.:: Hippo Technologies ::.

Resources: hippoVEND: Redelivery Terminals
(These instructions are for the first generation Redelivery Terminal;
for the Professional Edition click here)

Occasionally a customer may have a problem receiving a product they have bought — perhaps they accidentally declined the inventory, or the inventory got lost in a Second Life crash, etc. Redelivery Terminals allow customers to get redeliveries of products they have bought from you.

Using a Redelivery Terminal is very simple and consists of two steps. Rezzing and connecting the terminal, then telling hippoVEND which of your products you are happy for customers to be able to get redelivered.

Setting up a Terminal

Rez your terminal and if you wish, rename it as you would rename any Second Life object or prim using the build window.
Click it and choose "Reset" from the menu that appears.
Once the terminal reports it is ready, click it again and choose "Go Online". The terminal will now appear in the list of vendors on the hippoVEND website (although you can’t configure it there, only turn it online or offline).

Deciding which products can be redelivered

You may not necessarily want a customer to be able to get redeliveries of all your products — perhaps some are no-copy. To define which products can be redelivered using a terminal, go to the products page on the hippoVEND website and edit a product you wish to make redeliverable. Scroll down to near the bottom of the product configuration page and turn this option on ...

... save your changes and the product will now be redeliverable through any Redelivery Terminal of your's rezzed inworld.

How do customers use a terminal?

Once you have setup, turned a terminal online and chosen which products can be redelivered, all a customer with a problem has to do is to touch the terminal. It will check for up to the last twelve products they bought (or had bought from them if a friend made a gift purchase). Any items found in your sales log will be chattered to them as a numbered list. They'll then be offered a standard Second Life menu; if they had, for example, six products to choose from, the menu would look like this ...

... they then simply click the appropriate button and the Redelivery Terminal will contact the main server holding the item in question and request that it be delivered.

The owner’s control menu

As the terminal’s owner, you can click it at any time and get a menu. It will look similar to this (the exact set of buttons depends on whether the terminal is online, offline or needs resetting after you first rez it).

The buttons on the menus are fairly self-explanatory ...

Go Offline ... turn the terminal offline and inactive
Go Online ... turn the terminal online and ready for operation
Reset ... reset the terminal and reload its _config notecard settings (more on these below)
Test Me ... list any purchases that you yourself can obtain (if for example you’ve made some test purchases)
Status ... confirms the terminal is working okay
Help ... gives a copy of the user guide (more or less the same text as this web page)

Customizing your Redelivery Terminal

By editing the settings in the “_config“ notecard that resides within the Redelivery Terminal you can customize how the terminal looks and behaves. There are four commands you can alter, each are described below.

OFFLINE TEXT: <hovertext message>
e.g. OFFLINE TEXT: Terminal is Offline
- If you’d like a particular message to float over the terminal when it is offline, change this setting. (Or use OFFLINE TEXT: with nothing after it to turn the hovertext off).

ONLINE TEXT: <hovertext message>
e.g. ONLINE TEXT: Click me to redeliver a product
- If you’d like a particular message to float over the terminal when it is online, change this setting. (Or use ONLINE TEXT: with nothing after it to turn the hovertext off).

Useful Tip: Use the bar (|) character to force a break in a hovertext message.

ONLINE TEXT: Click me to redeliver a|previously purchased product ...
HOVERTEXT COLOUR: <colour name or vector>
e.g. HOVERTEXT COLOUR: Yellow
- The colour you’d like any hovertext to appear. The terminal knows the colour names red, green, yellow, blue, pink, black, white.
* Advanced users: You can also use a colour vector instead, e.g. HOVERTEXT COLOUR: <0.4, 0.3, 0.2>. To read about how colour vectors work in Second Life, see e.g. http://rpgstats.com/wiki/index.php?title=Color or search at forums.secondlife.com for advice.

DISPLAY FACE: <face>
e.g. DISPLAY FACE: 2
- Most users won’t need to touch this setting; it controls which prim face the “Offline” and ”Online” textures are applied to (you can list multiple faces, separated by commas).

Useful Tip: To change the textures used when the terminal is online or offline, just replace the textures in its inventory with your own, named the same.