Work assignment: assign a case to a designer

Work assignment is the hand-off from lab manager to designer in Cympha dental lab case management software, and the point where a submitted case starts design.

Audience: Lab managers triaging incoming cases. You're signed in to Cympha with the Lab Manager role and have at least one approved designer on your team. If you don't, see team-and-roles first — your designers sign up themselves and you approve them; assigning a case without designers is just moving paper around.

You'll come away knowing: how to triage the Case Queue at app.cympha.com/queue, open a submitted case, assign a designer, what happens to the case status as a result, and how AlignerBot cases run without a picker selection.

Time required: Around six minutes the first time. About thirty seconds per case once you know the queue.

Before you start

You need:

The Lab Manager role on a lab whose onboarding wizard is complete.
At least one approved team member with the Designer role. You can verify on /team — designers show with the Designer badge and no "Pending approval" note. If you want AlignerBot to do the work instead, you need an AlignerBot team member whose workstation is paired — see Install and pair Cympha Agent Manager — and note that AlignerBot work is dispatched automatically, not picked in the assign dialog (more below).
A submitted case to work on. The badge in the Status column reads Submitted when it's waiting for triage.

Step 1 — Open the Case Queue

Click Case Queue in the sidebar, or go to app.cympha.com/queue. The page header reads Case Queue with the subtitle "Review incoming cases and assign designers."

You'll see a table of every case routed to your lab, regardless of status. Columns: Patient, Category, Status, Designer, Created, plus per-row action buttons.

Step 2 — Filter for Submitted

The filter bar at the top has a status dropdown (defaults to All statuses) and a search box. To focus on cases that need triage, click the dropdown and pick Submitted. The table narrows to the rows you actually need to act on.

The search box matches on patient name only — useful when a customer pings you about a specific case and you want to jump straight to it.

Step 3 — Open a case

Click the patient name (or anywhere on the row except the action buttons) to open the case detail page at /cases/<id>. You'll see:

The intake form values the customer filled in (treatment parameters, patient demographics, scheduling).
Every file they uploaded, with previews where Cympha can render them.
The lab slip — a PDF compilation of the order. Click Download lab slip (PDF) to grab it.
The activity log with the Case created and File added events.
The Suggested actions tray in the left column, if your lab has automation policies enabled.

Skim the parameters and files. Common reasons to bounce a case back to intake (rather than assigning) before you assign anyone:

Missing scans (e.g. an AlignerBot case with no upper STL).
Ambiguous prescription (extractions conflict with missing-teeth list).
Wrong category (a crown case was submitted under the AlignerBot service).

If you need more from the customer, use the chat panel — the Customer button on the queue row opens it inline. If the data is acceptable, proceed to assignment.

Step 4 — Click Assign

Two ways:

From the queue table directly: click the Assign button on the row (the one with the user-plus icon). A dialog opens.
From the case detail page: there's an assignment control on the right-side actions panel.

The dialog is titled Assign Designer with the body "Select a designer for <patient name>." It contains a single dropdown labelled Select a designer….

The dropdown lists your approved team members with the Designer role. Members still in pending approval do not appear — they need to be approved on /team first. AlignerBot seats also never appear in this picker — the dialog is for human designers only.

Step 5 — Pick the right designer

Pick the human designer for the case. The dropdown shows their display name (first + last name, or email fallback).

AlignerBot cases don't go through this picker. The AlignerBot automation runs on the paired workstation: once an AlignerBot case lands in that machine's workspace, the Agent Manager's AlignerBot module launches OrthoPlus on it automatically — no dropdown selection involved. You can also assign an AlignerBot case to a human designer who knows OrthoPlus and have them run it manually. See set-up-alignerbot-for-your-lab for the automation setup.

Step 6 — Confirm

Click Assign Designer. The button shows "Assigning…" with a spinner while the request is in flight, then closes the dialog. A success toast reads "Designer assigned successfully."

The case detail page (and the queue row) refresh:

Status flips from Submitted to Designing automatically. The status transition is wired into the assignment action — you don't need a separate "advance status" click.
Designer column on the queue table now shows the assignee's name.
An entry appears in the activity log with the assignment.
The case appears in the designer's My Assignments page at /assignments.

Step 7 — Reassign if needed

If the wrong designer ends up with the case, or one designer asks to swap with another, repeat Step 4. The same Assign button works for reassignment — the new designer replaces the old one, and the activity log records "Worker reassigned".

What happens next

Designer's view. They see the new case in /assignments. If they have the Cympha Agent Manager paired with a Cloud Monitoring workspace folder configured, the files download to that folder so they can open the case in OrthoPlus, Implant Master, OrthoClic, or Studio. See A designer's first day.
AlignerBot cases. The paired workstation runs the OrthoPlus planning automatically, the review file uploads back via the agent, and that upload by itself moves the case to Awaiting Approval for the customer to review at /cases/<id>/approve.
Your view. The case stays in your queue (just under a different status). You can monitor progress, jump into the customer chat from the queue row, or escalate if a designer is sitting on something.

Troubleshooting

The Assign button is disabled / the dropdown says "No designers available". Your team has no approved designers. Go to /team, find members with Pending approval badges, and approve them. If you have no designer rows at all, ask your designers to sign up with your manager email and request to join — see team-and-roles.

My AlignerBot case isn't running automatically. Three checks: (1) is the workstation actually powered on with the agent running? Open the agent tray icon on that machine and confirm it reads Paired; (2) is OrthoPlus installed and licensed there? (the AlignerBot menu only appears when OrthoPlus is installed); (3) is your AlignerBot team member approved on /team (not still pending)?

The case is stuck in Submitted even after I clicked Assign. Refresh the page. If the toast said "Designer assigned successfully.", the transition is committed — your tab just has stale data. If you got an error toast, the assignment didn't go through; check the browser console.

A designer says they didn't notice the new assignment. The case appears in their My Assignments page at /assignments the moment you assign — ask them to open Cympha and check there rather than waiting on a notification.

Related how-to: see A designer's first day on Cympha for what happens on the receiving end, and Install and pair Cympha Agent Manager if you need to pair an AlignerBot workstation for automated runs.