Virtual Port Monitor works as a Windows port monitor (hence the name). A port monitor is usually used to monitor the status of a printer, as well as transmit data to the printer. Virtual Port Monitor installs itself as a port monitor, but instead of transmitting to a printer, the printer data is sent to the folder you select as the output folder in the dialog. Once the file has been written the the output folder, an executable file can be run with the name of the file automatically added to the command line, which causes most commercial programs to perform the Open function. If this program is a batch file, the filename is accessed via the command line parameter variable %1.

Virtual Port Monitor has been completely redesigned "under the hood" to accommodate the latest Windows port monitor specification. Even though the user interface looks much the same, it is different in that it serializes all configuration and informational data to and from the spooler service using the XcvData interface. This is done using SOAP/XML (the basis of .NET), so that browsing for folders and printers is actually done on the server while displaying the dialog in the client screen, supporting Terminal Services and Fast User Switching. Cluster Server support is implemented by using the registry functions supplied to the port monitor when the port monitor is initialized, so that Windows can write the configuration data to each node in the cluster. Additionally, the file name and environment variable safety routines have been modified to use a "character not allowed" algorithm, instead of the "character allowed" algorithm used in previous versions to support other languages that allow characters beyond the ASCII set used in the English language. Additional choices are now available for storing print files in a subdirectory based on the computer, printer, driver, as well as the user name. Also a new "Application Wait" feature has been added to support serialization of post-print applications that may have varying run times due to complexity of data, or other factors which may cause an instance executed later, to finish sooner than another, that was executed earlier. By waiting for the application to finish, Virtual Port Monitor can also delete the original file by choosing that option in the dialog. Finally the installer has changed to enable live installation of the product on systems that are in production, using a backup and restore technique, so that updates are applied with minimum interruption. The backup and restore functionality is added to the Virtual Port Setup utility so that a backup of the configuration can be stored on disk.