A designer's first day on Cympha

This orientation shows where a designer fits in Cympha dental lab case management software: cases arrive in My Assignments and go back to the doctor for approval.

Audience: Designers joining a Cympha-using lab on day one. You've been told "your cases will appear in your Cympha." This is your ten-minute orientation that gets you designing.

You'll come away knowing: how your account gets approved, where to find assigned cases, how Cympha Agent Manager moves files between Cympha and your workstation, and how to deliver a finished design back to the customer for approval.

Time required: Around fifteen minutes the first time, including the agent install. About two minutes per case once you're set up.

Before you start

You need:

A Cympha account. Sign up at app.cympha.com/sign-up if you don't have one. On the role-selection screen, pick Designer.
Your lab manager's email — you'll look them up by email on the role-selection step so the system knows which lab you're joining.
A Windows workstation. The desktop apps you'll work in (OrthoPlus, Implant Master, Studio) are Windows-only, and so is the Cympha Agent Manager that ferries files between Cympha and those apps.
Whichever desktop app you actually design in, already installed and licensed. Cympha doesn't ship those — they come from gm.cympha.com (or your lab's existing install).

Step 1 — Sign up as a Designer and wait for approval

Walk through app.cympha.com/sign-up. After verifying your email, you'll see the Select Your Role screen. Pick Designer and, on the prompt, enter your lab manager's email and click Find. Your account is created in a pending state.

What you see right after signing up: a stripped-down sidebar (Dashboard, My Team, My Cloud, Downloads) and a banner explaining that you're awaiting approval. You can't open cases, the queue is invisible to you, and you don't have a workspace yet — that all unlocks after approval.

Your request lands on your lab manager's My Team page under Approval Requests. When they click Approve, your pending role flips to the active Designer role. The sidebar gains a My Assignments entry and you can start receiving cases.

If the lab manager hasn't approved you within a day, ping them directly. There's no auto-approval — somebody at the lab has to vouch for you.

Step 2 — Install Cympha Agent Manager

This is what moves files between Cympha (the web app, where customers upload and you approve) and your desktop (where you actually design).

Open app.cympha.com/downloads and click Download for Windows under the Cympha Agent Manager card. Run the installer — defaults are fine. A small Cympha icon appears in your system tray (bottom-right of the taskbar).

The full install + pair walkthrough lives in its own doc: Install and pair Cympha Agent Manager. Read that one if you've never paired an agent before. The short version:

Right-click the tray icon and click Pair to Cympha.
Type your Cympha email.
Approve the pair request in your signed-in browser tab.
Tray tooltip flips from Not paired to Paired.

Once paired, the agent runs in the background — but file sync doesn't start by itself. Cloud Monitoring is opt-in: right-click the tray icon → Cloud Monitoring → Configure workspace…. The dialog shows (not set) until you pick a folder; choose one (any folder you like) and monitoring starts automatically. From then on the agent polls Cympha for cases assigned to you and downloads their files into that workspace folder.

Step 3 — Wait for an assignment

When your lab manager assigns you a case (see Assign a case to a designer for the manager side), two things happen:

The case appears in My Assignments at app.cympha.com/assignments.
Within a minute, the agent (with Cloud Monitoring configured) downloads the case's files into your workspace folder, under a subfolder named after the patient — plus a lab_slip.pdf that's refreshed whenever the case data changes.

Open app.cympha.com/assignments. The page header reads My Assignments with the subtitle "Cases assigned to you for processing." You'll see a table with columns: Patient, Category, Status, Lab Manager, Created, and a chat icon. The case you were just assigned shows with status Designing.

Click the patient name to open the case detail page at /cases/<id>.

Step 4 — Read the brief

On the case detail page, take a minute to skim:

Case parameters — what the doctor specified. Plan ranges, extractions, materials, anything category-specific.
Files — the raw scans the customer uploaded. The agent has already downloaded these to your workspace.
Activity log — useful if the case bounced through intake review or has a back-and-forth history.
Lab slip — a PDF that consolidates the order. Click Download lab slip (PDF) if you want a paper copy.
Case Chat — the case's chat, shared between you, the lab manager, and the case's doctor. Use this if anything in the brief is ambiguous before you start designing.

Step 5 — Open the case in your desktop app

Open File Explorer and go to your workspace folder. There's a subfolder named after the patient containing the files the agent downloaded. Open them in whichever desktop app the case calls for:

AlignerBot / clear aligners / ortho — OrthoPlus.
Implant guide — Implant Master.
Crown / bridge / general design — Studio, or your lab's preferred design tool.

Design as you normally would. The Cympha Agent Manager watches the workspace folder while you work, and new files it finds there are queued against the case.

When you save a finished output (an STL, a transfer pack, a .gvw, whatever the deliverable is), drop it into the patient's workspace folder. What happens next depends on the file: .gvw and .zip design outputs upload automatically; most other file types wait in the agent's Cloud Monitor panel for you to click Upload — so you get to vet what goes to the cloud. Open the panel via the tray icon → Cloud Monitoring → Show panel; pending files sit under New in workspace with per-file Upload / Ignore buttons and an Upload all.

Once uploaded, the new file appears in the Files panel on the case detail page in your browser.

Step 6 — Request approval

When the design is done and uploaded back, return to the case detail page in your browser at /cases/<id>. Find the Request Approval button on the actions row (it appears once you, the holder, have something to approve).

Click it. The case status flips to Awaiting Approval with a category-appropriate label (Plan Approval Pending, Appliance Approval Pending, or Design Approval Pending). The customer gets an email and a link to /cases/<id>/approve where they'll see the lab slip, the files, and three buttons: Approve, Request changes, Escalate to lab manager.

The activity log records "Approval requested" with the approval step.

End state: case in Awaiting Approval, holder is the customer. Your part is done until they respond.

What happens next

They approve. Case status flips to Approved — but Approved is a pivot, not a resting state. For digital-delivery categories (ortho, alignerbot, implant), the case auto-advances immediately: back to Designing (still with you) if another approval cycle remains — these categories have two, Plan then Appliance — or to Delivered on the final cycle, with no manufacturing step. Physical lab-service cases instead wait at Approved until the lab manually moves them to In Manufacturing.
They request changes. Case bounces back to Changes Requested. You're still the holder — the system keeps you on the case, not a generic queue. Read the customer's note, redesign, and click Request Approval again. For AlignerBot cases specifically, customers can only attach an XML tooth-position file (exported from Cympha Studio's 3D review) or a replacement .gos.gpk transfer pack when rejecting — they can't type free-text instructions. If they do try free-text, the system blocks the reject and tells them to upload a structured artefact instead.
They escalate. Case status flips to Escalated and the holder transfers to the lab manager. They'll triage and either reassign to you (with notes) or hand it to someone else.

Troubleshooting

My Assignments is empty even though my lab manager says they assigned me a case. Confirm your role has actually been approved — the assignments page only surfaces approved-designer assignments. Check the badge next to your name on /team. If you're still pending, nudge the lab manager to approve you.

The agent didn't download the files for my new case. Open the tray menu and check you're Paired — if not, re-pair via the agent install doc. Then check Cloud Monitoring: the workspace folder must be configured (Cloud Monitoring → Configure workspace… shows (not set) if it never was) and monitoring must be started. The agent checks for new cases every so often — give it a minute after assignment.

I saved a file but it isn't on Cympha. Most file types don't upload automatically — they wait for your click. Open the tray icon → Cloud Monitoring → Show panel and look under New in workspace; click Upload on the file. Only .gvw and .zip design outputs go up on their own.

The Request Approval button isn't there. Two reasons: (1) the case isn't in Designing status — check the status badge; (2) you're not the current holder — somebody (lab manager, intaker) may have reassigned. Check the Designer column on /queue or the activity log on the case page.

The customer rejected my AlignerBot design with a note like "move tooth 16 buccally". They shouldn't have been able to — the system blocks free-text rejection on AlignerBot. If it slipped through, ping the customer in chat and ask them to upload an XML overlay or a replacement GPK instead. Free-text instructions can't drive the OrthoPlus planner cascade.

Related how-to: see Install and pair Cympha Agent Manager for the agent setup details, and Assign a case to a designer to understand what the lab manager is doing on the other side of the handoff.