CasperVend 2/FAQ

CasperVend General FAQ

Last updated: 24 June, 2013

Adding / Updating Products

Q. If I update a product but keep the new name the same as the old one, can I just delete the old box from the dropbox, add the new, and not worry about relisting?

A. Yes, as long as the name really is an exact match between the two.

Redelivery Issues

Q. Does the redelivery terminal redeliver no-copy/transfer items? If so, is there a way to prevent that from happening?

A. Casper Warden writes: "When you set up a product on caspervend, it asks you what the perms are. If you select no copy, then the product won't be redelivered. So it's not the perms of the actual items that count, but the perms that you choose on the website. Otherwise the system wont know - or care - what perms you have."

General Issues

Never EVER deed vendors to a group! They will not work!

Q. Product and texture are in the dropbox. Product listing is set up correctly. Profile is set up correctly. (If applicable - product with proper tracking script is in holovendor) However, product is still not showing on vendor.

A. Make a small edit to the product - add a space in the name, for example - and click 'save". This will tell the website to update all vendors that are supposed to be showing that product (or the profile containing that product) and it should then show up.

Q. Why can't I use the in-viewer built-in browser?

A. Casper Warden writes: "The built-in browser is pretty terrible - I wouldn't recommend using it, ever. It trims URL's, doesn't render javascript properly, and is generally broken."

Q. I just hired on a store manager and added them on the webpage as my CSR. Are they now able to log into that page with their own account or do I need to share my account details with them in order for them to assist customers?

A. CasperVend does NOT support manager activity at this time. The CSR box only sets the person as a point of contact for your store. They cannot do anything IN the caspervend system for YOUR products unless you share the login details and they log in as you.

(Should you choose to do that, remember that it IS a huge security risk, as you've essentially given them full permissions on your CasperVend web account by giving them your login details...CasperTech does NOT recommend doing this for that reason.)

Q. I want to add a customer service webpage URL, or multiple CSR's, instead of a single avatar - can I do this?

A. As of 19 May, 2013, yes you can! The webpage will warn you that what you entered is not a valid single avatar account name, but it will STILL display what you have entered to the customer, just without any links. If you only put a single avatar account name in, the website will still give a profile link, as per usual.

Q. My vendors all say "Back in __ minutes" - what does that mean?

A1. Casper Warden writes: "It means your region just restarted. The vendor startup is staggered by a random time between 0 and 10 minues, so that we don't have 10,000 vendors hitting the server at once."

A2. You should upgrade your vendors - v2.10 and forward do not give this message anymore.

Q1. Is it normal to see TWO of all my products in the website listings?

Q2. When I go to the website and go to make a new product, I see TWO of everything I added to the dropbox...

A. Casper did a fix for this issue on 11 September, 2012. Check your listings again if you haven't looked at them since then. If it's still not fixed, send an IM to Casper Warden - if he's offline, fill out the form at the link you get back a couple minutes later in his autoresponse message.

Q. Why do vendors disappear from the website?

A1. Casper Warden writes: "it's normal for vendors to sometimes disappear from the list. Second Life is a noisy and unreliable platform, sometimes sims go dark (Stop accepting incoming connections) and that will cause us to toggle the vendors offline. Don't worry, it won't affect your sales - the vendors will come back online as soon as they are used."

A sim "going dark" will still be ONLINE inworld, and accessible to avatars - just not talking to the outside world.

A2. If you need to configure a vendor that's not currently in the list, simply click the logo area (this is the "admin" button) on the vendor inworld and it'll take you to its configuration page on the CasperVend website.

Transactions / Deliveries

Q. I got this message: "failed because 'We've encountered a problem with pricing on the vendor (the price info is out of date). Please wait a minute and try your transaction again.' - the money has been refunded to the customer." - what happened?

A. You may have changed the price recently and the vendor hadn't updated to the new price yet.

Q. I'm trying to set an item to be delivered on touch by turning off the touch menu. Unfortunately, it's not delivering. How can I fix this?

A. Make sure the product is set to be L$0 - if the product has a price greater than L$0 and the vendor has a price override of L$0, it's no longer considered "free on touch".

Q. Can you limit a purchase to one per avatar for a limited time period?

A. You can limit to one per avatar, but not for any time period. It's either limilted, or not - you have to make the changes manually. The 1-per-person limit is based on RECIPIENT, not buyer. So if you have the item limited to 1-per-person, the same person can buy 10 copies, but they have to go to 10 differnet avatars.

Q. My customer said they bought one item, but received a completely unrelated item!

A. Have the customer search their inventory for the item they actually purchased. What often happens is they will receive the item just dandy, but get confused by a broadcast delivery of something ELSE that happens right around the same time.

Q. A customer bought two of something but I ony received the L$ for one, and I don't have any affiliates - what happened?

A. Most likely reason: You have two caspervend scripts in one vendor. You may have run the update bee and it may not have deleted the old script when it dropped in the new script. Just delete the older of the two and you'll be fine.

Q. How does the system track purchases when the servers are down?

A1. When servers are UP, transactions are sent to all three servers simultaneously to ensure there's no problem getting the product to the customer.

A2. When servers are down, our v2 vendors will:

1) Make multiple attempts to register that the sale took place

2) If they can't succeed, they'll send an email to a special inbox.

3) Once the servers return to active duty, the inbox is read every 5 minutes and any transactions recorded there are picked up and pushed through.

This means, even if the database crashes, the transactions are NOT lost. They just have to wait until the database comes back to life.

Q. Is it possible for lag to cause a multi-item vendor to deliver the wrong item, say, if it delivers the item that was up before the new one fully loaded on the vendor?

A. No, that will never happen. The system will deliver the item that was configured. However....the user may not have understood which item was actually the active / selected item in the vendor.

Q. I'm setting up products on the website. One of the options is for "Second Item". What is that? Can I include something like a free gift when sold?

A. You can deliver an extra item (can be any item), however the SECOND item will NOT be included with redeliveries, only the FIRST (primary) item configured on the website.

Q. A customer contacted me saying they never received an item / unacceptable delivery delays. My stuff is no-copy, so is there a way to cancel the first transaction if I redeliver the purchase manually?

A. Casper Warden writes: "Yes, you need the transaction link which is sent to the customer when they pay the vendor. Then on that page you can cancel the transaction."

If there's a delivery delay it usually means there's something that you (the merchant) need to fix - the details are in the wall-of-fine-print in the merchant link from the sale - just read carefully to see where the problem might be.

Q. I've got a ton of customers complaining that they never got their purchase! When will these go through??

A1. Casper will need the transaction URL that you and/or the customer received when the purchase was made. Without this link, he CANNOT see what's happened with the transaction. (Just the name of the product or customer is NOT helpful if there have been database issues.)

A2. If the transaction completed and the customer is complaining they did not receive it, bear in mind the following:

1) Customers can miss the popup box -completely-, depending on their viewer. This is especially true for v3-based interface viewers (Firestorm, Exodus, Catznip, Niran's Viewer, the current Linden Lab viewer, etc.) where notices just seem to "vanish" if you don't tend to them right away.

2) Customer may have muted you for whatever reason in the past (this also prevents them from getting purchases from your servers.)

3) They may log off without "Accept"ing the delivery (thus, it gets lost.) If the product is copiable, they can redeliver it themselves from the redelivery terminal later.

4) If they've logged off before it got sent, their messages may have capped in the meantime (and thus the delivery gets lost.) If the product is copiable, they can redeliver it themselves from the redelivery terminal later.

5) Customer may have been in "Busy" mode, and the purchase was auto-declined.

6) If there's a global system issue, and your products are no-copy, it is entirely possible that people MAY be trying to scam you, especially if they don't want to provide a transaction link.

A3. If you have no-copy items, consider having a "rez check" script in your product packaging - this will let you determine whether they rezzed out the item to unpack it.

A4. LL *currently* does NOT have a "received verification" system in place. There is NO way to verify that a user accepted the delivery, unless (1) you have a script in the box that notifies YOU when it's rezzed out, and (2) they rez it in a script-enabled area.

Q. A (single) user claimed that they didn't get a delivery...

A. In addition to the points in the last answer, deliveries will also fail to arrive if they happen to be sent while the user is teleporting. This is why the vendor gives a message NOT to teleport away until the item is delivered.

This is an SL issue, not specific to any vendor system - SL sees you as "offline" while you're teleporting, because you are not in a single sim, but it's not a true "offline" status. NOTHING is guaranteed to get through in a teleport, not even IM's.

Website Specific Issues

Q. I'm trying to add new items on the webpage, but it's not loading that page...

A. If you are getting the "loading items" spinner continuously, this is a common issue caused by some malware which modifies javascript and prevents it from working right. You can remove the faulty plugin that causes the problem, if you know what it is, OR you can work around it by using google Chrome in "Incognito" mode.

Q. I'm trying to change a product and it's not giving me a popup.

A. Turn on javascript. You may have it off in an addon that blocks javascript by default.

Q. But I already updated Java!

A. This is JavaSCRIPT, not Java - they are two different scripting languages that unfortunately sound more related than they actually are.

Configuration / Customisation Issues

Q. A vendor I'm setting up for a new profile has a quirk, each time I "touch" it, it tells me "(my vendor name): Touched" - and does not display the menu, just gives me that message. How do I fix this?

A. Look inside the vendor contents for a script named "New Script". The script that ships with the vendor will never be named this, so if there is a script named "New Script" it may safely be deleted.

Q. How do I fill vendors?

A. The vendors *themselves* don't get filled - the included Dropbox is where all your products go. The dropbox sends data to the website, and then you configure your vendors via the website to list specific products or (using profiles) sets of products. See the detailed setup page for details on how this is done.

Q. If I stretch / resize my vendors, will they still work?

A1. Yes, it doesn't matter what size the vendor is, as long as all the buttons map correctly.

A2. You can also change the shape, just remember to go through the instructions in the customization box to remap all the buttons and vendor image panels.

Q. I rezzed out my 2.x vendor, gave it permissions, but now it's all gray!

A. This can happen for one of two reasons:

1) Incorrect "MAPPING" configuration card

2) Vendor is set to a profile with no products

(If scripts are OFF and the vendor cannot work, you will NOT get a debit window, message, OR change in vendor textures. Same thing will happen if you have accidently muted yourself.)

Q. I have gotten the vendor system started, added products to it, but it won't let me show more than one product - it keeps saying "selected singled product" - why won't it show multiple products?

A. You selected just one of your products in the "single product" pulldown menu. Go back to the configuration page, and select "None" - then you should be able to select a PROFILE with several products higher up on that page.

Q. Can the vendor be set up as a cube - a box, rather than a poster?

A. Rez the "Touch" vendor - that uses just a menu, so it can be re-shaped to be a box. You'll need to customise the texture mapping so that the product image is shown on all sides. See the Vendor Customisation page for details.

Q. I want to use the "Headless" vendor script in my furniture, but it keeps resetting every time people sit on it!

A1. You may find it easier to use a HoloVendor for furniture, rather than the headless script.

A2. Alternately, you can use a regular vendor box near the furniture you have out.

Q. Why are my textures not rezzing right / overlapping with other textures?

A1. Most likely reason: You have an alpha layer in the image, even if the picture doesn't have any visibly transparent areas. You can fix this by saving out the texture, loading it up in GIMP, photoshop or other image editor of your choosing,and saving it out as a NON-alpha version (24bit / "for the web" / remove alpha layer / etc. depending on your graphics software options.)

If you're uncertain of how to do that when saving as a PNG or TGA, then save it as a JPG instead - JPG doesn't support alpha layers.

A2. Casper Warden writes: "the biggest gotchya with image uploads are png's with alpha... Photoshop saves png's with alpha even when there's actually no transparent areas on the image, which causes alpha sorting issues inworld and also causes the caspervend preview images to not show. This can be fixed by using File -> Save to web, and unticking "Transparency" "

Q. Can I set the vendors to "Phantom"?

A. Yes, and they will still work :)

Q. I changed my vendor product image textures, and deleted the outdated ones from the dropbox. But they still show up in the list on the website, littering the list of textures. Is there a way to delete all textures from web database that are not present in any dropbox anymore?

A. Rez the latest UpgradeBee and use the "Check All" function at all your vendor (and dropbox) locations - the website thinks there's still something inworld that's using the old textures.

Q. The website has the correct price, and when I click info the price is correct, but the hovertext and pay options both say "0".

A. Any of the following:

1) Are scripts on in the parcel?

2) Is the vendor rezzed under the land group, if applicable?

3) Did you try resetting the vendor?

4) Did you give it a L$ price on the product listing on the website?

Q. The website won't let me edit my product entry! Help!

A1. Check and make sure the texture you originally used FOR that product is in the dropbox. If not, put it back in, or put in an updated texture. Then, set the product to that texture on the website, click save, and THEN it should let you update the rest of the entry.

A2. Alternately, you should now be able to use the UUID of the image on the website, rather than depending on keeping the texture in the dropbox. (this will free up dropbox space too!)

Q. How do I change how my vendors "talk" in local chat?

A1. There's a "verbosity" setting on the vendor configuration screen, this controls what your vendor does and doesn't say in local chat. The available options are Silent, Whisper, Say, and Shout. In "Silent" mode, the only thing it says in local chat is the blurb with price, permissions, and a description (if you filled out the description field) when the customer clicks for information about the product.

Q. Since the variants feature rolled out, and I've been converting some products over to being variants, I noticed the statistics page has a lot of "v2" in place of the product name. Will the statistics page will list the variant product name or just that "v2"?

A. You see "v2" when you delete products to convert them to variants, and have sales from those products that were deleted.

Discounts - Group / Everyone

Q. I set a vendor for xx% discount for group members only. The vendor is set to the correct group and I'm wearing the correct group tag. I reset the vendor, but there's still no visible discount.

A1. Pay menus now offer the discounted price in addition to the regular price. This may be disabled if you choose, as sometimes customers may find this confusing. If you disable this option, then the next answer will apply.

A2. The vendor gives a discount via a refund. It will NOT change the visible price you pay to the vendor initially, but it will refund the difference to the customer.

A3. Alternately, you can set up group discount profiles (with appropriate discounted pricing), group them into a separate vendor, and rez that under the group you want to give the discount to.

Q. Is there a easy way to put a discount to all customers in all vendors? Sometimes you want to have a sale for a occasion like a certain week.

A. Casper Warden writes: "Go to the Customers tab, and add a new discount level at L$0. It will work for all customers, even ones who haven't shopped with you before."

Q. I want to use a vendor to give group gifts. I tried setting the vendor to L$0, but the lowest it will go is L$1. Is there a way to do this totally free and only for members of my group?

A1. The vendor WILL refund the L$1 that they pay (to make it free.)

A2. Alternately, your group members should be able to "touch" the vendor and select "Deliver" from the menu.

A3. Casper Warden writes: "You can also disable the touch dialog then they can just get the object by touching the vendor."

Marketplace / MagicBox Issues

Q. Can I have the ANS data from MP on one SL account go to the CasperVend data of another SL account?

A. Casper writes: "No, sorry, it's account tied." The SL account names have to match between CasperVend and Marketplace.

Q. I keep getting update messages from my [Xstreet / Marketplace] Magic Box...

A. Casper writes: "If your magic box is sending updates it means you have some other script in there too, maybe a caspervend dropbox script." The dropbox script should NEVER go in the MagicBox, and vice-versa. Only the MagicBox Link script goes in the MagicBox.

API / Scripting

Q. Is there a scripting API for CV 2.0?

A. As of June, 2012.....YES! Currently a "read only" API is in place. Details can be seen on the CasperVend 2/API page.

SmartBots

Q. Every time someone buys a product from my vendors, it tries to invite them to the store group, but instead sends me messages that the group does not exist - but it does!

A1. You haven't subscribed to the SmartBots service. There are convenient terminals at Casper's shop where you can do so.

A2. Or the group name you've entered is different from the one that was activated on the SmartBots website.