SimpleLabOS reads the notification email a scanner platform sends your lab when a case is submitted. How much of a case that email builds depends entirely on how much the platform decided to put in it, and that varies enormously. A Medit Link order request usually names the patient and the teeth, so most of the case is already there. A 3Shape Communicate notice carries the practice, the operator, an order number and a link — and nothing about the work itself — so all it can build is a shell case with the link on it, and you finish the entry by hand. This page lists every field, so you know before you sign up instead of after.
No. There is no 3Shape API, no link to a 3Shape LMS or Unite account, and no automatic download of scans. What SimpleLabOS does is read the 3Shape Communicate notification email your lab already receives: the practice, the operator, the operator's email address, the order number, the 3Shape case ID and the link to the case are pulled out and put on a case in your inbox column. The patient, the teeth, the shade, the material and the due date are not in that email — 3Shape keeps them behind the link — so you open the link and type those yourself. We would rather write that sentence than sell you a word we can't back.
Same question about Medit or iTero? The tables below answer it field by field.
Every inbound email lands in your Scanner Inbox first, with everything that could be read out of it shown on the row. Two things have to be true before an email turns itself into a case without you: a doctor in your lab has to match the sender address (or the operator address inside the mail), and enough fields have to be readable — in practice the patient name, the tooth numbers and the material all being present.
A 3Shape Communicate notice never reaches that bar, because none of those three fields are in it. A Medit Link order request often gets close but usually stops short, because the shade and the material are written in prose rather than as labelled lines. So the normal path, for both, is this: the email arrives in the Scanner Inbox with whatever we could read already filled in, you glance at it, and you press Create Case on that row. It is far less typing than an empty form. It is not the same thing as an automatic case, and we are not going to call it one.
Everything below was read out of the parser that actually runs in production, not out of a vendor's brochure.
A shell case with a link. Everything clinical is behind that link.
| Field | In the notification email? | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Sending practice | Filled in for you | Read from the sender block, or from the "added by" line on a change notice. |
| Operator (the person who scanned) | Filled in for you | The Operator line becomes the doctor name on the case. |
| Operator email address | Filled in for you | This is what matches the case to the right doctor in your lab, even when the mail was forwarded from your own mailbox. |
| Order number | Filled in for you | Kept on the case, and used so the same order can never open two cases. |
| 3Shape case ID | Filled in for you | Kept alongside the order number. |
| Link to the case in 3Shape | Filled in for you | Written onto the case note, so the scan is one click away. |
| "Case has been updated" notices | Filled in for you | Recognised as an update and attached to the case that already exists, with the new state written on it — not filed as a second case. |
| Patient name | Not in the email | 3Shape does not put it in the email. You type it. |
| Tooth numbers | Not in the email | Not in the email. You type them. |
| Shade | Not in the email | Not in the email. You type it. |
| Material | Not in the email | Not in the email. You type it. |
| Due date | Not in the email | Not in the email. You set it. |
| Scan files (STL, PLY, OBJ) | Not in the email | The notification carries no attachments. The scans stay in 3Shape — open the link, download, then drop them on the case. |
Bottom line: a case in your inbox column carrying the practice, the operator, the order number and the link, and nothing clinical. You open the link, read the case in 3Shape, and finish the entry by hand. That is a shell case. Calling it an integration would be a lie, and the lab that left us over exactly that was right to be annoyed.
Usually most of a case: patient and teeth come across, shade and material usually don't.
| Field | In the notification email? | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Patient name | Filled in for you | Read from the case title, e.g. "Aaron Weed - 3 and 14 crowns". If the title doesn't start with a name we leave the field blank rather than guess — a wrong patient name costs more than an empty box. |
| Tooth numbers | Filled in for you | Read from the case title and the body together, universal numbering 1–32. Where the two disagree you get both, so nothing is silently dropped. |
| Partner / sending practice | Filled in for you | Kept on the case. |
| Order ID | Filled in for you | Kept on the case and used to stop the same order opening two cases. |
| Clinic comment | Filled in for you | Kept in full on the case. This is where the clinic usually writes the shade, the material and the special instructions. |
| Requested delivery date | Filled in for you | Read and written onto the case, but it does not set the due date field — you set that, so nobody's board gets a due date nobody agreed to. |
| Link to the order in Medit Link | Filled in for you | Written onto the case note. |
| Shade | You type it | Filled in only when the comment spells it out as a labelled line ("Shade: A2"). Written in prose, it stays in the comment and you copy it across. |
| Material | You type it | Same rule as shade: a labelled line is read, prose is kept as text. |
| Prescribing doctor | You type it | Medit's mail doesn't name the doctor — the "Hi …" greeting is your own user, not theirs — so the case is matched to a doctor by the sending address. |
| Scan files (STL, PLY, OBJ) | Not in the email | Not attached to the notification. Download them from Medit Link through the link on the case. |
Bottom line: most of a case. A typical Medit Link order request arrives with the patient and the teeth already on it and the clinic's own comment kept in full. You add the shade and the material if the clinic wrote them as prose, set the due date, and it is ready to work.
No dedicated reader yet. The general email reader looks for labelled lines.
| Field | In the notification email? | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Patient name | You type it | Read when the mail writes a labelled line — "Patient: Jane Doe", and the Spanish, French and German spellings of it. Otherwise blank. |
| Tooth numbers | You type it | Read from "Tooth", "Teeth" or "#" followed by numbers (1–32). |
| Material | You type it | Read from a "Material:" line. |
| Shade | You type it | Read from a "Shade:" or "Colour:" line. |
| Rush flag | Filled in for you | The words urgent, rush, asap or emergency anywhere in the mail mark the case urgent. |
| Full message text | Filled in for you | Always kept on the case, so nothing the doctor wrote is lost even when no field could be read. |
| Attachments | You type it | STL, PLY, OBJ, JPG, PNG, WEBP, HEIC, TIFF, BMP, DICOM and PDF files up to 100 MB each are saved onto the case — but only when the email had enough in it to open the case on its own. If the mail needed your review first, the file is still in the original email and you attach it yourself. We know that gap is annoying; it is on the list. |
| Order number, case link, practice | Not in the email | Those come from a platform-specific reader, and so far we have written one for 3Shape Communicate and one for Medit Link. |
Bottom line: it depends on what the platform writes. A doctor who emails you a normal prescription with labelled lines gets most of a case; a platform notice with its own layout — iTero's has one — lands in the Scanner Inbox with the full text kept, and you create the case from there. We have not written an iTero reader yet, so we are not putting an iTero badge on this page.
Every lab gets one, in the form lab-yourlab@inbound.simplelabos.com. The lab-yourlab part is yours to change, and the whole address sits at the top of the Scanner Inbox page with a Copy button.
Either set that address as the notification recipient in 3Shape, Medit or iTero, or leave a rule in the mailbox that already receives them and forward them on. Forwarding is fine: the reader works off the body of the message, not the sender, so a mail forwarded through Gmail or Outlook still parses.
If the address you forward from is also your normal business inbox, list the senders allowed to open cases — a full address like dr.smith@clinic.com, or a whole practice with @theirpractice.com. Mail from anyone else waits on a separate tab instead of reaching your case list, nothing is deleted, and doctors you have already added always come through without being listed. An empty list means the filter is off, on purpose.
Every message shows what was read out of it and which gate stopped it becoming a case. You press Create Case on the row, or delete it. Nothing arrives silently. The Scanner Inbox is part of the Standard and Pro plans — the Starter plan does not include it.
No API, no account link, no LMS connection. We never log in to their platform, and we can never see a case they didn't email you about.
Notification emails carry no scan files. The STL stays on the platform. The link on the case gets you there in one click, but the download is yours to do.
Your doctors keep scanning on the machine they already own, and case chat that happens inside 3Shape Communicate or Medit Link stays there.
We are working on reading 3Shape order files, so a lab can drop the file the scanner writes and have the clinical fields fill themselves in properly. The case form already accepts a 3Shape or exocad order file and prefills what it can read, but we have not yet checked it against enough real exports to call it done — and we are not going to invent a date for when we will.
The one way to get a complete case with no typing is for the doctor to send it through the doctor portal: a real prescription form with a tooth chart, material, shade, due date and file upload. It costs your doctors nothing and it is the only path where every field arrives filled in.
See the doctor portalNo. There is no 3Shape API connection and no link to a 3Shape LMS or Unite account. SimpleLabOS reads the 3Shape Communicate notification email your lab receives and builds a case from it carrying the practice, the operator, the order number, the 3Shape case ID and the link. The patient, teeth, shade, material and due date are not in that email, so you open the link and type them.
No, and we would be suspicious of anyone who said it would. The email has no patient name and no tooth numbers in it, so there is nothing to create a case from. It lands in the Scanner Inbox with the order number and the link already read out, and you create the case from that row in a couple of clicks.
Often it gets most of the way. The patient name and the tooth numbers usually come out of the case title, and the clinic's comment is kept in full. The last step still normally needs you, because the shade and material are usually written in prose rather than as labelled lines, and an automatic case is only created when those fields are readable too.
Not with a dedicated reader, no. An iTero notification lands in the Scanner Inbox with its full text kept, and the general reader fills in whatever the mail writes as a labelled line. If the iTero mail your lab receives does carry labelled fields, forward us one and we will tell you honestly what comes out of it.
Not from 3Shape or Medit — their notifications carry no attachments at all, and the scans stay on the platform behind the link. A file a doctor genuinely attaches to an email does get saved onto the case — STL, PLY, OBJ, JPG, PNG, WEBP, HEIC, TIFF, BMP, DICOM and PDF, up to 100 MB each — as long as that email had enough in it to open the case by itself. If it went to review first, the attachment stays in the original mail and you add it to the case yourself.
No. The Scanner Inbox is part of the Standard and Pro plans; the Starter plan does not include it. Ask us before you pick a plan if scanner email is the reason you are here — we would rather tell you now than have you find out in week two.
Yes. Put a forwarding rule on that inbox and point it at your lab's inbound address — the reader works off the body of the message, so a forwarded mail parses the same as a direct one. If that inbox also gets everything else your business gets, switch on the allowed-sender list so only the addresses and domains you name can open a case.
You do not get two cases. When a platform gives us an order number, that number is held against the case, and a second delivery for the same order — including the platform's own "case has been updated" notice — points at the case that already exists instead of opening another one.
Yes. You get a 14-day trial, and the fastest test is to forward a real notification from each of your platforms at your inbound address on day one and see exactly what comes out.
That is the whole evaluation: send us a 3Shape, Medit or iTero email you actually received and look at what the case comes out like.