Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 can be installed on a non-persistent virtual desktop, but unless the installation is made part of the virtual desktop image that loads every time a user logs in, the installation will not remain with the virtual image once the virtual machine is shut down.

From my understanding of a non-persistent virtual desktop, you would create a machine image that acts as the default image that is used when starting the virtual machine, and any data that the user would need to save would be on a server, because anything that would be saved to the C: drive (or drive that Windows is installed on) would not be retained after the virtual machine is shut down. Because of this, you would need to create an image with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 pre-configured.

The first step after installing Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 for the virtual desktop image would be to configure roaming profiles or set a location of the profile to be something other than the default directory (C:ProgramData\Nuance\NaturallySpeaking\Users) because the default directory would be deleted after the virtual machine is logged out of. The master roaming profile would have to be set to a location that all users would be able to access from a network location. An example would be to have it set to “\<server>\dragonprofiles,” in which everyone would save and open their master roaming profile from the “dragonprofiles” folder on the server.

Or the company can set up a mapped drive (for example, the H: drive is common in a non-persistent virtual environment to use as the user’s “Home” drive), to setup a drive that links to a folder specific to the user. You could also set this up to use a removable drive, provided that the drive letter would be the same every time.

Keep in mind that by using a roaming profile, a local cache of the master roaming profile is created by copying parts of the master roaming profile to the C:ProgramData\Nuance\NaturallySpeaking\RoamingUsers directory when the profile is loaded on the machine for the first time during initialization of the profile. Being that the non-persistent virtual desktop “resets” each time it is used, the local cache will be generated every time the user logs into the machine and then loads their profile, meaning that the initialization of the profile will take longer on the first load after the machine is started.

The next step would be to set up any other Administrative privileges (Tools> Administrative Settings) for the users. A specific Administrative Setting that I would recommend is to disable the option to “Set audio levels on each machine,” provided that the user is using the same microphone for their profile each time. The reason I suggest this setting to be disabled is because Dragon NaturallySpeaking uses the Hardware ID of the microphone (which can be depended on the USB port and microphone chipset name) to determine if the user is using the same microphone. If the Hardware ID changes, and the “Set audio levels on each machine” is enabled, the user will be prompted to go through the microphone setup when loading their profile.

In summary, the Dragon NaturallySpeaking installation and configuration would need to be setup as part of the virtual machine image and either roaming profiles, mapped drive, or removable drive would have to be used.

Verification Source:  Tom, Senior Technical Support Analyst with Nuance Communications

Test Date: 7.9.12