Wire a designer's workstation end-to-end

This checklist takes a new designer from sign-up to the first assigned case, preparing the workstation a lab uses with Cympha dental lab case management software.

Audience: A lab manager onboarding a new designer, and the designer themselves. Use this as the joint checklist so each side knows what the other is doing.

You'll come away knowing: how a new designer signs up, gets approved into your lab, picks up an OrthoPlus seat, installs the desktop tools, pairs the Cympha Agent Manager, and lands their first assigned case in My Assignments — without anyone walking them through it.

Time required: Around twenty-five minutes of active work for the designer, plus the lab manager's one-click approval. Most of the time is downloads.

Before you start

You need:

A Cympha lab that already has a Lab Manager account. If you're a brand new lab, finish the lab onboarding wizard first — the designer's signup needs the lab manager's email to point at.
The designer's email (the one they will sign up with).
A Windows workstation for the designer. OrthoPlus and the Cympha Agent Manager are Windows-only. The web app — and Cympha Studio, which is a browser app — work in any browser, but the desktop design work happens on Windows.
A way to pay for OrthoPlus — either the designer pays themselves on gm.cympha.com, or the lab buys a seat and shares an activation code with them (codes are valid for 10 minutes, so generate one only when the designer is ready to paste it).

If you're still deciding which GuideMia desktop products this designer needs, read What do you need first.

Step 1 — The designer signs up at app.cympha.com/sign-up

The designer opens app.cympha.com/sign-up. They enter their email, set a password, verify the code that lands in their inbox. They arrive on the Select Your Role screen.

They pick the Designer role card. The page reveals the Lab manager email field. They paste the lab manager's email exactly as the lab manager uses it on Cympha and click Find.

Two things to watch for:

A successful lookup shows the lab manager's display name and email under the input. That's the visual confirmation the right lab is selected.
An unsuccessful lookup means no lab manager account matches that email. If you know the lab manager has an account, verify the address character by character; if they don't, they need to sign up first.

They continue. Their account is created and they land in the pending state — their role reads Pending Designer and they cannot open cases yet. Note the direction of this flow: the designer requests to join; labs cannot send invitations.

Step 2 — Lab manager approves the request on My Team

The lab manager opens app.cympha.com/team. The approval requests area shows a row for the new designer with Approve and Reject actions.

The lab manager clicks Approve. The designer's role flips from Pending Designer to Designer. The next time the designer's browser refreshes, their sidebar gains My Assignments and they can see their lab on My Team.

If the wrong designer signed up against your lab, click Reject instead. They keep their account but lose the pending-membership link.

Step 3 — Subscribe to OrthoPlus (or activate a lab-issued code)

The designer needs a running OrthoPlus licence to actually open the cases your lab will hand them. There are two paths and both end at the same place.

Path A — designer pays themselves. They open gm.cympha.com, pick GuideMia OrthoPlus, choose a tier (Starter, Studio, or Enterprise — Studio carries the Popular badge) and a billing interval, and complete the secure checkout. After the return-to-account redirect, they generate an activation code from /account. The code is valid for 10 minutes and activates one machine; they only need it long enough to paste it into OrthoPlus.

Path B — lab buys the seat. The lab manager subscribes on gm.cympha.com under their own account, then generates an activation code from /account and pastes it into a chat / email to the designer. The same 10-minute window applies, so generate it just before the designer is ready to install.

Either way, the next step is identical. Keep the code on the clipboard.

Step 4 — Install OrthoPlus

The designer opens app.cympha.com/downloads and downloads GuideMia OrthoPlus. They run the installer with default options.

When OrthoPlus asks for activation, they paste the code from Step 3 and activate. If activation fails because the code expired, generate a fresh one and try again — expired codes stay dead and cost nothing.

If you want a deeper walkthrough of the GuideMia desktop installs (Implant Master also lives on the same downloads page), see Install and pair Cympha Agent Manager, which covers the agent install in detail and links out to the OrthoPlus install notes.

Step 5 — Install and pair the Cympha Agent Manager

OrthoPlus alone is just the planner. To get Cympha-hosted cases onto the workstation and finished designs back into Cympha, the designer needs the Agent Manager.

Back on /downloads, they download the Cympha Agent Manager and run the installer with defaults. A small Cympha icon appears in the system tray (bottom-right of the taskbar). The agent lives in the tray — closing its window doesn't quit it, and it starts again automatically on every Windows login.

Pair it. They right-click the tray icon and pick Pair to Cympha…. The dialog asks for one thing — the Cympha account email they signed up with — and they click Send pair request. Approval happens in the browser, not on the desktop: in their signed-in Cympha browser session, a modal titled "Cympha Agent pair request" pops up over whatever page is open. It shows the machine name, OS, agent version and timestamps, and it can't be dismissed without choosing Approve or Deny. The designer checks the machine name is theirs and clicks Approve. The agent picks up the approval within a few seconds and shows as paired. A pair request is valid for 1 hour; an expired one just means sending a new one from the tray.

Choose the workspace folder. Cloud Monitoring is opt-in: in the tray, Cloud Monitoring ▸ → Configure workspace… shows (not set) until a folder is chosen. Pick the folder where incoming Cympha cases should land — picking it starts monitoring automatically, no second click. From then on the agent polls Cympha every 20 seconds and downloads cases assigned to this user into {workspace}\{category}\{PatientName_Date_caseID}\, each with a lab_slip.pdf that refreshes when the case changes.

The full pair walkthrough — including the failure modes — lives in Install and pair Cympha Agent Manager. Read that doc once if this is the designer's first time pairing.

Step 6 — Lab manager assigns the first case

With the designer's role flipped to Designer and their agent paired, the lab manager opens their case queue. Any case in Submitted or Designing status without a designer can be assigned.

The lab manager opens the case, picks the new designer in the assign dialog, and confirms. Status flips to Designing, the new designer becomes the holder, and three things land within about half a minute:

The designer gets an email from Cympha with a link to the case.
The case shows up in the designer's My Assignments page at app.cympha.com/assignments with status Designing.
The Agent Manager downloads the case's files into the workspace folder, under the case's own folder.

The mechanics on the lab manager side are covered in Assign a case to a designer.

Step 7 — Designer opens, designs, requests approval

The designer opens File Explorer, navigates to the case folder in the workspace, and opens the relevant file in OrthoPlus. They design as they normally would, saving output into the same case folder.

The agent watches the workspace. A .gvw review file or a .zip design output uploads automatically; most other file types wait in the agent's Cloud Monitor panel (tray → Cloud Monitoring ▸ → Show panel) for a click on Upload, so the designer controls what leaves the machine. Dropping any supported file into the case folder queues it against that case.

The full first-case walkthrough — where to find the lab slip and how the case chat works — is in A designer's first day on Cympha. The very last action there is the same:

The designer opens the case in their browser at /cases/<id> and clicks Request Approval. Status flips to Awaiting Approval with the right step label, the holder transfers to the customer, and the case is out of the designer's hands until the customer responds.

What success looks like

End state:

Designer's role on My Team reads Designer (not Pending Designer).
OrthoPlus launches without an activation prompt.
The Agent Manager is paired and its cloud workspace folder is set.
One case is visible at /assignments with status Designing.
The workspace folder has a case folder with the customer's uploaded files and a lab_slip.pdf.
After the designer saves a deliverable and clicks Request Approval, the case detail page shows status Awaiting Approval with the Plan Approval Pending (or Appliance Approval Pending) label.

When all six bullets are true, the designer is wired in and the lab manager can stop chaperoning.

Troubleshooting

The designer's sign-up couldn't find the lab manager. The lab manager email must be the exact address used to sign in to Cympha — not a forwarding alias. Ask the lab manager to check /profile for their canonical address and re-do the lookup with that one. If the lab manager hasn't yet signed up, do that first.

Lab manager says they approved but the designer's sidebar still says Pending. The designer's browser is caching the old user record. Have them sign out and back in, or refresh the page — the role flip propagates on the next reload.

OrthoPlus activation reports the code is invalid or expired. The 10-minute activation window passed. Generate a new code from gm.cympha.com/account and paste it immediately.

The agent still shows unpaired after the designer clicked Approve in the browser. The agent polls for the approval and normally picks it up within seconds. If it's stuck, the likeliest cause is that the pair request was sent for a different email than the account that approved it — send a fresh request from the tray (Pair to Cympha…) with the exact sign-in email, and approve the new "Cympha Agent pair request" modal. Note a pair request expires after 1 hour, and typing an email that has no Cympha account produces no visible result at all — nothing happens, by design. Full pairing troubleshooting is in Install and pair Cympha Agent Manager.

Case is assigned but no files appeared in the workspace folder. Three checks, in order. First, the agent must be paired. Second, Cloud Monitoring must have a workspace folder set — tray → Cloud Monitoring ▸ → Configure workspace… reads (not set) if nobody ever chose one, and picking a folder starts monitoring on the spot. Third, if the case was created but has no actual files attached (rare; the customer may have abandoned the upload), the activity log on /cases/<id> will show no file events. One expectation-setter: if the designer deletes a downloaded file locally, the agent will not re-download it — that's what Reset sync state… in the Cloud Monitoring menu is for, and even that re-tombstones existing files rather than re-downloading them.

The designer signed up under the wrong role. Roles are set once and can't be changed self-service. If the request is still pending, the lab manager can Reject it and the person keeps their account without the membership. If the wrong role was already approved, contact Cympha support.