I am trying to create a script that allows me to search legal databases by saying things like "Search Westlaw cases for Jones". I've searched for ages and can't seem to find a way of transferring a variable from the voice-recognised text to the scripting environment that is not in a pre-determined list.

Surely this is fairly fundamental functionality and there must be a way to achieve this. Has anyone got any ideas?

I think there are only two ways to do this:

1.  Use Vocola.

2.  Do a macro that uses an input box.  So you would say "search Westlaw" and a box would pop up.  You would dictate the search terms into the box and then click on a search button (you could "click" by voice, of course).

It's very disappointing that this functionality is not available through persons using Advanced Scripting.  Obviously, it is within the functionality of NaturallySpeaking, because you can do it within Vocola.  (And you can do it with Siri.)

Thanks Matt. That's helpful.

The following is what your command should look like before pressing the Save button:



The previous command is based on the KnowBrainer 2011 search commands that currently support Google, Bing, Ask, Yahoo, eBay, Wikipedia and an awesome Internet dictionary. This command will allow you to dictate anything you want to search for from almost anywhere. In other words you don't have to be within a document. As an example, you could dictate something like “muscular sclerosis” from within your desktop, pause for a second and say Search Westlaw which will do the following:

Temporarily turn off the microphone (to prevent possible interference), open the NaturallySpeaking View Recognition History, copy the last phrase that you dictated to the clipboard, open up a new tab in your favorite browser (it doesn't matter if you're using Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari etc., sign in, paste the contents of your 1st uttered phrase into the search box and initiate the search. NOTE that we cannot test this command and we have bypassed the passwords but hopefully you have enough information to edit this macro to fit your specific needs. If not, we can do this for you via our On-Site Macro Writing (by appointment) support.

Click KB 2012 REV D to Download a 30 Day Evaluation of KnowBrainer 2012 

Thanks for that very detailed reply. I've adapted it a little and got something working. It's an innovative workaround. I might also try the input box method to avoid accidentaly typing the search terms into documents. I'm at the start of using Dragon so it's nice to know there's a really helpful forum out there.

For the special case of searches, I've added searches for Dragon Medical Practice Edition so don't know why they couldn't be added for Dragon Legal and Dragon Professional.  You modify the file in Dragon that defines where to go for the searches.  I've both modified existing entries to go elsewhere and I've added entries for clients.   The file is iwcsp.ini in the (Windows 7) ProgramData\Nuance\NaturallySpeaking11 directory.  It is plain text.

Make a backup of the file first. 

Copy one of the entries, paste to add to the end of the file, then change the name in the brackets to something like [Westlaw.com], change the "enx=xyz" to something like "enx=westlaw", and change the Query statement to correspond to the Westlaw convention(s) for searches.  The value in braces is the variable xyz in "search westlaw for xyz"

I ran into one case where the web site search was such that I could never figure out the proper query string, but other cases have been working within a few minutes.   No scripting is needed. Let us know if this works for Westlaw.

Larry Allen
Softnet Systems, Inc.
http://www.pcspeak.com