Cases & the pipeline
Board and list Cases (the home page) shows every open case as a kanban board — one column per pipeline stage. Switch to List for a sortable table; overdue rows tint red, due-today rows amber, and the ⚑ Urgent chip filters to anything due within 48 hours. Filters above the board: Stage, dentist, technician, and a Due by date with quick presets. A due date is a day, not a time. A case counts as overdue once that day has passed, so work due today reads *due today* all day and only turns red tomorrow — and Due by includes cases due on the date you pick. The same day shows everywhere it appears: the board, the list, the CSV, My queue, the station screen, the TV board, the printed pan label and the dentist’s portal. If your lab runs multiple pipelines, a selector appears under the toolbar — one tab per pipeline with its in-flight count. In list view you can multi-select cases and bulk Check IN / Check OUT at a chosen workstation, and Print labels (N) prints a pan label for every case currently shown. The search box searches every case your lab has taken, not only the ones on the board — see Finding cases & patient history. Creating cases Click + New case. The case number (C-YYYY-NNNN) is assigned automatically. Leave Pipeline and Assign to on Auto and your assignment rules pick the pipeline and/or technician. Multi-unit cases A bridge isn't one restoration — click + Add another unit to give each unit its own Tooth # (1–32, or A–T for primary teeth, comma-separated — anything else is rejected inline), restoration, material, shade, quantity and a note for that unit. Every unit block shows the same fields in the same order. Billing prices each unit separately and sums them on one invoice line. Units can be edited later on the case page (Edit units → + Add unit → Save units). The case page Everything about one case: the pipeline with stage history, units (a per-arch unit says which arch, so an upper and a lower of the same restoration are never two identical-looking lines), the doctor's notes (with a 🎙 Voice note button for gloves-on dictation), the AI pre-flight banner, the pan tracker (check-ins, and a Trail of every bench it visited), Files — one box for everything of your own. Drop in photos and they get a visual QA check (each showing who uploaded it and who approved it; choosing Rework asks what needs redoing and records it on the case); drop in a scan or a design (STL/PLY/OBJ) and it opens in the browser viewer, which centres and scales whatever the scanner wrote and offers a download rather than a blank panel for a file it cannot read. You are asked what each mesh is — upper arch, bite, design — so a case with three of them is readable, and a scan emailed with the order is attached here automatically when you accept the intake. Everything in Files is yours alone: to send a file to the practice, attach it to a message in the conversation, the conversation with the dentist, dentist notifications, Pan label and Shipping label. Outsourcing sends the case out to a partner lab or milling centre — pick who, tick which 3D files go, add a note and a date, and they get an order email from you with an expiring download link rather than attachments; you then move the job along as they report it and record what it cost you (see Settings → Outsourcing partners to add one first). If your practices manufacture in-clinic, you ask for approval in the conversation: click the ▾ beside Send and pick Request approval. That message IS the request, so the design files ride along with it — up to 10 files at 120 MB each — sized for a revision, so a bite scan, a gingival scan, implant data and photos all go in one message. The case then stops and is theirs: their case list marks it Your approval needed and the case reads The lab is waiting on you, where they approve the prototype or ask for changes, with their own attachments if a new bite scan is part of the answer. Asking for changes starts a new revision of the same case — one history, one invoice, however many rounds it takes. Where a case GOES at each of those three moments is yours to set at Lab → Settings → Dentist portal (see Settings). A case waiting on a practice is marked in amber and is deliberately NOT the same state as a credit hold, so a stopped board always says which kind of stopped it is. The inverse is marked too: when a practice messages you or asks for a change on one of their cases, the card shows ASKED — or a red CHANGE when they have asked for one — and the case carries a banner saying since when. That is a different state from waiting on them — the board should always say which party owes the next move. You are also emailed — once when a practice starts waiting on you and again if a note becomes a change request, not once per line they type. Set where those go at Lab → Settings (blank sends them to the admin; a shared inbox like cases@yourlab.com is usually better once more than one person works the board), and switch the event off there if you find them noisy — the board still shows it either way. Any reply on the case clears it — there is no check that the reply answers what was asked; Dealt with it is there for when you picked up the phone instead, and on a change request Agree — start revision N bumps the revision. Asking does not move the case or start a revision: you decide that. If the doctor phones instead of opening the portal, record it yourself: the amber banner carries They approved — record it and They asked for changes. The conversation notes that the lab entered it rather than putting the words in the doctor’s mouth, and everything else is identical — the same state, the same revision, the same charge if a product bills on approval. From revision 2 the board and the list show an R2 badge beside the case, and the case page shows Revision 2 — so you can see which cases have been back without opening them. Advancing stages Show shipped & delivered brings finished work onto the board — the last 90 days of it, because finished work accumulates forever while work in flight does not. While you are searching it is held on regardless, since the case you are looking for is usually a finished one. An older shipped case is still on its own page, in Office → Invoices, and findable by case number in the header search. Stages only move forward. Advance from the case page, or automatically by scanning a pan into a mapped bench (see Scanning & workstations). Reaching Shipped creates the invoice line and notifies the dentist. Moving a case to another pipeline A card carries AI when the case came from an intake, REDO when it is a remake, HOLD when it is stopped for credit, and ⚠ when pre-flight flagged something. The toolbar counts those three together as *need attention*. On the case page, the Pipeline card has a pipeline selector (when your lab has more than one). A case can only move to a pipeline that contains its current stage. My queue — the bench view Cases, Intakes and the boards show the whole lab. My queue shows only the cases assigned to you, newest work first, with a big due-today hero — built for a phone or an iPad at the bench. Switch it to All cases when you need the lab’s work instead; Mine is the default because that is the question a technician is asking. A case gets assigned by an assignment rule, on the case page, or in bulk from the Cases list. Deleting Deletes are soft — deleted cases are kept for 90 days and support can restore them on request.
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