User roles and permissions: build your lab team

User roles and permissions decide who sees and works each case in Cympha dental lab case management software, so set up the team before the first case reaches your queue.

Audience: Lab managers who have finished onboarding and now need to add designers, intakers, AlignerBot operators, manufacturing engineers, or other co-workers to the lab.

You'll come away knowing: the seven lab-side roles Cympha defines, how a team member self-signs-up against your lab, how the pending-then-approve flow works on /team, what each role can see and do once approved, and when to pick Lab Admin vs Operational vs leaving them on Designer.

Time required: Six to eight minutes to read. About ninety seconds to approve a new team member once they've signed up.

Before you start

You need:

A Cympha account with the Lab Manager role — team approvals and membership actions are the lab manager's. If you signed up as Clinical or Designer, your /team page either shows you the read-only lab-member view or tells you the page is for lab managers only.
Your lab onboarding Completed (app.cympha.com/lab should NOT show the red dot + Onboard My Lab button). Team management is gated on a fully-onboarded lab.
The email addresses of the people you want to add. They'll use these emails to sign up themselves — you don't invite them from your side. There is no invite-by-email button on /team; the team flow is request-then-approve, driven by the joining member.

Step 1 — Understand the role taxonomy

Cympha defines seven lab-side roles. Each role has a specific status responsibility and specific permissions.

Lab Manager — you. The owner / primary operator. Routes Submitted, Escalated, and Shipping cases by default. Exactly one per lab for case-routing.
Lab Admin — a lab-staff observer. Sees the lab's Case Queue but does not receive cases routed by status. Lab configuration (services, payment options) and team approvals remain the lab manager's to run.
Designer — a human designer. Holds Designing cases. Briefly holds Approved cases before they auto-advance.
AlignerBot — the role assigned to the user (and machine) that operates the AlignerBot agent. Mechanically a designer, but the work runs on a paired workstation via OrthoPlus. A lab without an AlignerBot seat can still take AlignerBot-category cases — Designing falls to a human designer instead — but nothing runs automatically. See set-up-alignerbot-for-your-lab.
Case Intaker — a pre-design QC role. Holds Intake Review cases. A lab with no Case Intaker skips Intake Review entirely — Submitted cases go straight to Designing. This is by design; not every lab has a dedicated intake step.
Manufacturing Engineer — handles physical fabrication. Holds In Manufacturing: when the lab moves a case to that status, it routes to the manufacturing engineer. A lab with no manufacturing engineer doesn't see the physical manufacturing/shipping statuses at all.
Operational — shipping clerks, lab coordinators. Holds Shipping alongside the Lab Manager.

Each of these (except Lab Manager) also has a pending variant — the state a new team member sits in while waiting for you to approve them. No lab-side access; they see a "pending approval" screen until you click Approve.

See role-matrix for the full permission grid.

Step 2 — Tell your team member what to do

Your team member self-signs-up. Send them four things:

The link app.cympha.com/sign-up.
The exact email of your lab manager account (the one you'd see on your /profile page) — they'll need this on the role-selection screen.
The role they should pick. "Pick Designer" or "Pick Manufacturing Engineer".
(For AlignerBot specifically) a note that picking GuideMia AlignerBot triggers a subscription prompt; if they don't intend to run AlignerBot, they should pick Designer instead and they can still take on ortho cases manually.

They sign up with email + password (or OAuth), verify their email, then land on the Select Your Role screen at /role-selection.

Step 3 — The team member's side (briefly)

On /role-selection they:

Type your lab manager email in the Lab Manager Email field and click Find. Your name and email appear in a small confirmation card.
Pick the radio button for their role (Designer, Manufacturing Engineer, etc).
Click Submit — <Role> at the bottom.

Their account is created in a pending state. They get an "Approval pending" screen explaining you have to approve them before they can take on work. If they picked AlignerBot, a subscription prompt fires first.

Step 4 — Approve the request

Sign in to your lab manager account and click My Team in the sidebar. You land on /team. Page header reads My Team with subtitle "Manage membership requests and your designer team."

Two cards stack down the page:

Approval Requests — pending team-member sign-ups waiting on your decision.
Team Members — already-approved members.

In Approval Requests, you'll see the new sign-up as a row with columns:

Member — their name and email.
Role — the pending role label (e.g. Designer (Pending)).
Current Lab — empty for a fresh signup; populated if they were previously on another lab and are switching.
Requested Lab — your name (so they're requesting to join you).
Actions — Approve and Reject buttons.

Click Approve. A toast confirms "Designer added to your team". Their pending role flips to the active one; on their next page load they see the designer view.

If you click Reject instead, the pending request is cleared — the person keeps their account and can request a different lab.

Step 5 — Manage existing team members

After approval, the team member appears in the Team Members card below. Each row has:

Member, Role, Email — as expected.
Membership — a pill showing On (active) or Off (disabled).
Pending Change — populated only when this team member has requested to switch labs.
Actions — Turn off (or Turn on if disabled) and Delete.

Turn off / Turn on disables the member entirely. A turned-off member can't sign in at all — their login is revoked immediately and stays revoked until you click Turn on. Their account and history survive. Use this when someone is on extended leave.

Delete (trash icon, red) removes the member from your team. Their account itself survives — they're just detached from your lab — but their open assignments need to be re-routed first.

Step 6 — Pick the right role for each hire

Some practical guidance:

One Lab Manager per lab (you). Don't try to add a second Lab Manager; use Lab Admin for a co-owner or senior partner who needs visibility.
Use Lab Admin for someone who needs to see the lab's cases without being in the design or shipping rotation — a practice manager keeping an eye on throughput. Lab settings and team approvals stay with you, the lab manager.
Use Designer for anyone doing the actual design work. They see only cases assigned to them. They can hold Designing and briefly Approved.
Use AlignerBot ONLY for the user account paired with your OrthoPlus workstation that runs AlignerBot. This usually goes together with installing the Cympha Agent Manager — see set-up-alignerbot-for-your-lab.
Use Case Intaker if you want a QC step between submission and designing. Skip it if your designers are happy to triage as they go.
Use Manufacturing Engineer for whoever runs your printers / mills / finishing benches. When you move a case to In Manufacturing, it routes to them — and hiring one is what makes the physical manufacturing/shipping statuses appear for your lab at all.
Use Operational for shipping clerks. They hold Shipping cases alongside you.

Step 7 — What each role sees on day one

After approval the new team member signs in and works from:

Designer / AlignerBot — My Assignments at /assignments ("Cases assigned to you for processing"), with a patient-name search and a status filter.
Case Intaker — the cases routed to them: anything sitting in Intake Review.
Manufacturing Engineer — the cases routed to them: anything moved to In Manufacturing.
Operational — the lab's Case Queue; they hold Shipping cases alongside you.
Lab Admin — the lab's Case Queue, as an observer.

Lab staff who are not the manager see a read-only view of /team: a Lab Manager card plus a Team Members table ("Other active members in your lab.") with no approval controls.

When to escalate to Lab Admin vs Operational

Both Lab Admin and Operational are "non-design" lab roles, so people sometimes confuse them.

Lab Admin is an observer — they see the lab's cases but cannot be assigned cases by status, and lab settings stay with the lab manager.
Operational is operational — they handle the physical world (packing, labelling, courier handoff). They CAN hold Shipping cases.

If someone needs to be in the shipping rotation, pick Operational — that's what puts them in the case routing. You cannot stack two roles on one account.

What success looks like

A well-staffed lab on Cympha has:

One Lab Manager (you).
One or more Designers for the work you do manually.
An AlignerBot user only if you offer AlignerBot.
A Case Intaker if you want QC before design — otherwise skip it.
A Manufacturing Engineer if you make physical appliances. Digital-only labs (AlignerBot files, plans) can skip this.
An Operational user if your manufacturing engineer doesn't also handle shipping.

A smaller lab can get away with just Lab Manager + one or two Designers — the intake step is skipped, manufacturing and shipping default to the lab manager, and digital deliveries don't need a manufacturing engineer at all.

Troubleshooting

A new sign-up isn't appearing on my approval list. Three things to check: (1) Did they type your lab manager email exactly as it's spelled? A typo points them at no lab. (2) Did they finish the role-selection flow, or stop on the find lab manager step? (3) Refresh the page — /team polls but a forced refresh closes the gap.

A designer says their My Assignments page is empty. Either they haven't been assigned any cases yet (use the Assign button in the queue — see assign-case-to-designer), or their Membership is Off — in which case they can't even sign in. Check the Team Members card on /team.

The Approve button does nothing. Check the toast bar at the bottom right of the screen — if it says an error, the most common cause is the team member has since changed their request to a different lab (their Current Lab column will now show your name and Requested Lab will show another lab). Use Reject to clear the stale request.

I can't find a way to invite someone by email. That's by design — there is no invite-by-email flow. Cympha's team model is request-then-approve: the new member self-signs-up with your manager email, and you approve. The reason is that the new user always controls which email they want to use as their login; an invite-by-email flow forces a particular email on them.

Someone left and I want their old cases reassigned. Before clicking Delete, open /queue and filter for cases assigned to them. Click Reassign on each row to pick a new designer. Then return to /team and delete them.

An AlignerBot user keeps failing to dispatch. AlignerBot needs (a) an AlignerBot-role user on your team, (b) that user paired with a workstation running the Cympha Agent Manager and OrthoPlus, and (c) an active OrthoPlus subscription on the paired account. See set-up-alignerbot-for-your-lab for the full setup.

Related how-tos: role-matrix for the full permission grid, lab-onboarding-wizard, set-up-alignerbot-for-your-lab, assign-case-to-designer, customise-your-lab-intake-form.