Yesterday SLM went live with the Direct Delivery functionality. Since then the site has been decidedly wonky in places as people rush for a look, to buy with the new system or to update the items they sell to the new delivery method.
It’s been fun. OK, perhaps fun is too strong a word for some people but on the whole it has been reasonably smooth for a Linden Lab deployment.
So, for those of you who haven’t yet tried it out, here’s a few tips and tricks. It’s not a complete run down as others have done that. Assuming you’ve got an awareness of the background to this new feature then this post might be helpful.
To get the Direct Delivery folder you need to receive something you’ve bought. I assume all viewers will automatically create the folder when you have a DD item delivered but if not, the latest versions of Firestorm, Phoenix and the official LL viewer definitely do.
When you’re ready, go here and get a Direct-Delivery-Linden-Bear – it will create the Delivery folder when you receive it. For Firestorm it’s at the very bottom of the inventory folder so don’t go looking for it in your actual inventory as you won’t see it. For Phoenix it’s buried amongst all your normal folders.
When you’ve got the bear you can either move the folder to somewhere else in your inventory or you can rez/wear it direct from that folder.
If you’re a retailer and need to update your listings it’s trickier to get started but the rest seems to go ok. You have two months to move all your listings to direct delivery before they disable the magic boxes. If you can’t bear the thought of doing all that unpacking and loading then the quick way is to just put the current magic box items to the direct delivery system and that’s extremely easy.
If you want to have a read of the tutorials I wrote last year, check these out:
Second Life Marketplace Direct Delivery Testing Part 1. Creating A New Listing
Second Life Marketplace Direct Delivery Testing Part 2. Migrating Magic Box Listings
Ignore anything written about going onto the beta grid since it’s now live. The process seems to have stayed the same so it should give you a pretty good idea what to do if you’re bewildered.
To do the migration, you’ll need either Firestorm or the latest official viewer to load your items – phoenix doesn’t have the outbox. (I have no idea what other viewers will work with it – if you use something else you’ll have to do some legwork to find out)
So, once you’ve had the bear delivered and you’ve got the received items folder, log out of the marketplace and inworld. Then log back into the marketplace and inworld. (don’t ask)
Once you’re back in, go to either the “me” or “avatar” menu (depending on which viewer you use) and look for a menu item there called Merchant Outbox and open it. If it opens and says you need to set up a store, keep logging out of both the marketplace and inworld and relogging into both until you see a message in the outbox that tells you to drag the items to load into it.
The absolute easiest way to do this is:
- to go to your magic boxes and copy them into your inventory
- drag up to 100 of the boxed items from that folder into the merchant outbox (making sure you don’t drag the magic box scripts in there too)
- then send to the marketplace
keep doing that with all your magic box items until they’re all loaded.
This is the cheats way to do it as the outbox will automatically create the folder for you and the customer will still get the boxed item. The long way to do it is to unpack each box and then move each folder into the outbox. That too will do a straight swap out. If you rename the folder before dropping it in then it won’t swap and you’ll have to associate them individually.
Once you’ve sent them all through the outbox, go to the marketplace and you should see all your magic box items are now unassociated. That means that SLM has swapped your magic box item for the one you’ve sent via the merchant outbox.
If you see any unassociated items that have the word “Direct” in the delivery column, it means that SLM hasn’t managed to do the swap. You’ll have to select the listing and associate it with the new folder.
Go to listed items and select them all and using the edit tool select “unpacking required” and update.
That’s it. Doing it the quick way means you have the luxury of time to unpack each of them individually if you wish. If you don’t then it doesn’t matter as you’ll still be able to sell after they turn off the magic boxes.
A few things to note:
- If you put more than 100 items in the folder, apparently it won’t send them to SLM. If you find you have put more than that number in, you can select and delete some and then it will send.
- Those deleted items go to your lost and found folder – they don’t just vanish. You’ll need to delete them out of there if you want to.
- Don’t just drop them into the folder as you would a magic box – always make sure you drop them into the bit that says Drag items here to create folders. If you don’t, you may find they get dumped into one of the folders already in the box (if there are any), you’ll never be able to find them once loaded and you’ll need to delete them from the website (see the point below for the problems with that).
- If you try to delete any of the now unassociated magic box items from the unassociated list you can’t do a bulk delete – you need to do each individually and it takes forever! Or go to Xstreet and remove the magic boxes (you’ll see it down the bottom of the page in the left hand column). It won’t delete the box inworld but will take the items out of your unassociated items list on SLM.
- If you want to replace the boxed item that is now in the DD system later on with an unboxed folder then the pro tip is to rename it slightly so you can easily change the association.
and finally..
The website is running like a dog with 3 broken legs. Give it a few more days if you can before you try to migrate your listings.
It’s really not that bad and so far there have been no reports of failed deliveries – which has to be a bonus.
