Introduction
Aim and Scope of the Project
Officially started in July 2008 by the Governing Council of the European Central Bank, TARGET2-Securities (T2S) is a project of the Eurosystem intended to overcome the present fragmentation and to reduce inefficiencies in the European securities settlement market by fostering competition. Securities and cash accounts are placed on one single technical platform to provide integrated securities settlement.
T2S Features
T2S settlement is conducted in real-time gross mode using central bank money on a harmonised delivery-versus-payment basis. Almost all securities traded in Europe can be settled in T2S. Highly sophisticated settlement algorithms and a number of state-of-the-art functionalities such as auto-collateralisation raise the level of settlement efficiency and help to optimise liquidity management.
Access to T2S
Users can communicate with T2S in application-to-application mode (A2A) or via a graphical user interface (GUI) using a standard browser application. The T2S GUI is the basis for connecting to the platform in user-to-application mode (U2A) to display and update information online. In addition to all functionalities available in A2A mode, it provides some additional features for querying and maintaining data.
T2S GUI Principles
The following principles ensure maximum usability of the T2S GUI:
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- Clarity
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- Task-orientation
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- Comprehensibility
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- Consistency
Aim and Scope of the User Guide
This guide is intended to facilitate the use of the T2S GUI Demo Version (T2S Demo). The present chapter contains general information about the T2S project and the principles of the GUI for users with little previous knowledge about T2S. Chapter 2 describes the basic principles and the layout of the T2S Demo, while chapter 3 and chapter 4 explain the content of the screens and how to perform a limited number of business cases implemented in the T2S Demo.
Structure and Layout of the User Guide
The basic layout of the guide is built on a margin-based structure. The margin column and the text column run in a single stream adjacent to each other. The margin column is used for certain kinds of text templates, e.g. sub-headings and smaller images.
When referring to specific parts of an illustration or screenshot, position numbers are used to identify the corresponding explanation.