This article is the second of a two-part tutorial covering how to explore the proposed Direct Delivery functionality that is available for testing on the Beta grid. This tutorial covers the basic process of migrating existing magic box content. It appears to be relatively straightforward, so if you choose to do a straight migration to DD then it won’t take you long at all when the time comes. It doesn’t cover everything but (unless things change dramatically) will guide you through a basic migration of your listings, which you can practice on the beta grid. It assumes you already have your test marketplace set up, have downloaded the Direct Delivery Project Viewer and have a basic familiarity with the Direct Delivery process as detailed in Part 1.
Once more, remember the usual caveat – this is LL we’re talking about here so the process may change. However, I doubt there’ll be major changes so it should give you a good start for when the day comes when we need to do it for real – you don’t want to be destroying your listings.
Preparing for the Test
Open up your test SLM storefront @ https://marketplace.aditi.lindenlab.com/ and log in.
Then log into the Beta grid with the Direct Delivery Project Viewer – remember, you don’t need to select a grid name as it will automatically log you into the right one.
How to migrate one (or all) of your listings
Once you’re in, go to one of these two regions:
- Virtual Trade Campus South: secondlife://Aditi/secondlife/Virtuatrade%20Campus%20S/127/127/27
- Virtual Trade Campus SE: secondlife://Aditi/secondlife/Virtuatrade%20Campus%20SE/86/124/34
You’ll see ban lines around you – that’s how you know you’re in the right place (don’t ask, I found it inexplicable).
Next, get yourself a magic box for the test: https://marketplace.aditi.lindenlab.com/stores/75 and wait for it to be delivered.
Once the box is delivered (and it will arrive in your objects folder as LL decided not to make it a Direct Delivery) rez it on the ground on the other side of the ban lines (see, I told you it didn’t make sense).
Then load your magic box with the item(s) you want to use to test the migration. Don’t be surprised if you don’t have all your stuff in your inventory. It will be as current as the last time you logged into the Beta grid – in my case that looks like it was early 2010!
Once you’ve loaded the box, go back to the SLM website, sync the website and box then list the items – you can do a quick fill and it will pick up the details of your real listing if you want to save time.
Once you’ve listed all the items you want to test the migration on, your listings should look like this – note you can tell the magic box listings because it has Magic Box in the Delivery column.
(I must have been a bit eager and took this screenshot before listing my plywood cube, so it says it’s unlisted – I’m not going back to take another screenshot! Use your imagination and pretend there’s a green tick beside it)
Now, go back inworld and go to me>merchant outbox and drag the same items that are in your magic box into the merchant outbox then click the send to the marketplace button.
Remember, the items can be in a folder or boxed. If you drag a boxed item in there it will automatically create a folder which has the same name as the boxed item to save you time. There’s also a limit of 100 items at a time, so if you have a crammed magic box you’ll have to send them in batches.
When they’ve been successfully loaded you’ll see the success button.
Go to the website and you’ll see something spooky – the magic box item is now Unassociated and the current listing has been replaced by the Direct Delivery item. (again, imagine there’s a green tick beside it)
Now in theory all you need to do is check to make sure that all the items you uploaded via Direct Delivery have replaced the magic box item. Assuming that they have (if they haven’t you’ll need to find out if they did upload or if something else has stopped them replacing the magic box listing), the only thing left to do is to update your listings to change the Use It Now that has appeared beside all of them to telling your customer that they need to unbox. Unless told otherwise the listing will assume the item is unpacked.
So, go back to the listings and select all your Direct Delivery items and do a bulk edit. Only select unpacking in the Usage Requirements field and save.
Then they’ll all be updated to tell the customer the box needs unpacking.
If you are migrating all your magic box items and the direct delivery items have replaced the magic box in the delivery column you can delete the magic box and you’re done.
During the transition period, if you want to give people the option of buying the item from the magic box, you will need to relist the item again – this will require you to go into each item and do a quick fill with the details. Once done, you’ll see you now have two listings – one for the Direct Delivery and one for the magic box.
If you go to your storefront you’ll see it looks exactly the same as normal. Which means there’s no way for the shopper to know if an item is a Direct Delivery or magic box delivery unless they click on the item or you identify it in the listing name. This may cause problems for people who don’t have a viewer with the inbox. Time will tell how we’ll manage this post migration.
What I did try was to update the listing name to identify the magic box one (which you can’t really see in the pic)
There was one thing I didn’t do – check to see what happens if you unbox the item and put the folder in the outbox rather than the boxed item. I assume you’ll have to do the listing by hand. Information from anyone who has tried it would be appreciated.
Initially, LL said everything needed to go into a folder before it could go into the outbox, and I was planning to unbox everything and put the folder in the outbox so people wouldn’t have to unpack it but now they’ve given us a workaround of auto creating a folder if you don’t drop a folder in I’m not going to. I know it’s bad of me but I have over 500 items and just can’t face spending days unboxing, renaming the folders and then having to associate it on the website. All my new releases after it goes live will be unboxed and ready to use and bit by bit I’ll do the ones that I migrate but it’s not going to happen straight away.
So, as you can see, if you choose to do a like-for-like migration and put the same items in the outbox as you have in your magic box it should be extremely quick and easy. By disassociating the magic box items it should be quick to identify if you’ve missed any in the migration and unless you want to relist your magic box items or change the boxed items to folders it shouldn’t take you long at all.
So there you have it, assuming everything else works it could be an almost pain-free migration (I know, famous last words!) Do try it whilst it’s on the Beta grid, you could be pleasantly surprised.
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If you want more information, check out the LL help pages:
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Marketplace/Direct_Delivery_Beta_Instructions
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Alternate_Viewers#Direct_Delivery
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SL_Marketplace:Direct_Delivery_FAQ
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Marketplace_Beta_Current
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