CasperVend 2/Setup

(( Casper: This is for my tinkering with the layout while not leaving a mess on a major page in active use. ~Sphynx))

 #) About CasperVend
    1a) Link to features
    1b) Link to "what's in the box"
 #) The Fine Print
    -- Pre-requisites
    -- Terminology
    -- Allowable vs non
    -- DMCA / Copyright
 #) Creating Your Account
    a) Security notes
    b) Register for CasperVend
    c) Resetting your CasperVend Password
 #) Upgrading your vendors
 #) Setting Up Your Dropboxes
    a) Important stuff
    b) General notes on dropboxes
    c) Where to get dropbox details and troubleshooting
 #) Upload product info
 #) Set up product listings
    a) Basic info
    b) Landmarks, notecards, etc
    c) Bot information
 #) Configuring Vendors
    a) Single-product vendors
    b) Multi-product vendors
    c) Turning a non-vendor item into a vendor
    d) More vendor config options
 #) Gifting options
    a) Direct gift (sent from the system) 
    b) Gift box (you get the box, you give the box, they rez it)
 #) "Search" feature on vendors
 #) Sales, discounts, and loyalty rewards
    -- Link to customers page 
    -- Link to profiles & groups page 
    -- Link to vendor discounts 
 #) Profit Sharing
 #) Adding a CSR
    -- CSR limitations
 #) Setting up secondary / branch locations, fast
 #) About transactions
    -- link to transaction page
 #) Expansion Packs & Promotional Tools
 #) Payments, Statistics & Sales Records
 #) Sending Product Updates to Customers
 #) FAQ / Troubleshooting

Introduction

Thanks for choosing CasperVend! You've joined the tens of thousands of creators who have chosen CasperVend for its flexibility, quality and stability.

The setup process is really simple, but if you get stuck along the way please see Getting Help.

Now, let's get this show on the road!

Prerequisites

This complete manual assumes you have a comfortable familiarity with web-enabled networked vending systems. If you have never used a web-enabled networked vending system before, you should probably begin at the New User Quick Start instead, where the instructions are simplified for those just starting out.

It is assumed that you have the following

• At least one item you wish to sell
• A promotional image for each item you wish to sell
• If your product is in multiple pieces (such as an outfit) that you have put the product in a box / bag / shipping crate.

Getting Started: Step Overview

Here's an overview of the set-up process:

1. Make your product (if not already done)
2. If necessary, and your product is in multiple rezzable parts (like a house), you can pack it in the Rez-Free
3. Make your product's vendor image (if not already done)
4. Put your product in a box / bag / shipping package
5. Also include any notecards / landmarks you wish in the same shipping package
6. Put this shipping package in the dropbox
7. Let dropbox process and send data to the website
8. Leave the dropbox rezzed *somewhere* inworld
9. Log in to website
10. Set up your product listing(s) on the website
11. Create any profile(s) you wish, if desired
12. Rez your vendor(s) and grant debit permissions
13. Click the logo area (or the admin button on the touch menu)
14. Let that take you to the website (and log in again, if necessary)
15. You will arrive at the vendor configuration page
16. On that page, select the product or profile you want displayed on THAT vendor.
17. Usually about a minute or so later the vendor will update to display the product(s)

Once you complete these steps, you should be up and running! We highly recommend that you continue to read the rest of this manual so that you are more completely informed of all the options and possibilities CasperVend has to offer you and your customers.

Terminology / glossary

This guide uses the following terms:

• Vendor - Vendors are the objects, included with your purchase, which the customer will pay to receive their product. They usually (but not always) display your product textures.
• DropBox - called "servers" by some other systems, DropBoxes are responsible for actually delivering the customer's purchase.
• Item - "Items" are the things you put inside your DropBox.
• Product - "Products" are created on the website using Items, and include information about your product including price and permissions.
• Texture - An image, or snapshot. A picture used to advertise your products.

Setting up your dropboxes

As mentioned above, we assume you already have at least one product (boxed if needed) and one promotional texture.

Be careful to give everything a unique name - delivery functions work by name, rather than UUID, so if you name two different things with the same name, the customer may get ANY of the things named with that same name, at random - not necessarily the packaged product!

1. Rez a DropBox, which is included with your purchase. Be careful that you rez the DropBox itself and not the UpgradeBee. (If the name starts with a number, it's the wrong one.)
2. Next, open the contents of the DropBox (right click, edit, "contents" tab), and drop in your product(s) and the promotional texture(s).
3. After you've finished loading the box, wait for it to finish uploading. You'll be able to see this indicated in the floating text above the box.

Notes on DropBoxes

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DropBoxes are really important! Your dropbox is what delivers your products to your customers. You must always remember the following:

• They must stay rezzed at all times - they can't deliver if they're not inworld.
• We recommend keeping the number of items in a dropbox below 400, with 200 being the approximate number most people are comfortable with while waiting for the contents to load. There have been issues reported when people go substantially over these numbers.
• You can use as many boxes as you like
• It doesn't matter to CasperVend which items go in which box.
• If you place an item with the same name into two or more different dropboxes, additional copies are used as a backup, and when delivering the item, the system will use the first available dropbox that has the item being sold.
• We absolutely recommend having at least one set of dropboxes on another region, to act as a backup if your main region is experiencing trouble. See Backup Dropboxes for details and explanations.
• It's best to put DropBoxes on regions that are not laggy. Extremely busy regions or homesteads should be avoided.
• Your customers can easily find out where your DropBox is. However, it doesn't matter - the contents of a dropbox cannot be copybotted or otherwise stolen, except by someone on your friends list if you grant them modification rights. Please check your friends list and make sure that only individuals who you trust implicitly have modification rights on your objects.

What vendors are there?

For details on what vendors are included, see the Introduction page.

Your Account

Creating Your Account

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Before you can begin setting up products on the website, you need to have a CasperVend account.

If you have not used CasperVend before, you can do this by rezzing out a vendor style of your choice, and following the instructions on the Creating Your CasperVend Account page.

Security Notes

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Protect your business by following these tips, and keep your account safe.

• Choose a password which is difficult to guess.
• Do NOT use your Second Life password.
• Do NOT use a password you've used with any other Second Life related service, such as other vending systems.
• Do NOT give your password to anyone!

Resetting your password

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See the section on Resetting your CasperVend Password

Creating Your Product Listings

Before you can sell an item, you need to tell CasperVend about it. To do this, you create a new product listing on the CasperVend website. This product listing is basically information about an item in your dropbox that the website uses to both display information, and dispense the specified product.

To Create A New Product

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1. Click on the (C)asperVend logo in the bottom left hand corner of one of your vendors.
2. Visit the link that appears in local chat, and enter your password if necessary.
3. Now, click "Products" on the left hand side. Please pay attention to any menu/popup messages you receive.
4. Click "+ List New Product" to create a new product.
5. Fill out details about your new product, then click Save.

To see the product options at-a-glance, read the product options page.

If you are selling products that have a license the user needs to agree to, see the Product License page.

Permissions

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One of the things the website asks for when you enter your product details is "permissions". Please be aware that this does not actually change the permissions set to your objects, but instead the information about the permissions will simply be told to the customer as an advisory.

In addition, any products which are set to COPY will be claimable by customers as a redelivery - so be careful when setting this flag. See the CasperVend_2/Redeliveries page for more information.

• If you are selling items which are no-copy to you, the merchant (such as breedables), see the Limited Availability page.
• If you are selling limited edition items (limited number on the grid), see the Limited Edition page.

Configuring Your Vendors to Sell Products

By default, any new vendor is set to the default profile. Profiles specify which products show in a vendor, and the default profile shows EVERYTHING (that you haven't excluded via the product options). So, in order to have only certain products showing in a multi-panel vendor, you need to create a profile containing just those products that you want in that vendor.

Profiles are applied on a per-vendor basis. You can have many vendors out, each with their own profile. Read on for details.

Single Product Vendors

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For vendors which are designed to show only one product, there is a shortcut you can use to quickly configure them.

1. Access the vendor configuration page, by clicking the (C)asperVend logo in the bottom left hand corner of the vendor.
2. Look for the configuration option called "Single Product"
3. Simply switch the Single Product selector to the product you wish to show.

Multi Product Vendors

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For scrolling, multi-product vendors, you need to create a full profile. See the Profiles & Groups page for more details and information.

1. Access the vendor configuration page, by clicking the (C)asperVend logo in the bottom left hand corner of the vendor.
2. Look for the configuration options labelled "Actions"
3. Under Actions, look for "New Profile", and click it.
4. Give your profile a name, and click "Create". You'll be taken to a screen with two white boxes.
5. Select a product from the left white box that you want to show in the vendor, and click the [-->] button. This will add the product to the profile. Repeat with each additional product you want in the profile. There is currently no way to select only several of the products. You can only move one, or move them all, nothing in between.
6. When you're done, click "Finish".

The profile will be saved and will be applied to your vendor within a couple minutes!

Making A Non-Vendor Object Into A Vendor

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Caveat: This is not recommended for furniture that gets sat on - the vendor script will soft-reset anytime an avatar sits or unsits, since LSL sees it as a change in the linkset. We recommend the holovendors to display furniture instead.

1. Take the vendor script AND "mapping" notecard out of the headless vendor into your inventory
2. Drop the script and notecard from your inventory into your product
3. Click the object, and select "Admin"
4. Log in to the website, if necessary
5. You will be taken to the configuration page for that vendor product
6. Change your options as desired
7. All set!

Gifting Options

There are three ways customers can handle gift options:

1. The customer can choose a simple "buy as a gift" option, without a gift box. The vendor then sends the product directly to the recipient, but waits for the recipient to come online first so that their inventory doesn't cap. If the product is a no-copy product, it will be normal to see it still in the dropbox, while the system waits for the recipient to log in.
2. Customers are also able to choose the gift box option when they "buy as gift" (see the "gift boxes" page for details of how that works) if they want to give the gift themselves.
3. If you have them available, customers may also choose to purchase a gift card to give to the recipient (see the gift cards page for details).

"Search" on vendors

The "search" button on the vendor's "touch" (click) menu will search the profile that is attached to that vendor. If you are using a single-item profile on a single-item vendor, you will have a search button despite there only being one product. This is a profile function, not a vendor-specific function. You can set single-item vendors to a single product (rather than using a single-item profile) to remove the search button from the touch/click menu.

Set Up Extra Locations, Fast

Setting up branch/satellite locations is fast and easy - pick up copies of the appropriate vendors from your main store, rez them at the new location, and slide into place. Done!

Group Bots

See the group bots page for more information.

Upgrading Your Vendors

See the upgrading section for more details.

Transactions & Deliveries

Want to see where common problems are in the delivery process? Check the deliveries & tracking page.

Adding a CSR / Manager

Simply add your manager's name (SL account name) on the "Overview" tab, in the CSR box.

If you add a single name, the message that gets sent to the customer will include a link to the CSR's inworld profile.

To add multiple CSR / managers, simply add the additional names. The message that gets sent to the customer will include ALL the names, but will NOT include any profile links.

Currently, CSR/Managers are NOT able to do anything with your products. They are simply a contact point for your customers.

FAQ / Troubleshooting

There is a General FAQ you can check, as well as the more specific FAQ's at the bottom of many of the sub-pages linked from this setup page.

More Vendor Configuration Options

• See the vendor configuration overview for all the vendor options at-a-glance.
• To create affiliate vendors, see the affiliates page.
• To learn about the read-only vendor API, see the API page.
• To learn about "split-pay" or profit sharing options, see the profit sharing page.
• To learn how to make your vendors play videos for your products, see the video playback page.
• To learn how to customise vendors, or use the "Headless" vendor, see the customisation page.
• To learn how to play sounds from your vendors, see the Sounds page.
• To learn how to integrate CasperLet into CasperVend listings, see the Rental Vendor Integration page

Setting Sales & Discounts

• To learn how to set vendor discounts or price overrides, see the vendor discounts page.
• To learn how to set vendors for a grid-wide sale, see the customers page.
• To give a specific customer a special discount, see the customers page
• To give a specific customer a credit balance, see the customers page
• To set loyalty credit bonuses, see the customers page
• To set profile-specific price overrides or discounts, see the Profiles & Groups page

Expansion Packs & Promotional Tools

• to sell textures, see the page on the Texture Vendors.
• To rez demos, see the holovendors page.
• To offer gift cards to customers, see the gift cards page.
• To set up lucky chairs, see the Lucky Chair page.
• To set up the midnight madness boards, see the Midnight Madness page.
• To set up a gatcha machine, see the Gatcha! page.
• To set up the quantity vendor, see the quantity vendor page.
• To learn about gift wrapping options, see the gift boxes page.

Payments, Statistics & Sales Records

• To import your sales from other networked vending systems, see the sales data import page.
• To link your SL Marketplace store for sales tracking, see the Marketplace page.
• To learn about payments in real world currency, see the Paypal & credit cards page.
• To learn about deliveries & transaction tracking, see the Deliveries page.

Note:
If a customer buys something by accident and you refund them, deleting that transaction won't immediately subtract that transaction from your statistics or their customer totals. You will need to manually regenerate them using the link at the top of the customers page.

Sending Product Updates to Customers

To send product updates to customers, see the updates page.

Other Options

You can also report a bug or suggest a new feature.

Perks of Being a CasperTech Customer

• Add yourself to our Business Directory! See the instructions on adding your business listing.