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Marketplace Direct Delivery migration guide

Started ‎01-10-2012 by
Modified ‎03-04-2013 by
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Marketplace Direct Delivery migration guide

Direct Delivery essential information

Magic Boxes are being phased out as the method for storing and delivering inventory on the Second Life Marketplace.  Direct Delivery will be replacing the Magic Box delivery system over a two month migration period.  For technical reasons, individual merchants must manually migrate their items to the Direct Delivery system.  Our hope is that the advantages of Direct Delivery and the greater ease of adding new items to the Marketplace will balance this initial inconvenience.  Additionally, this manual process gives merchants the opportunity to un-box their products before listing them using Direct Delivery, resulting a smoother purchase experience for their customers. 

Migration Dates

April 2, 2013:
  • Merchants will no longer be able to list unlimited-quantity items for L$10 or less using Magic Boxes.
  • Any active, unlimited-quantity listings for L$10 or less using Magic Boxes will be unlisted.
April 16, 2013:
  • Merchants will no longer be able to list unlimited-quantity items using Magic Boxes, regardless of price.
  • Any remaining active, unlimited-quantity listings using Magic Boxes will be unlisted, regardless of price.
We do not have a Magic Box shutdown date for the migration of limited-quantity listings (items that the Merchant does not have rights to copy, such as breedable animals which are “no copy” for the seller) at this time. After we designate that date, we will give 30 days’ notice so that Merchants will have time to migrate those items. 

Simple migration instructions

Here is a set of high-level instructions for migrating your items from Magic Boxes to Direct Delivery.  If you encounter errors or would like more information about the upload process, please see the detailed instructions covered in this article.

To convert your Magic Box listings to Direct Delivery:

  1. Copy all items from your Magic Box into your inventory.
  2. Open the MERCHANT OUTBOX by choosing Me > Merchant Outbox...
    (You may optionally un-box your items before the next step.) 
  3. Drag all Marketplace items from your inventory to the MERCHANT OUTBOX and click the Send to Marketplace button.
  4. All affected listings on the Second Life Marketplace re-associate with their matching Direct Delivery inventory automatically.  See "Manual association" below for any items that fail to associate.

Use the steps provided in this guide to successfully migrate your existing Marketplace inventory out of your Magic Boxes and into the simpler and more reliable Direct Delivery system.

Video tutorials

For official video tutorials on how to use Direct Delivery, see the following on youTube:

Marketplace on the Aditi preview grid

The Second Life Marketplace with Direct Delivery is available for testing and experimentation on the Aditi preview grid.  For detailed information on the preview grid and instructions on how to connect to the Aditi Marketplace, visit the Preview Grid article in the Second Life wiki.

Copy existing items from your Magic Box into your inventory

If you do not already have your Marketplace store's inventory neatly organized in your Second Life inventory, you may wish to copy your existing items out of your Magic Box for convenience.  

  1. Log into Second Life and locate your first Magic Box.
  2. Change the name of the Magic Box to "DD Migration 1" (or "DD Migration 2" for the second, and so on). This will help you stay organized if you are copying mutliple Magic Boxes.
  3. Open the Contents tab of the Magic Box and click Copy to Inventory.
  4. A "DD Migration 1" folder appears in your inventory.
  5. Take your Magic Box into your inventory to remove it from the world.  It is no longer needed.
  6. Delete all of the following Xstreet scripts from each "DD Migration" folder:
    • Xstreet Communications
    • Xstreet Merchant Sign Script
    • Xstreet Object Tracking
    • Xstreet Vendor Components A
    • Xstreet Vendor Components B

Copy Magic Box.png

(Optional) Eliminate boxes by using folders

Direct Delivery eliminates the need to box items in order to sell more than one item in a single listing.  Instead, you may organize groups of items into folders so they can be listed and delivered as a complete package.  To convert your existing boxed items, unpack them into folders in your inventory as you did with your Magic Box by doing the following:

  1. Rez the item inworld.
  2. Right-click the item and select Open.
  3. Click Copy To Inventory.
  4. Move the resulting folder in your inventory into the folder called "DD Migration 1".  Folder names must match the names of previously boxed products if you would like your existing Magic Box listings to be automatically converted for Direct Delivery.  See the Automatic association section for details.
  5. Delete or move the original box object from the "DD Migration 1" folder.
Note: There is a limit on the number of objects and folders that can be contained in a top-level folder sent to the Marketplace.  Please see Selling in the Marketplace for more details.

No Boxes.png

Upload items to the Marketplace using the Merchant outbox

The Merchant outbox allows you to upload items to the Marketplace directly from your inventory.  To upload your store items to the Marketplace:

  1. Highlight approximately 50-100 of the items in the "DD Migration 1" folder. The easiest way to accomplish this is to click the first item in the folder, scroll to the last item you'd like to select, then click that item while holding Shift. Make sure you do not select the Magic Box folder itself, unless you want to sell your store's entire inventory as a single package!
  2. Right-click the selected items and choose Copy to Merchant Outbox. (You may also choose to drag and drop selected items to the Merchant Outbox which is accessed under Me->Merchant Outbox.) If you have problems copying items to your Merchant Outbox, please contact support.
  3. Verify that each highlighted item has been added to the Merchant Outbox.
  4. Click the Send to Marketplace button to upload your items to the Second Life Marketplace.
  5. If you encounter errors during the upload process, you may review them in the Import failure log, which you can access by choosing My Marketplace > Merchant Home, clicking Import failure log on the left side of the page under Inventory.
  6. Repeat steps 1-4 until you have sent all items to the Marketplace. Be careful not to send the same item twice or you will need to delete each additional copy from your Marketplace Unassociated Inventory.
Tip: After you click Send to Marketplace, your Magic Box listings will automatically be re-associated with your new Direct Delivery inventory as long as each folder has the same name as an item in your Magic Box.  See the next section for more details.
Warning: You may not upload items using the Merchant outbox if you have more than 100 unassociated items in your store inventory.  Make sure to clear unneeded unassociated inventory regularly in order to keep uploading new inventory.

Drag to Merchant Outbox.png

Magic Box Cleanup

In order to clear your Magic Box inventory items from your store's Unassociated Inventory, you must remove your Magic Boxes from the Second Life world and XStreet.

  1. Log into the Xstreet SL web site (https://www.xstreetsl.com/).
  2. Click Cancel on the pop-up box and log in using your Second Life credentials.
  3. Click on your user name on the top right.
  4. Click on My Marketplace Inventory in the Account Functions box.
  5. Check the lower left section called Registered Servers. If you have not yet taken your Magic Box back into your inventory, click the Location link to visit it inworld and take it. Then click the Remove link.
  6. Once you have completed step 5 with each of your Magic Boxes, go to the Second Life Marketplace.
  7. Click My Marketplace on the top right.
  8. Click Manage Listings on the left.
  9. Click Sync Marketplace with Magic Boxes on the upper right.
  10. Wait several minutes (this can take up to 15-30 minutes for Merchants will very large inventories) and refresh the page. All items from the removed Magic Box should no longer appear in your Unassociated inventory items.

Associate Direct Delivery items with your existing listings

You do not need to create new Marketplace listings in order to begin selling your items uploaded with the Merchant outbox; instead, you can associate the uploaded items with your existing Magic Box listings.

Automatic association

If an uploaded item has the same name as an existing Magic Box listing, association is handled automatically and the existing listing will begin selling the item via Direct Delivery.  Automatic association may fail if an existing listing's associated item has already been manually changed, which may often occur as a result of product updates.

To confirm the success of automatic association:

  1. Choose My Marketplace > Merchant Home.
  2. Click Inventory, on the left side of the Merchant home page.
  3. Check the Delivery column under the Manage inventory section of the Inventory page; all successfully associated listings should read Direct.  If any listings still read Magic Box, you may manually associate them with a new Direct Delivery item by using the manual association method below.

Manage listings delivery.png

Manual association

On the Second Life Marketplace website, choose My Marketplace > Merchant Home, then click Manage inventory from the left side of the page.  Your recently uploaded Direct Delivery items appear in the Unassociated Marketplace Inventory section with a Delivery type of "Direct".  Your existing Magic Box listings appear in the Manage inventory section, with a Delivery type of "Magic Box".  For each existing active Magic Box listing, do the following:

  1. Click Actions > Edit to open the listings Edit Item Listing page.
  2. Click the Edit associated object button on the Edit Item Listing page.
  3. Choose the Direct Delivery version of the object from the unassociated inventory in the provided list.  Delivery type is not indicated on the list, but it only displays inventory that is not currently associated with a listing.
  4. Click Update on the Edit Item Listing page to update the listing.
  5. Check to see that the Delivery type of the active item listing is now "Direct".
  6. Find the Magic Box version of the item now in Unassociated Marketplace Inventory and choose Actions > Delete to remove it from your Marketplace inventory.
  7. Repeat this process for each of your active listings until the Delivery field for each active listing reads "Direct".

Congratulations!  You no longer need a Magic Box in order to sell objects on the Second Life Marketplace.  For more information on setting up a Marketplace store or item listings with Direct Delivery, see:

 

Item delivery locations

Any items delivered using Direct Delivery are sent to the customer's Received items folder in inventory; this circumvents any issues surrounding deliveries to offline customers whose IMs have been capped.  Deliveries made using a Magic Box will continue to be delivered to the customer's Objects folder.

To help customers understand where to look for their new deliveries, a status message has been added to each delivery in the customer's order history as shown here:

 

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