Working with Multiple Sites

Learn about Vocera support for multiple physical locations.

In Vocera, a site is a logical division of a single Vocera database that corresponds to a distinct physical location. When you create multiple sites, you allow a centralized Vocera Voice Server or cluster to support multiple physical locations whose users can all communicate with each other. You associate users, groups, and other Vocera entries with specific sites to improve speech recognition and to simplify data management.

Note: You can also support multiple physical locations by using a separate, independent Vocera Voice Server or cluster for each physical location. Because these deployments do not utilize sites, badge users in different locations cannot call each other directly–they must use the telephony interface to communicate. Such deployments may be desirable in situations where a high-speed WAN link between each location is not available.

For example, suppose your organization wants to provide badges to users in three physical locations: New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. You can support these users with either of the following deployments:

Use the Sites screen in the Administration Console to define and manage site settings. When a site and the Vocera Voice Server are in different time zones, you can use the Administration Console to specify a time zone for the site.

Note: Do not configure site settings if your installation has only one physical location–by default, all Vocera data is associated with a special site named Global. Similarly, do not configure site settings if you have a multi-server deployment.

If you are deploying one Vocera Voice Server to support multiple sites, site configuration is very important. Each site that you define contains its own users, groups, locations, address book entries, and devices. You can set up all your users and groups in the Global site, then transfer them to individual sites later when you define them. It may be more convenient, however, to define your sites in advance and assign users and groups to their appropriate home sites.

A multi-site deployment provides seamless device connectivity across multiple physical locations—users can communicate with other users, groups, and address book entries at their local site as well as at any other site. If users roam from site to site, the Vocera Voice Server knows which site they are visiting and can direct calls to their devices at that site.

Groups, locations, and address book entries at different sites can have the same name. For example, each site can have its own “Front Desk” or “Code Blue” group, its own “Cafeteria” location, and its own address book entry for “The Local Pharmacy”.

If you do not want to associate a user, group, address book entry, or device with a specific site, you can assign it to the Global site—a virtual site that does not represent any physical location. For example, you can set up a Global Administrators group with members from each of the individual physical sites.

Note: Partitioning a deployment into multiple sites improves speech recognition. See Site Grammars for complete information.