Dragon Professional Anywhere 2023.4

Important information

Configuration file update

Dragon Professional Anywhere 2023.3 introduced breaking changes to the Dragon Professional Anywhere configuration file structure. Failure to use a configuration file with version 2023.3 or higher as the basis for your deployment will cause the following issues:

• Dragon Professional Anywhere will display an error during application start, stating that 'The “Flavor” setting is not configured correctly in the configuration file. Please contact your administrator.'

• Customizations in the 'DefaultOptions' section of the configuration file won't be applied.

In general, we recommend always using the configuration file delivered with a new release. To transfer any customizations to the new version, you must copy customized values, such as the organization token, to the new configuration file.

Improvements

If Dragon Professional Anywhere is minimized when the user logs off, Dragon Professional Anywhere now remembers this and starts in a minimized state when the user next logs on.

Solved issues

General

• The cursor no longer jumps randomly to a different location in the same edit control while dictating. [DMOCE-2089]

• The “Corrections” menu no longer displays a black border when opened in virtual server environments. [SOD-50983]

• Dragon Professional Anywhere no longer closes unexpectedly in virtual server environments. [DMOCE-1935]

• Users requesting a password reset from Dragon Professional Anywhere now successfully receive the password reset email. [SOD-50298, DMOCE-1886]

• The dictated text is now visible when text scrolls in the Dictation Box. [SOD-38105, DMOCE-1925]

• Opening the “Manage Auto-Texts” window no longer causes memory leaks. [SOD-51544, DMOCE-1490]

Application support

• When the user selects “Always use when logging on” during logon, Dragon Professional Anywhere now correctly saves their settings and uses them for future logons in virtual server environments. [SOD-50073, DMOCE-1699]

Known issues

Functionality not included in the 2023.4 release

Use cases and functionality that are not supported

• Fields that are supported for dictation at the cursor but require key press simulation for full functionality
• Basic Text Control with URL support

Applications and text control types that are not supported

• Dragon Medical One Java Integration SDK
• Dragon Medical One .NET Integration SDK
• WPF

• Delphi TRichEdit

VMware Horizon Agent 8

When having VMware Horizon Agent 8 installed, Dragon Professional Anywhere might not start again after the application has been closed. The issue has been fixed with the VMware Horizon 2111 release (Horizon Agent 8.4).

Screen saver not displayed

When working with a Philips SpeechMike or Nuance PowerMic 4 device, the screen saver is not displayed after the configured period of inactivity when recording is in standby mode.

To disable this behavior, press and hold the left mouse and touchpad buttons on the recording device for five seconds. When the firmware setting has been changed successfully, the device provides visual and audio feedback. This setting is stored on the device and needs to be changed individually on each device.

Dragon Professional Anywhere

General

• When transferring text from the Dictation Box to the target text control, the target application sometimes displays an error message telling the user that the operation cannot be completed because the clipboard is in use by another application. In this case, users can recall the text back to the Dictation Box and try to transfer the text again.
• On a virtual machine, when configuring the 'General.EnableHandsFree' and 'General.StartInStandbyMode' settings in the SoD.DefaultOptions section of the Dragon Professional Anywhere configuration file to 'True', these settings are not reflected in the 'General' pane of the 'Options' window.
• When working in unsupported applications with Basic Text Control enabled, the microphone icon is sometimes not updated to indicate Full Text Control when switching to a supported application.
• When working with a Nuance PowerMic III device in an RDS environment, the microphone device buttons will stop working after disconnecting and reconnecting or locking and unlocking the RDS end point.
• Saying press tab does not insert a tab in the Dictation Box, it changes the focus to another text control instead.
• The following voice commands do not work in the anchored Microsoft Word application when the focus is on any other window: press space, press tab, press enter, cut, copy, paste.

Dictation

• When using a selection voice command in the Dictation Box after it was opened automatically, the cursor focus is removed from the original unsupported application.
• When having the Dictation Box open and with the 'Anchor the speech focus when recording is started' option enabled in the 'General' pane of the 'Options' window, putting the cursor into a supported text control and starting recording will not close the Dictation Box on the first attempt and the Dragon Professional Anywhere user interface will reflect the change of the recording status only with a delay of several seconds.
• When dictating in Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge applications, formatting commands are not supported.
• When dictating in Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge applications, the commands undo that and redo that are not supported.
• When dictating in an edit control and exiting the edit control application, the remaining part of the utterance will be written to the Dictation Box in the incorrect order.
• When dictating over text that contains bullet points, the cursor is not positioned at the end of the newly dictated text.

Dragon Professional Anywhere 2023.3

Important information

Mandatory update to the configuration file

Dragon Professional Anywhere 2023.3 introduces a breaking change to the Dragon Professional Anywhere configuration file. Make sure that the configuration file delivered with Dragon Professional Anywhere 2023.3 is used in your deployments. Failure to use the updated configuration file will lead to an error during application start; the error message will state that 'The “Flavor” setting is not configured correctly in the configuration file. Please contact your administrator.'

Update to the 'DefaultOptions' configuration file section

Dragon Professional Anywhere 2023.3 introduces a breaking change to the Dragon Professional Anywhere configuration file section that is used to define application default options. If your deployments configure default options via the configuration file, either update your configuration file to the one that is delivered with Dragon Professional Anywhere 2023.3, or change the existing configuration file as follows:

Change

<section name="SoD.DefaultOptions" type="SoDCommon.DefaultOptionsSection, SoD.Common" requirePermission="false"/>

to

<section name="SoD.DefaultOptions" type="SoDCommon.DefaultOptionsSection, Nuance.SoD.Common" requirePermission="false"/>

Using Microsoft Edge WebView2 to display the content of the personalization and help window

Dragon Professional Anywhere now uses Microsoft Edge WebView2 to display richer content with improved usability in the Dragon Professional Anywhere personalization and help window. To support this improvement, you must deploy the Microsoft Edge WebView2 runtime component to machines that host Dragon Professional Anywhere. Failing to do so will not impact the core functionality of Dragon Professional Anywhere but will potentially impact end users interacting with content displayed in the Dragon Professional Anywhere personalization and help window. To deploy Microsoft Edge WebView2 to machines hosting Dragon Professional Anywhere, install the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Evergreen Standalone component; for more information, see Webview2 - Microsoft Edge Developer.

Microsoft Edge WebView2 deployment in Citrix environments

Currently, some Citrix environments exhibit issues that can cause the Microsoft Edge WebView2 runtime process to fail working as expected, leading to the Dragon Professional Anywhere personalization and help window not displaying properly, and to sometimes terminate with a message visible to end users. As a workaround, you can apply a configuration change to Citrix to disable the Citrix Special Folder Redirection feature (SfrHook) for the Microsoft Edge WebView2 runtime process. To do so, add the following registry keys to your Citrix environment configuration:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\CtxHook\AppInit_DLLs\SfrHook\msedgewebview2.exe]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Citrix\CtxHook\AppInit_DLLs\SfrHook\msedgewebview2.exe]

For Citrix documentation on the registry keys, see: How to Disable Citrix API Hooks on a Per-application Basis

Change of default settings for Citrix virtual channels

Starting with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 2109, the 'Virtual channel allow list' policy setting will be enabled by default.

This means that Nuance custom virtual channels will no longer work with the default configuration. The policy setting for virtual channels must be disabled (preferred) to allow all virtual channels again, or configured to allow Nuance virtual channels. For more information, see the Nuance Citrix Extension Deployment and Configuration Guide delivered with the Nuance virtual extension package, or contact Nuance Technical Support.

Citrix and VMware automatic USB device splitting to enable button controls on Nuance PowerMic devices

In a session roaming use case in Citrix or VMware environments where the Nuance virtual extensions cannot be used (for example, on Linux-based thin clients), manual device splitting is not supported. Automatic device splitting must be configured; for more information, see the Deployment and Configuration for Citrix Environments and Deployment and Configuration for VMware Horizon View Environments guides.

What's new

Dragon Professional Anywhere redesign

The Dragon Professional Anywhere DragonBar has been redesigned based on customer feedback:

• Reduced the size by 75% to minimize the footprint on screen.

• Updated the volume indicator.

• Updated indicators for speech focus anchoring and Basic Text Control.

The following usability improvements have been made:

• Full design refresh of the ‘Corrections’ menu, notification messages and the Dictation Box.

• Support for automatically changing the color to match the Windows operating system theme.

• The position of the DragonBar and Dictation Box is now saved between sessions in VDI environments.

This redesign is also the first step towards compliance with accessibility standards; as a result, users cannot revert to the previous DragonBar.

Warning message for formatted auto-texts

End users will now see a warning message if they try to edit formatted auto-texts through Dragon Professional Anywhere and not Nuance Management Center. This behavior is not new, but the warning message now informs end users that trying to do this will make the auto-text revert to plain text.

Support for TX30

Dragon Professional Anywhere now supports applications that use the TX TextControl 30.0 text control.

Incorporate EULA within Dragon Professional Anywhere client

Dragon Professional Anywhere end users in certain markets now see a EULA to ensure that they understand the license terms. The end user must agree to the EULA terms during installation or on first launch in order to use the software. The end user’s response is stored in the SoD.config file.

Solved issues

General

• When ‘Transfer text when recording is stopped’ is enabled, text is now transferred immediately after recording ends, even when there is no pause between this and the end of the dictation. [SOD-49667, DMOCE-1825]

• Accented characters can now be transferred correctly from the Dictation Box in formatted text mode. [SOD-48789, DMOCE-1757]

• When ‘Audio feedback when voice commands are recognized’ is enabled, Citrix now gives audio feedback when voice commands are recognized. [SOD-48687, DMOCE-1638]

• The show anchored application voice command now shows the anchored application without resizing the window. [SOD-31002, DMOCE-1909]

• Users working in a Citrix environment can now move between different workstations without audio error. [DMOCE-1834]

• The delay between pressing the PowerMic button and starting recording in virtual environments has been considerably reduced. [DMOCE-1819]

• Dragon Professional Anywhere no longer stops responding when recording. [DMOCE-1726]

• Dragon Professional Anywhere can now be successfully installed using the MSI installation method. [SOD-50083]

Application support

• The Chrome/Edge change warning on the Dragon Professional Anywhere login window is now only displayed when needed. [SOD-50660, DMOCE-1910]
• The Dictation Box no longer opens when switching dictation from an unsupported edit control to a supported edit control. [SOD-50422]

Known issues

Functionality not included in the 2023.3 release

Use cases and functionality that are not supported

• Fields that are supported for dictation at the cursor but require key press simulation for full functionality
• Basic Text Control with URL support

Applications and text control types that are not supported

• Dragon Medical One Java Integration SDK
• Dragon Medical One .NET Integration SDK
• WPF

• Delphi TRichEdit

VMware Horizon Agent 8

When having VMware Horizon Agent 8 installed, Dragon Professional Anywhere might not start again after the application has been closed. The issue has been fixed with the VMware Horizon 2111 release (Horizon Agent 8.4).

Screen saver not displayed

When working with a Philips SpeechMike or Nuance PowerMic 4 device, the screen saver is not displayed after the configured period of inactivity when recording is in standby mode.

To disable this behavior, press and hold the left mouse and touchpad buttons on the recording device for five seconds. When the firmware setting has been changed successfully, the device provides visual and audio feedback. This setting is stored on the device and needs to be changed individually on each device.

Dragon Professional Anywhere

General

• When accessing links in the 'Help' window, the application displays an error message. Users can click 'Yes' or 'No' or close the error window to continue with help content, or say open training to access the training module. The training module covers most feature-related help topics.
• When opening the ‘Corrections’ menu in virtual server environments, any parts of the menu that overlap with the desktop have a black border.
• When transferring text from the Dictation Box to the target text control, the target application sometimes displays an error message telling the user that the operation cannot be completed because the clipboard is in use by another application. In this case, users can recall the text back to the Dictation Box and try to transfer the text again.
• On a virtual machine, when configuring the 'General.EnableHandsFree' and 'General.StartInStandbyMode' settings in the SoD.DefaultOptions section of the Dragon Professional Anywhere configuration file to 'True', these settings are not reflected in the 'General' pane of the 'Options' window.
• When working in unsupported applications with Basic Text Control enabled, the microphone icon is sometimes not updated to indicate Full Text Control when switching to a supported application.
• When working with a Nuance PowerMic III device in an RDS environment, the microphone device buttons will stop working after disconnecting and reconnecting or locking and unlocking the RDS end point.
• Saying press tab does not insert a tab in the Dictation Box, it changes the focus to another text control instead.
• The following voice commands do not work in the anchored Microsoft Word application when the focus is on any other window: press space, press tab, press enter, cut, copy, paste.

Dictation

• When using a selection voice command in the Dictation Box after it was opened automatically, the cursor focus is removed from the original unsupported application.
• When having the Dictation Box open and with the 'Anchor the speech focus when recording is started' option enabled in the 'General' pane of the 'Options' window, putting the cursor into a supported text control and starting recording will not close the Dictation Box on the first attempt and the Dragon Professional Anywhere user interface will reflect the change of the recording status only with a delay of several seconds.
• When dictating in Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge applications, formatting commands are not supported.
• When dictating in Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge applications, the commands undo that and redo that are not supported.
• When dictating in an edit control and exiting the edit control application, the remaining part of the utterance will be written to the Dictation Box in the incorrect order.
• When dictating over text that contains bullet points, the cursor is not positioned at the end of the newly dictated text.

Dragon Professional Anywhere 2023.1

Important information

Using Microsoft Edge WebView2 to display the content of the personalization and help window

Dragon Professional Anywhere now uses Microsoft Edge WebView2 to display richer content with improved usability in the Dragon Professional Anywhere personalization and help window. To support this improvement, you must deploy the Microsoft Edge WebView2 runtime component to machines that host Dragon Professional Anywhere. Failing to do so will not impact the core functionality of Dragon Professional Anywhere but will potentially impact end users interacting with content displayed in the Dragon Professional Anywhere personalization and help window. To deploy Microsoft Edge WebView2 to machines hosting Dragon Professional Anywhere, install the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Evergreen Standalone component; for more information, see Webview2 - Microsoft Edge Developer.

Microsoft Edge WebView2 deployment in Citrix environments

Currently, some Citrix environments exhibit issues that can cause the Microsoft Edge WebView2 runtime process to fail working as expected, leading to the Dragon Professional Anywhere personalization and help window not displaying properly, and to sometimes terminate with a message visible to end users. As a workaround, you can apply a configuration change to Citrix to disable the Citrix Special Folder Redirection feature (SfrHook) for the Microsoft Edge WebView2 runtime process. To do so, add the following registry keys to your Citrix environment configuration:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\CtxHook\AppInit_DLLs\SfrHook\msedgewebview2.exe]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Citrix\CtxHook\AppInit_DLLs\SfrHook\msedgewebview2.exe]

For Citrix documentation on the registry keys, see: How to Disable Citrix API Hooks on a Per-application Basis

Change of default settings for Citrix virtual channels

Starting with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 2109, the 'Virtual channel allow list' policy setting will be enabled by default.

This means that Nuance custom virtual channels will no longer work with the default configuration. The policy setting for virtual channels must be disabled (preferred), to allow all virtual channels again, or configured to allow Nuance virtual channels. For more information, see the Nuance Citrix Extension Deployment and Configuration Guide delivered with the Nuance virtual extension package orcontact Nuance Technical Support.

Philips Virtual Server extension deployment

Dragon Professional Anywhere no longer requires Philips Virtual Server device extensions to be deployed on the virtual server; deploying the virtual extensions to the end point is sufficient to enable support of Philips microphone device buttons in Dragon Professional Anywhere.

What's new

Supported infrastructure

Dragon Professional Anywhere now supports Microsoft Windows 11 and Microsoft Edge.

Microsoft Word and Outlook voice commands

Dragon Professional Anywhere now supports the following document management voice commands in Microsoft Word:

• new document

• save document

• save document as

• print document

Dragon Professional Anywhere now supports the following email management voice commands in Microsoft Outlook:

• open inbox

• create email

• reply to email

• reply to all

• forward email

Dragon Professional Anywhere now supports the following calendar management voice commands in Microsoft Outlook:

• open calendar

• new appointment

• new meeting

Solved issues

General

• Dragon Professional Anywhere no longer turns off the microphone when unlocking a Microsoft Windows session with the microphone in standby mode. [SOD-44619]
• Dragon Professional Anywhere no longer remains stuck in Text-to-Speech mode in Citrix virtual server environments. [SOD-42619]
• Dragon Professional Anywhere no longer asks the user to save changes when closing the Dragon Professional Anywhere 'Options' window when no changes were made. [SOD-42749, SOD-42664]
• Making changes in the 'Options' window no longer reverts the selected microphone to the previous device. [SOD-38955]
• Dragon Professional Anywhere no longer reverts changes to the end user options when logging off and on to Dragon Professional Anywhere immediately after having applied changes to the options. [SOD-42471]
• Users can now assign group, site and organization level step-by-step commands to hotkeys and microphone device buttons. [SOD-42160]
• Dragon Professional Anywhere now properly ends all processes when exiting after using the correction menu. [SOD-44828]
• Addressed an issue that sometimes caused Dragon Professional Anywhere to terminate abnormally. [SOD-42922]
• Dragon Professional Anywhere no longer displays the logon dialog when starting Dragon Professional Anywhere via the command line and having only Nuance PowerMic Mobile available as audio input device. [SOD-42161]
• Users can now interact with the correction menu the first time it is opened in a Dragon Professional Anywhere session. [SOD-42121]
• Dragon Professional Anywhere now displays the correct application icon in the title bar of the Dragon Professional Anywhere personalization and help window. [SOD-42038]
• Users can now create an auto-text by saying make that an auto-text when the 'Manage Auto-texts' dialog is already open. [SOD-40489]
• Dragon Professional Anywhere now terminates properly when exiting after the end user was logged off from Dragon Professional Anywhere due to inactivity. [SOD-40322]
• The mouse cursor no longer becomes slow or unresponsive when Dragon Professional Anywhere has been configured to automatically log off end users. [SOD-38668]

Application support

• Addressed an issue that sometimes caused a JavaScript error message when documenting into web-based applications or text controls. [SOD-44712]
• The insertion position no longer moves to an unexpected position when documenting in Microsoft Word embedded into SAP. [SOD-23277]

Known issues

Functionality not included in the 2023.1 release

Use cases and functionality that are not supported

• Fields that are supported for dictation at the cursor but require key press simulation for full functionality

• Section 508 compliance

• Text control mapping

• Basic Text Control with URL support

Applications and text control types that are not supported

• Dragon Medical One Java Integration SDK

• Dragon Medical One .NET Integration SDK

• WPF

• TX30

VMware Horizon Agent 8

When having VMware Horizon Agent 8 installed, Dragon Professional Anywhere might not start again after the application has been closed. The issue has been fixed with the VMware Horizon 2111 release (Horizon Agent 8.4).

Screen saver not displayed

When working with a Philips SpeechMike or Nuance PowerMic 4 device, the screen saver is not displayed after the configured period of inactivity when recording is in standby mode.

To disable this behavior, press and hold the left mouse and touchpad buttons on the recording device for five seconds. When the firmware setting has been changed successfully, the device provides visual and audio feedback. This setting is stored on the device and needs to be changed individually on each device.

Dragon Professional Anywhere

General

• On a virtual machine, when configuring the 'General.EnableHandsFree' and 'General.StartInStandbyMode' settings in the SoD.DefaultOptions section of the Dragon Professional Anywhere configuration file to 'True', these settings are not reflected in the 'General' pane of the 'Options' dialog box.
• When working in unsupported applications with Basic Text Control enabled, the microphone icon is sometimes not updated to indicate Full Text Control when switching to a supported application.
• When working with a Nuance PowerMic III device in an RDS environment, the microphone device buttons will stop working after disconnecting and reconnecting or locking and unlocking the RDS end point.

• Saying press tab does not insert a tab in the Dictation Box, it changes the focus to another text control instead.

• The following voice commands do not work in the anchored Microsoft Word application when the focus is on any other window: press space, press tab, press enter, cut, copy, paste.

Dictation

• When having the Dictation Box open and with the 'Anchor the speech focus when recording is started' option enabled in the 'General' pane of the 'Options' dialog box, putting the cursor into a supported text control and starting recording will not close the Dictation Box on the first attempt and the Dragon Professional Anywhere user interface will reflect the change of the recording status only with a delay of several seconds.
• When dictating in Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge applications, formatting commands are not supported.
• When dictating in Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge applications, the commands undo that and redo that are not supported.
• When dictating in an edit control and exiting the edit control application, the remaining part of the utterance will be written to the Dictation Box in the incorrect order.

• When dictating in multiple instances of Microsoft Word, the cursor moves unexpectedly between the instances.