Getting Started: PowerMic Mobile 4.0

Getting Started

Welcome letter

When you implement PowerMic Mobile, Nuance sends a welcome letter to your organization's point of contact or system administrator. The welcome letter contains important information for installing and configuring PowerMic Mobile and links to additional documentation.

Configuration URL

Your welcome letter contains a link to configure PowerMic Mobile to work in your organization. To configure PowerMic Mobile, the user opens the link on their mobile device. Alternatively, the user can copy the link on their device and paste it in the PowerMic Mobile Add profile screen (Settings > Add a profile).

For more information on deploying PowerMic Mobile via an MDM solution, see: Mobile device management (MDM) support

License types

The following license types are available:

Account licensing - your organization has licenses for a set number of users. You can manually assign licenses via the Nuance Management Console or you can configure your organization to automatically assign licenses to your users when they log in (auto-provisioning).

Enterprise licensing - your organization has a license for an unlimited number of users. With an enterprise license, your organization must be configured to automatically assign licenses to your users when they log in.

Auto-provisioning

By default, when a user logs in to PowerMic Mobile with a new user name, the user is automatically added to your organization and a PowerMic Mobile license is assigned. You can turn this off at the organization level via the Nuance Management Center (NMC). Proceed as follows:

1. In NMC, open the Organization Details page for your organization.
2. Open the Auto-provisioning tab and, in the left panel, click PowerMic Mobile.
3. Clear the Enable auto-provisioning for this product check box.

Bandwidth

PowerMic Mobile requires approximately 14 kbps to stream audio.

Cellular data consumption

Dictating for 10 minutes per day, 22 days per month uses 16.5 MB (132 megabits) per month.

Your users can configure their device settings to turn off cellular data or to prevent the application from working without WiFi.

Battery consumption

PowerMic Mobile consumes approximately the same amount of battery as a phone call. The actual amount depends on the device, the age of the battery and other applications running on the device.

Mac OS

PowerMic Mobile works with Dragon Medical One running on Mac OS via virtualization solutions such as Citrix XenApp or VMware Blast. We have not found any performance or functional issues specific to Mac use.

iPad

iPads are supported and tested within the OS requirements (iOS 8 and higher).

Best Practices

Cellular data vs. WiFi

PowerMic Mobile uses WiFi or cellular data. It is recommended that users connect primarily via a reliable WiFi network with the following characteristics:

• The network should be readily available on the user device.
• The user should not need to log in to the network frequently.
• Access to the network should not time out.
• The signal strength should be consistent and not have frequent drop-offs.
• -67 dBm is considered the minimum signal strength for PowerMic Mobile. This ensures reliable and timely delivery of data packets. Consistent guidelines can be found online that recommend signal levels for target use.

WiFi signal strength can be determined via an app such as Amped Wireless WiFi Analytics Tool on Android or the native Field Test Mode on iOS.

The device should have cellular data turned on as a back-up to the WiFi network.

Network switching

The user's device should be set up to automatically connect to several networks when they are available.

If the device is disconnected from the current network during recording, PowerMic Mobile will buffer 1.5 seconds of audio. If a second network is connected within 1.5 seconds, the buffered audio and new audio will be uploaded and there will be no disruption to the user.

If a network connection is not established within 1.5 seconds, the microphone will turn off, the buffered audio will be discarded, and PowerMic Mobile will unpair from Dragon Medical One. When the network is restored, PowerMic Mobile will automatically pair with Dragon Medical One and the user can tap the record button to start recording again.

Recording

By default, the record button in PowerMic Mobile toggles recording on and off. Once the microphone is turned on the user must tap the record button again to turn it off. It is recommended to turn the microphone off when not actively recording. Ambient noise will keep recording active in both PowerMic Mobile and Dragon Medical One.

Most modern mobile devices have a noise-canceling microphone. Noise cancellation should be enabled if available.

To check the location of the noise-canceling microphone, see the device specifications. Make sure the microphone is exposed and available when recording. For good sound quality when using a protective case, make sure the microphone is not covered.