Merchant Outbox, Do I Use It Or Wait Till I Have To??

[Saoirse Morrisey]

Hi:)  I wanted to add some new items to my MP listings and having read about the problems with Merchant Outbox and DD, I'm a bit confused.  

I use Firestorm viewer and I guess what I need to know is should I add my new items via the Merchant Outbox or should I wait till I'm pushed, that is when we can no longer use Magic Boxes.  Does it look like this may happen in the near future or way off in the distant future?

I have to confess I have not read all the info on the Merchant Outbox, so regarding old listings being removed from the MB and placed in the MO, do I have to re enter all the details in the MP as if it was a new listing?

I am a bit worried that if I do start removing from the MB and the MO doesn't work for some reason that I won't be able to go back to the MB, that would be a nightmare!

 

[Claireschen Hesten]

if you want to migrate all your items to DD go to your magic box(s) open them so the contents copies to your inventory then highlight the contents (everyting but scripts) open the merchant outbox drag everything that you highlighted in to it click send to marketplace as long as the items have the same name as the associated items in your listings everything will be converted to DD for you

if you have new items you want to add to the marketplace it would be an ideal time to try out the merchant outbox

[Marcus Hancroft]

The Merchant Outbox in Firestorm works perfectly, Saoirse.  Why anybody would want to continue adding their new items to an outdated system like the Magic Boxes when they know that system is being phased out is beyond me.  There are a couple of things you need to do the first time you use the Merchant Outbox.  First...click Avatar/Merchant Outbox and let it initialize.  If it keeps telling you you need to "open a new store" (or words to that effect), log out of your marketplace store on the website, log out of your viewer, log back in to your marketplace store and then log back inworld.  Open the Outbox again and it should initialize fine.  

With Direct Delivery, it is no longer necessary to box your items for sale.  So, just drag the folder that everything is in into the Outbox and allow everything to load.  There will be an arrow next to the folder in the Outbox.  Click it and double check that everything got moved over.  Click "Send To Marketplace."

You can still box your items if you wish.  The difference is that your customer will no longer have to find a place to rez a box and unpack it if you use a folder rather than a box.  It's very convenient for new residents who may not have land to rez things on.  

You will get a pop-up saying "Upload Successful" if everything went as normal and your Outbox will change to "empty" again.  Now you can go to your store on the marketplace and go to the "Unassociated Items" section where you will see your new item ready to be listed!  Click the Action button, select Create New Listing, and off you go again.

Linden Lab has stated that they will give at least 30 days notice before they shut off the Magic Boxes and there are several things they have to fix before they can do that.  Namely, getting Direct Delivery to accept No Copy items to the merchant.  eg, Breedables items are all no copy even to the sellers and the Direct Delivery system doesn't accept the item if the seller doesn't have copy permissions.  That has to be fixed first before they can turn off Magic Boxes.

Try adding just one of your new items to get a feel for how the system works and the process you have to go through to get something new listed.  See what you think.  After one or two, I think you'll love it!

If you have any other questions or need help, you can contact me inworld and I'll help talk you through the process.

 

[Saoirse Morrisey]

Thanks to both of you for your replies!  A lot of very helpful info which I'm going to try out.  Fingers crossed it works ok.

 

Thanks again!

 

 

[Sassy Romano]

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Saoirse Morrisey wrote:

...having read about the problems with Merchant Outbox and DD 

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Merchant outbox for some has failed to initialise.  When it works it's fine.

What problems with Direct Delivery, seriously, I can't think of any.  I've heard of one case of a DD delivery failure but that's it.  Even the issue in WEB-4851, still delivered, just didn't show up in Received Items until a relog.

I do pounce on these because there's still FUD going around about Direct Delivery and just about all of it is totally unjustified in as much as its function and how it replaces a Magic Box.

Granted there are still a bunch of other issues with Marketplace and the overall architecture behind payment through to delivery and log reconciliation but that exists with Magic Boxes too and won't change.

At this point i'm also of the opinion that LL have largely abandoned Marketplace.  Either the team isn't capable of fixing the key issues or have been taken off it and not replaced.  It could just be project resource allocation but there's no evidence whatsoever of any real software engineering going on or bug fixes having taken place for the past month and more.

In fact, Direct Delivery was THE project, took far longer than expected, still some outstanding issues like the outbox but to all intents, it delivers and that was the major requirement.  Job done it seems.  Re-allocate the developers to something more shiny, doodle from time to time with a JIRA or two and if they can't find something irrelevant, make up something irrelevant to do instead.

Time will tell.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Sassy Romano wrote:

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Saoirse Morrisey wrote:

...having read about the problems with Merchant Outbox and DD 

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[snip] .. I do pounce on these because there's still FUD going around about Direct Delivery .. [/snip]

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I have to concur with your determination that DD pretty much works as expected .. and also that most of what we hear to the contrary is FUD. However LL has so perfectly fertilized the field such that FUD plants gow with unbelievable rapidity with stalks so tall and leaves so broad that they block out the sunshine of reality way too well. LL is very much reaping what they've sewn.

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Sassy Romano wrote:

[snip[ .. At this point i'm also of the opinion that LL have largely abandoned Marketplace .. [/snip]

[snip] .. In fact, Direct Delivery was

THE 

project, took far longer than expected .. [/snip]

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After the "completion" of any large-scale project the likes of DD, it's been my experience in the past that I needed a time to recharge my creativity battery. I would fall into a state of work-related lethargy that made it almost painful to look at or try to comprehend anything beyond tiny syntax fixes and trivial tasks.

As proof of my theory that CTL's dev team is suffering the same affliction is the fact that it appears the Marketplace now remembers the number of items listed per page on the Manage Listings and View Store pages. To my knowledge those values were lost after closing the browser, but it now appears they are retained .. even after a reboot. I know it's a tiny thing, but it's also firmly in the "trivial" class.

If I'm corrrect, this also goes to my theory that the dev team is predominantly staffed by relatively "green" workers. When I was young and felt immortal, I would deliberately burn my candle at all three ends and thus guaranteed that I'd wind up burnt-out after any project. But as I aged and matured (in both social and technical skills) I found it much wiser to sprnkle trivial and inconsequential tasks among the tasks required by the Main Project task.

If only the dev team had been allowed to (or made to) sprinkle in some of these window-dressing fixes during the DD Development process, I'm very confident that not only would DD have been completed sooner, but they'd be ready to jump back on the horse much sooner than they seem to be now.

[Lava Babii]

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I have to concur with your determination that DD pretty much works as expected .. and also that most of what we hear to the contrary is FUD.

Yeah, I've dealt with your FUD the last days. I had the odd idea to unpack my boxes, upload the unpacked folders and change the associated object to these folders instead so that my customers don't have to unpack. First I couldn't find the new objects, and then I've lost one of my products. Wonderful experience. Right, I am 5 SL years old, and I should have known better.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Lava Babii wrote:

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I have to concur with your determination that DD pretty much works as expected .. and also that most of what we hear to the contrary is FUD.

Yeah, I've dealt with your FUD the last days. I had the odd idea to unpack my boxes, upload the unpacked folders and change the associated object to these folders instead so that my customers don't have to unpack. First I couldn't find the new objects, and then I've lost one of my products. Wonderful experience. Right, I am 5 SL years old, and I should have known better.

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Question for you. Did you do everything all at once? Or did you start by doing one product, see how that went and learned from it how the system "worked"?

When you taste a new food, do you stuff the whole portion into your mouth at once and then declare it "horrible" because you couldn't chew and you choked on the portion size? Or do you take a tiny taste, see if it's to your liking, then proceed with eating progressively larger and larger bites until you fully determine if you like it or not?

[Josh Susanto]

>[snip[ .. At this point i'm also of the opinion that LL have largely abandoned Marketplace .. [/snip]

Too good to be true.

If only they could have abandoned it on 12 September 2011 instead.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Josh Susanto wrote:

>

[snip[ .. At this point i'm also of the opinion that LL have largely abandoned Marketplace .. [/snip]

Too good to be true.

If only they could have abandoned it on 12 September 2011 instead.

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But if they abandoned it on 12-Sept-2011 that would mean that they ... Ooooohhhh!! Gotcha! (sneaky .. very sneaky)

LOL

[Lava Babii]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

 

Question for you. Did you do everything all at once? Or did you start by doing one product, see how that went and learned from it how the system "worked"?

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I am already using DD for my boxes. I wanted to change the delivered objects to folders with the contents, that's all. And I've tried it one by one. After uploading the new folders, I wasn't able to associate the new objects to existing listings, they were not visible. However, after clicking here and there, they became visible (I cannot say when and why). After changing the association for the third product, it was corrupted and gone. And yes, I've submitted a ticket, and received an absolute useless reply (after several days). So I gave up for now.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Lava Babii wrote:

I am already using DD for my boxes. I wanted to change the delivered objects to folders with the contents, that's all. And I've tried it one by one. After uploading the new folders, I wasn't able to associate the new objects to existing listings, they were not visible. However, after clicking here and there, they became visible (I cannot say when and why). After changing the association for the third product, it was corrupted and gone. And yes, I've submitted a ticket, and received an absolute useless reply (after several days). So I gave up for now.

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One of the outstanding "Issues" they have with DD is the list of products it shows when you click the "Edit Associated Object" button from the Product Listng Edit screen. In my case, it insists on showing a list of products that are long deleted and haven't existed in either a Magic Box or a DD upload for several months.

The workaround is to type part of the uploaded Folder Name into the Search box then click the Search button. It will then show a correct list of uploaded folders that contain the string you entered. I believe it also searches for whole words only, so it will match "Big Tennis Shoes" and "Ladies Tennis Skirt" if you type in "tennis" for your search term, but it will NOT find those two if you only type in "tenn".

Try editing the associated object on the borked Product Listing again and then use the Search box to try and locate the missing uploaded folder. It might still be hanging around in the ozone somewhere ... y'just never know. (Unless I'm misunderstanding you and what happened is the whole fricking product listing disappeared .. in which case .. umm .. I'm as lost as you are.)

[Marcus Hancroft]

One of the things the Commerce Team did to try to streamline and speed-up the Marketplace, was to install a five minute delay between uploading an item and it showing up in the "Edit Associated" window.  I've been slowly converting to foldered items as well and I can tell ya, it's a pain to have to wait five minutes like that before you can finish the listing.

What I've started doing is uploading one folder, unboxing the next item, uploading the second item, unboxing a third item, uploading it (making any changes needed) and THEN going to the Marketplace and pulling up the first item.  By the time I get three items unboxed and uploaded, the first one is ready to go.

Darrius is correct.  The list of items in the Edit Associated window is ridiculous.  Use the search if yours is too long or you can't find it.  Good luck!

[Darrius Gothly]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

[snip] ... it appears the Marketplace now remembers the number of items listed per page on the Manage Listings and View Store pages. To my knowledge those values were lost after closing the browser, but it now appears they are retained .. even after a reboot. I know it's a tiny thing, but it's also firmly in the "trivial" class. [snip]

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Well, after further testing I can now positively state that I was wrong. SLM does NOT remember these settings after all. It was an artifact of Google Chrome remembering and automatically providing the necessary cookie values. As soon as I closed and rebooted .. SLM promptly reverted to the miniscule default values.

*GRRRRR*

[Julia Soothsayer]

I am one of the people that has been unable to use the merchant outbox for 3 months. I have been trying all sorts of things to get it to work but it always is initializing! There is a JIRA with tons of people having trouble. Just be careful - my 1K items are all jacked up now.