Lab Mode

Lab mode is a place to practice. AccessPoint keeps a training copy of your organization (sometimes called the training tenant). It has the same configuration as your real work — request types, statuses, templates, letters, languages and settings — as of the last time your setup was copied into it, and it holds only fictional training cases. It sits beside your real data — in AccessPoint for Microsoft 365, in your own Azure database — but is kept separate from it.

Nothing in the training copy appears in your real lists, reports, search, exports or My Day, and nothing in your real work appears in the training copy.

Lab mode was called Train mode before AccessPoint 2.6.0.

Entering Lab Mode

1. Select the Training button in the toolbar.
2. On the hub's Lab mode card, select Open Lab mode.
3. The first time, a short dialog explains Lab mode. Select Open Lab mode again.

You can also start from a Practice step in Get Started, from the Training cases gallery, or from a register's New menu by choosing Practice with a training case….

By default everyone who uses AccessPoint may enter. An administrator can limit Lab mode to the people who hold one role.

How You Know You Are in Lab Mode

• A coloured band across the top reads Training — fictional cases; nothing is sent; configuration as of , with Training cases and Return to my real work.
• The page title starts with [Training].
• Every new-case dialog says Training case, and every training case shows the banner Training case — fictional, for training. Nothing is sent, delivered or published.

Lab mode belongs to one browser tab. Other tabs stay in your real work, and AccessPoint never starts in Lab mode when you sign in. Lists start filtered to your own training cases; clear the filter to see everyone's.

Inactivity

After 28 minutes without activity a warning appears with Stay in Lab mode. At 30 minutes the tab returns to your real work and tells you so. To leave sooner, select Return to my real work in the band or on the hub's Lab mode card.

What You Can Do

You work with your real role: what you can open and change is what your role allows in your real work. A training lead can also grant you a role that applies only in Lab mode — for example, to let a coordinator practice a privacy officer's work. Roles that come from matching case details (dynamic roles) do not apply in Lab mode.

Configuration is read-only in Lab mode (Configuration is read-only in Lab mode.), and Settings → Training is available only in your real work.

People Who Answer You

In Lab mode the people around you on a training case can answer as the scenario scripts them. People outside your organization — a requestor, a consulted third party, a complainant, the regulator's contact — write back a while later in exercise time. Colleagues inside it — a custodian, a reviewer, an advisor, a senior official and others — are simulated people: they exist only in Lab mode, have no account and no role, nobody can sign in as one, and they never appear in your real work, lists, reports or notifications. Anything a script writes is marked as scripted, and nothing it writes is sent anywhere. See Training Cases for how they work, and the Studio for writing your organization's own scripts.

Nothing Leaves Lab Mode

Lab mode is for practice, so nothing you do there reaches anyone outside it.

• Letters are simulated. The send button reads Send (simulated). The letter is generated and filed on the case exactly as it would be, and Simulated — nothing was sent. confirms it.
• Some things are not available (Not available in Lab mode): portal delivery and the reading room, payment requests (fee estimates and recording an offline payment work as usual), repository connectors, adding records from Microsoft 365, and data import. Uploading your own files is also off unless an administrator allows it; the Lab library of fictional records is always available. See Training Cases.
• Notifications from a training case go only to the people training on that case — in the feed and by e-mail with [Training] at the start of the subject — and never to Teams. A link in such an e-mail asks before it opens Lab mode.
• The automatic acknowledgement is never sent from a training case, and training cases never reach the public portal.
• Your real reports, search, exports, audit ledger and retention purge log never include training cases. The audit ledger records only that your setup was copied into the training copy, that training cases were reset or training data removed, and that a team exercise ended.
• AI Assist works in Lab mode, and what it uses counts toward your organization's monthly AI budget.

A request made from Lab mode is checked against your Lab mode session before anything else. If that check fails, the request is refused — it is never quietly answered from your real data.

AccessPoint Learning in Lab Mode

How we decide shows in Lab mode as it does in your real work, with the rule from the training copy's configuration and your organization's coach notes. The rest of AccessPoint Learning — the Studio, learning path settings and your progress through modules — works in your real work only, and is refused in Lab mode. An Exercise step in a module opens its training case in Lab mode, and finishing the case's guide ticks the step back in your real work.

Copies and Resets

Your administrator controls when the training copy is refreshed. A setup copy copies the current configuration into the training copy again and removes every training case; a reset removes every training case and keeps the configuration. Either one returns everyone in Lab mode to their real work with a message, and the worked examples are added again. To clear up after yourself at any time, use Remove my training cases (see Training Cases).

The Exercise Clock

Deadlines matter in training too — a breach notice due in 72 hours, a request due in 30 days — so the training copy has one exercise clock. Only the lead of a live team exercise that uses the clock can move it, and only forward. While it is ahead, the band reads exercise clock + h. Due dates, overdue flags, notice deadlines and reminders in the training copy follow it; the times recorded in each case's history stay real.

Lab Mode and the AccessPoint Training Lab

The AccessPoint Training Lab (learn.realizer.io) is a separate online simulation of AccessPoint in which training providers run classes. It is not part of your AccessPoint: nothing done in a class touches your organization's records, and your AccessPoint does not know who took one. Lab mode is the other way round — practice on your own configuration, inside your own AccessPoint.

• A training lead can record a Training Lab certificate as training done elsewhere, so a learning path counts it (see Completion Records and Team Progress).
• A provider can have its course exported to your organization as a private pack, so its exercises run in your Lab mode (see Training Cases).

Editions

Lab mode works the same way in AccessPoint for Microsoft 365 and Hosted AccessPoint. In Hosted AccessPoint, Lab mode stays on as a full sandbox on the Free plan — every register included — but uploading your own files into it is off there. If a subscription lapses beyond its grace period, AccessPoint becomes read-only but Lab mode keeps working, without uploads.

Related Pages

• Training Hub — where training starts.
• Training Cases — starting a case, its guide and the people who answer you.
• Team Exercises — the exercise clock and shared cases.
• How We Decide — the coach that also shows in Lab mode.
• Settings → Training — who may enter, the setup copy schedule and uploads.