NAVs and related components from an unlimited number of sources each day. The standard PORTIA report library has also been expanded to include new gain/loss, profit/loss and NAV reports.

Enhanced integration capabilities provide clients more options and easier ways to integrate Thomson PORTIA to other systems. These include a new web services integration layer; a subscriber service that allows user to import into PORTIA using XML messaging, and the ability to publish records using MSMQ plus PORTIA services usability enhancements.