11.5

Chapter 6: Configuring and using the Roaming feature and Roaming User Profiles
Overview of the Roaming feature
The Roaming feature lets users dictate with Dragon from different network locations and on dif-
ferent computers without having to create and train individual User Profiles at each location.
Some situations that the Roaming feature makes possible:
n A doctor may need to dictate reports in a medical office building using a desktop computer, in a
hospital room using a Tablet PC, or at home using a laptop computer. The Roaming feature
allows the doctor to use the same set of User Profiles containing the same vocabulary words
with the acoustic information from each location.
n A user dictates on the same laptop at multiple offices and at home. Before leaving the office,
the user loads a set of User Profiles from a central location on the network to his laptop. Once
home, the user dictates and corrects as you normally would. When you return to the office, you
reconnect the laptop to the network. The next time the user opens a Dragon user profile, the
Roaming feature synchronizes the updated User Profiles on the laptop with those at the
network’s central location.
The relationship between the Master and the Local
Roaming UserProfile
With the Roaming feature, each Dragon user profile has a single Master Roaming User Profile that
can be opened from multiple networked computers running Dragon. The Master Roaming User
Profile is stored on a network location accessible to your dictating users.
When a Master Roaming User Profile is opened from that central network location, Dragon trans-
fers a copy of that user profile to the local computer. That local copy is called the Local Roaming
User Profile.
The Local Roaming User Profile is a copy of the user data taken from the Master Roaming User
Profile but modified locally by corrections and acoustic data gathered during a dictation session.
You can set a central storage device to contain all your Master Roaming User Profiles. By loading a
Dragon User Profile from the central network location, your users can dictate at any computer
where Dragon is installed. When users exit Dragon and save the changes to their User Profiles,
these changes are saved in that central location. The next time the user runs Dragon, all the
changes saved are available regardless of which computer on the network he or she uses for dic-
tation.
Advantages of the Roaming feature
It is important to distinguish the Roaming feature from simply browsing to a network directory
and creating files there. Nuance recommends using the Roaming feature rather than storing non-
Roaming User Profiles in a network directory. Using the Roaming feature, you can:
n Minimize network traffic. When Dragon opens a User Profile, if there is already a copy of the
Roaming User Profile on the local computer, only the updates are downloaded from the
network. When the user closes the User Profile at the end of his or her dictation session, only
the updates from the current session are uploaded to the network. These updates typically
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