[Athen] Dragon Server

[Doug Mantle]

Hi Robert.

We are currently using two types of Dragon licensing that offer what you are looking for.

We have had the Academic Lab Packs for 15 systems up and running now for about 6 or 7 years. We use them in our exam area and public access lab spaces. User profiles are stored in a shared network directory. We have one directory for exam profiles and one for public use profiles. This prevents problems with students ‘customizing’ their profiles for their benefit in an exam. Access to the appropriate directory is maintained through Windows file sharing security settings and/or group policies based on the specific system they are using and / or their login credentials. Accessing the roaming voice profiles is managed within Dragon by specifying the network location they are stored in. This gives any user from any computer where the Dragon software is installed and configured, access to their voice profile.

A few years ago we needed to increase our loan out licenses for individual students and employees. We previously purchased individual copies of the software for this purpose. Nuance changed the licensing a few years back and now one copy of the software is eternally registered to one user and cannot legally be reassigned. With this change came a new product (imagine) called Dragon Professional Group. We currently have two employees using it and two licenses available for student loan. This involves an online license manager that you use to ‘sign out’ licenses to individuals. You install the software on their systems and they login to gain access.

Both options give the ability to store profiles centrally, accessing them from any configured / connected system. The Lab Packs use a shared networked directory. As I understand it, Professional Group uses a synchronized profile through the cloud but doesn’t necessarily require the internet to use Dragon. Sorry, I am a bit fuzzy on the exact methodology of the Group licensing and profile storage.

Of note, when you have these types of licenses, a small yearly maintenance fee gives you both free upgrades and access to technical support. And, yes the technical support is pretty good. It is NOT the team you get when you access the consumer pay-per-use options. They actually know what they are doing and are eager to help.

A link to some info about Academic Lab Packs
https://www.nuance.com/dragon/industry/education-solutions.html

A link to some info about Professional Group
https://www.nuance.com/dragon/business-solutions/dragon-professional-group.html


Hope this helps. If you have further questions, I am happy to discuss it with you. Feel free to reach out…


Take care,



Doug Mantle,
Assistive Technology Support Specialist,
STARS Learning Lab Co-ordinator
Accessibility, Counselling and Student Development - Accessibility Services - Student Affairs

King's University College at Western University
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From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Wink Harner
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2020 6:14 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Dragon Server

Robert,

We set this up at my college in Arizona some years ago. IT can create a data bank on the main server and in the BIOS system of each computer where dragon is installed, re-direct the SAVE path for the dragon profiles to go to the server under the student's profile name instead of the profile being saved on the local computer(s).

We had the students back up their voice profiles onto flash drives and we cleaned the data off the servers either once a semester or once per academic year so as not to clog up space.

Our IT dept was notoriously short of server space so I volunteered a bit of my budget $$ to purchase several TB of server space just for the dragon profiles.

Hope this is helpful.

Wink Harner
Accessibility Consultant/Alternative Text Production
The Foreign Type
Portland OR
foreigntype at gmail.com<mailto:foreigntype at gmail.com>
480-984-0034
This email was dictated using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Please forgive quirks, misrecognitions, or errata .


On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 1:48 PM Robert Spangler <rspangler1 at udayton.edu<mailto:rspangler1 at udayton.edu>> wrote:
Hello, I am writing to see if there is anyone who is using Dragon in a multi-user environment.  Currently, we have six testing machines on which Dragon is installed.  Rather than have a user create a new dragon profile on each machine, we have these set up to use generic Windows accounts, so the student logs in using an account called test, and everyone uses the same Dragon profile on every computer, which I create upon installing Dragon.  However, our IT department is trying to push us away from using generic accounts, which is certainly understandable.  I am hoping that we can set up Dragon so that our students can create their Dragon profile on one machine and have it pull from a server no matter which test workstation they are using.

I have downloaded a Dragon Group Server install guide to pass along to our IT department, so we can get this started, but I was wondering if there was anyone on this list who is using this configuration.  How well does it work?  Does the Dragon server actually store the user's voice data, or does it just hold custom words and other settings shared among all users?  Do we need to have roaming profiles enabled to even use this?  Basically, is what I am attempting to accomplish possible?

Thanks!
Robert


--
Robert Spangler
Disability Services Technical Support Specialist
rspangler1 at udayton.edu<mailto:rspangler1 at udayton.edu>
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