III. Single Item Gift Vendor

LogSpark Single Item Gift Vendor Owner’s Manual

This document is for the Single Item edition of the LogSpark Gift Vendor, if you have one of the more sophisticated multi-item Gift Vendors, it will have its own Manual.

Overview
The LogSpark Single Item Gift Vendor Script turns a simple boxed item into a Gift Vendor.

Shoppers may pay the vendor and receive the item themselves or they can touch the vendor, choose “Send As Gift” and have the item sent to their loved one, their best friend or even to their alt.

* Easy and quick to set up.
* Allows your shoppers to send gifts even to those who are offline.
* Messages you when sales are made.
* The Vendor can (optionally) give a Notecard  describing your product or telling users how to use the vendor itself.
* The Vendor can  (optionally) give DEMO of product.
* Vendor can personalise the messages that it sends to shoppers and gift recipients to include your store name.

Quick Start

1. Put the item that you wish to sell into a box and add a texture to the outside as you would normally.

2. In the Description Field for the box put the price that you wish to sell the item for. (Just the number of Lindens, don’t write L$ in front of it.)

3. Drop a copy of the LogSpark Single Item Gift Vendor Script into the box.

4. Touch the box, check the Dialog Message and agree to the debit perms.

Detailed Instructions
For the purposes of this section, let us assume that the store owner is called Harriet Wragg and her store is called Harriet’s Hats. Harriet is going use her LogSpark Single Item Gift Vendor Script to sell a special edition hat to commemorate the anniversary of the opening of her first store in 2007. The name of the hat that she is going to going to sell is Harriet’s Anniversary Hat and it will cost L$100. Harriet’s customers will be able to get a demo version of the anniversay hat for free from the vendor so that they can try it out before they buy it.

Preliminary Set Up
Harriet rezzes a box and puts a copy of Harriet’s Anniversary Hat inside it.

She also drops a copy of the Harriet’s Hat Store Notecard into the box too. (This is not essential but Harriet likes to have a Notecard containing some promotional textures and a Landmark that her visitors can take away even if they don’t buy anything in her store.)

Harriet has already prepared the Demo version of the Anniversary Hat, it is basically the same as the regular hat but it has a large flexible prim with Harriet’s Logo and the word DEMO floating above it. The Demo version of the hat is named:

Harriet’s Anniversary Hat DEMO

The vendor is very strict about the spelling of the name of the demo item. It expects it to be exactly the same as the name of the regular item and then a space and the word “DEMO”. But it will also accept the name of the item plus “-DEMO” with no space. So either of the following are acceptable:

Harriet’s Anniversary Hat DEMO

Harriet’s Anniversary Hat-DEMO

(Adding a demo version of the hat is entirely optional. If Harriet does not add a demo then the vendor will adjust seamlessly to accomodate.)

Harriet then puts a texture advertising the Harriet’s Anniversary Hat onto the sides of the box.

Vendor Configuration

Harriet now right clicks on the box and chooses Edit.

In the General Tab of the Edit Window Harriet clicks inside the text box for the object’s description and she types:

100, Harriet’s Hats, Yes

These three things separated by commas are the configuration for the vendor.

100 is the price in L$. The Gift Vendor script will use this to make sure that it receives the correct amount of money from the shoppers.

“Harriet’s Hats” is the name of Harriet’s store. The Gift Vendor script will use this in the menus and messages that it displays to the shoppers who use the vendor. (It is not required to do this, but it makes the menus and messages look a little more professional and user friendly.)

“Yes” means that Harriet wishes the vendor to send her a message whenever it makes a sale. (This setting is optional and the default is Yes. If Harriet did not want to receive messages from the vendor when sales are made, she would set this value to “No” instead).

*Harriet’s Tip: Don’t worry about the text box for the object’s name because the vendor will set this automatically when it starts up.

Final Checks
Once the vendor is set up and the configuration has been set in the description field, Harriet places a copy of the LogSpark Single Item Gift Vendor Script into the contents of the vendor and closes the edit window.

Harriet clicks on the vendor which examines the things inside it and reads the configuration from the Description field. If there are any errors in the configuration (for example the price is missing) or if Harriet has forgotten to actually put the Hat inside the vendor, it warns her and waits for her to fix the problem.

When everything is set up correctly, the vendor shows Harriet a dialogue window and asks her to confirm that everything is correct. If she spots a mistake she can choose No and the vendor will wait for her to make the changes and start again. When she is happy with everything, Harriet clicks on Yes.

The vendor now asks Harriet for Debit Permissions in a long yellow window. (This is necessary because sometimes people pay the vendor at the wrong time (like before they have told it to whom they wish to send a gift) and it allows the vendor to return the payment so that the shopper may start over.)

Harriet grants permission and the vendor is ready to make sales.

Using the vendor to make purchases, receive Demos and send gifts.
When someone wishes to purchase Harriet’s Anniversary Hat, they right click on the vendor and pay it L$100. The vendor then displays a drop down menu asking them to confirm that they wish to purchase the hat for themselves.

If this is their intention, they click Yes and the Hat is delivered to them.
(The vendor also sends an Instant Message to Harriet to say what it sold and who purchased it.)

If the shopper chooses No, the hat is not delivered and the payment is refunded.

If the shopper wishes to try out the Demo version of the hat, they can choose “Get Demo” from the menu and the Demo version is delivered to them.

Sending A Gift
When a shopper wishes to send an item as a gift, they click on the vendor and it displays a drop down menu with the following options: “Send As Gift”, “Notecard” and “Cancel”

If they choose “Send As Gift” then vendor prompts them for the name of the person that will receive the gift. After they have supplied the name, the vendor looks up the avatar to make sure that the name is spelled correctly and that it will be able to send the Anniversary Hat to the avatar specified.

If the vendor cannot find the avatar that is named as the gift recipient by the shopper, it tells the shopper and asks them to try again.

Once it is happy that it has accurately identified the gift recipient, the vendor confirms the recipient’s name with the shopper and prompts them for the payment. The shopper has the opportunity at this point to change their mind and answer “No” to the confirmation message, in which case the vendor goes back to waiting for another shopper.

Once payment is made the vendor sends the Anniversary Hat to the recipient and also sends them an instant message to say who sent it and the name of the store that it came from.

Finally it confirms with the shopper that it has made the delivery and thanks them for shopping at Harriet’s Hats.

PLEASE NOTE
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The DEMO EDITIONS are the the same as the Regular Editions in all respects except that the script will pay a 5% commission (or L$2 whichever is greater) to Sandry Logan on every completed sale.
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F.A.Q.

Q. I put my price in but the vendor fails to start, it keeps saying that the price cannot be zero. What is going wrong?
A. Make sure that you just put the price in numbers, don’t write L$100, just write 100.

Q. Can I sell scripts from this vendor?
A. Yes, but you will need to box them.

Q. Can the vendor sell multiple items and deliver them in a folder?
A. No, if you wish to sell multiple items, for example a whole outfit, please box it first.

Q. Other vendors deliver items in a folder and when I set a box for sale and set it to “Give Contents” it gives them in a folder. Why can’t your vendor do this?
A. The problem lies not with the LogSpark vendor script but with the LSL programming language. The feature of the language that delivers a number of items in a folder only works when the recipient is in the same region as the vendor (or was very recently in that region). If the recipient is offline or in another region, the delivery will fail silently.

Q. Are you going to fix this, or is Linden Lab?
A. Many people are hoping that Linden Lab will fix it. If you wish to help you could vote for it on the JIRA:
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-868

Q. I don’t make demo versions of my items, can I still use this vendor?
A. Yes absolutely. Putting in a free demo is entirely optional. The vendor will look for a demo version in its contents, but if it is not there it will make the menu for the user without the “Get Demo” option.

Q. My vendor is set to send me messages when it makes sales, but I don’t want it to do that now. I changed the “Yes” to “No” in the description field, but it still sends them. What am I doing wrong?
A. You’re not doing anything wrong at all. The vendor is remembering the settings from when you first set it up, you will need to restart it to make it see the new settings.

If you are using a version 1.x viewer, Right Click on the vendor and choose Edit. Now look at the tools menu at the top of your screen and choose “Reset Scripts in Selection”.

If you are using Viewer 2.0 Right Click on the vendor and choose Edit. Click on the Build menu menu at the top of your screen and choose Scripts then look for Scripts and then Reset Scripts.

Q. What happens if I don’t put a Notecard in the vendor and someone clicks that Notecard button?
A. If there is no Notecard in the vendor, it will not offer “Notecard” as a menu option.

Q. My customers say that the Gift Vendor says that it cannot find <such_and_such avatar>. Why is this?
A. The LogSpark Gift Vendor uses a database external to SL. It can take quite some time for new names to be added to the database. Sadly, this is beyond our control.

Q. I see that my Gift Vendor uses Fast Pay so that it always asks for the right amount of money. Why then does it ask me for permissions to take money from me?
A. Two reasons:
1. We were made aware of some problems with people not understanding how the Gift Vendors work, people would pay money into the vendor without using the Gift Button to nominate a gift recipient, the goods would then be delivered directly to the payer. In the current version, when someone pays money into the Vendor, the Vendor confirms that the item is indeed intended for this user before it is delivered. If the user answers No to this question, their payment is returned.

2. There is a very small window where someone can pay money into the vendor whilst it is waiting for a payment from someone who is sending a gift. In this instance the payment would be returned and the vendor would wait for the payment from the correct shopper. If someone pays money in at the wrong time, the Gift Vendor tells them what is happening and suggests that they try again in a moment when the other person has finished.

Q. Since I installed my Gift Vendor, I get blue drop down messages (and entries in my transactions on the SL web site) saying that someone paid me some Linden Dollars and then I paid that amount to them? Is this something to do with the Gift Vendor?
A. This is related to the question about debit permissions.

Thanks for your interest in LogSpark International’s Products and Services, please feel free to contact either of us with any enquiries.

Sandry Logan
Blu Sparkle