How to distribute annotation tasks within the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) - VMHorizon 7

Hello Prodigy developers!

We are using VMHorizon VDI (VMware Horizon | VDI Software Solutions | VMware | UK) for NLP tasks involving medical records within the secure environment.

Users have their personal virtual accounts (virtual desktop instance with personal login and password), however, within the VDI there are shared hard drives, so users may share/see folders from other users.

Users can install software within their individual accounts (only users can see their personal software once logged in) or it is possible to ask the IT admins to install centrally, such that all users will be able to use software and packages.

My question is what will be the best approach to distribute the annotation tasks across multiple annotators within the VDI?

I see two approaches:

a) each annotator should have their personal licenses and install Prodigy locally within their account and then to share their annotations through the shared hard drive (possible case).
b) to install Prodigy centrally, so every annotator will have access to the same SQLight database of Prodigy and it will be easier to manage their progress and train models (preferable case)

I am more interested in the approach b), however I'm not sure how the Prodigy license covers this case. If I understand correctly, only developer should have valid license, while annotators are not obliged. So if we install Prodigy centrally at VDI, all annotators will be able to annotate documents by starting the prodigy server within their virtual desktop account.

I'm wondering if this (central installation of Prodigy) is feasible (license-wise) and if not, what might be a potential solution for that?

Sorry if it's a bit convoluted, I'm happy to clarify all necessary details.

Thanks.

I'm not familiar with the details of VMHorizon VDI, and we wouldn't be able to provide support for it specifically. But to answer the licensing question:

Anyone with the capability to start up a new annotation service would need to have a Prodigy license. If the person only needs to go to the annotation interface, and they can't control starting the tasks, saving out the data, etc then they are just an annotator. But if they can interact with the backend --- which includes starting and stopping the server --- then they're considered a developer and need to have a license key.

Hi Matthew,

Many thanks for clarifications, it is very helpful!