Kiosk.Net Tools

This document contains info about the various Kiosk.Net addons to help run your system and take advantage of all teh cool features it offers. Included inside are items to:

IM MACHINE

Use this box to send out IMs and any objects to your kiosk owners and to your subscription groups. This can be used to send out news, kiosks upgrades, and other important messages you want them to have.

There are two kinds of IM Machines. One is for IMing your kiosk OWNERS. This is very useful for sending out news specific to them, or kiosk upgrades. The other type of IM machine is for your subscriber group.

To send out messages/items in either type of IM Machine, here's what you do:

  1. Rez the appropriate IM Machine. The IM Machine will immediately rename itself to YOUR name so that the messages appear to come from you. If you want, you can rename it at this point if you want the messages to come from your organization name, for example.
  2. Edit the .settings notecard inside the IM Machine to configure it.
  3. Set your title, myID, and IM settings (see below for details).
  4. Remove the sample notecard from the IM Machine and add any objects you want to send out.
  5. Click the IM machine and click IM from the menu to start sending.

.settings notecard settings:

title: this simply sets some floating text so you remember what this IM machine is sending out.

myID: set this to the same setting as your server's myID setting.

IM: the message you want to send out. You can have as many of these lines as you need.

IM Machine version 2.0 additional settings:

sendOn: When to send your message.

intervalDays: How many days between re-sends

repeats: How many times to resend your message after the first send.

sendDayOfMonth: Specify which day of the month to resend messages. Overrides intervalDays.

The Kiosk Owner version has one additional setting:

kioskversion: which version of your kiosks you want the message to go out to the owners of.

IM Machine menu items:

IM: To start sending IMs, click the "IM" menu item and they will begin sending.

Stop IMs: Click this to stop the machine from sending while it is in the middle of sending.

Re-Register (version 2.0): Registers your IM machine with the server for resends. This is useful if you accidentally picked up your IM Machine and re-rezzed it.

Test (version 2.0): This does a single test send to you to confirm that your settings are correct and you get what you expect.

Die: This causes your IM Machine to "unregister" as an active IM machine, which means that it will no longer show up in the IM history when your subscriber button on your kiosks are clicked. This moves the IM machine entry to the Archived IM Machines list on your Dashboard so you have a permanent message history.

After Sending

When the KIOSK OWNER type of IM Machine (or IM Machine 2.0 in OWNER mode) is done, you can delete the IM Machine since it is not needed any more, since there is no way kiosk owners can request resends of those messages.

If you use the SUBSCRIBER IM Machine (or IM Machine 2.0 in SUBSCRIBER mode) to send out a message to your subscriber group, you should NEVER delete your IM Machine directly. You should only delete it by using the "Die" menu item on the IM Machine menu. The reason for this is that when the subscriber IM Machine is done sending messages, it needs to be left alone so that subscribers can go to a kiosk and have messages resent - the IM Machine stores the text and objects to be resent. These existing IM Machines are all displayed on your Kiosk.Net Dashboard, which you can get to by clicking your server. Each IM Machine corresponds directly to one item in your message history list available from your kiosks. So keep your subscriber IM Machine rezzed in world until you no longer want subscribers to be able to get that message resent. At that point, when you are ready to archive it, click the IM Machine and select Die and this will allow the IM Machine to unregister from the server as an active IM machine (which moves it to your Archived subscriber group IM Machines list), and your IM Machine will then delete itself. If you want to permanently remove an item from the archive list, just click the red button on that list and it will be permanently deleted.

It is VERY important that you never pick up a SUBSCRIBER IM Machine into inventory. Unlike your Kiosk.Net server, if a SUBSCRIBER IM Machine is picked up, the web server will no longer be able to communicate with it and that message will no longer be able to be resent when a subscriber requests a resend. However, you can move an IM machine by following these instructions.

If you are using an IM Machine v2.0, if you accidentally pick one up, you can re-rez it and click Re-Register to register it back with the server. If you do this, it's very important to go to your Dashboard and delete the OLD version of that IM machine entry or it will show up twice in the History list.

I highly recommend locking your SUBSCRIBER IM machine once you have started sending messages to avoid an accidental deletion later on. Delete it via the menu only!

IM Machine Notes

So remember the difference between the two types: The Kiosk OWNER IM Machine can be rezzed and deleted directly when done, and has a special Test mode. The SUBSCRIBER IM Machine should NEVER be deleted since it needs to be left around for re-sends and must be removed via the Die menu.

You also have the ability to remove IM Machines from your Dashboard page on the Kiosk.Net website. This is really only necessary if you accidentally pick up or delete a subscriber IM Machine box in-world. In this case your Dashboard has no idea that the IM Machine was deleted, so this allows you to clean up that dead entry from your Dashboard. If you delete an IM Machine from your dashboard while it still exists in-world, you will lose your connection exactly as if the IM Machine was deleted, so it won't be used any more and you can delete it. With a v2.0 IM Machine, you can Re-register the IM machine which will register it again which allows it to immedately be used for resends again.

You normally should not change the number in the description field for the IM Machines. It is used to start an IM session from somewhere else other than the start of the list of subscribers in your database. If you have to do an emergency abort halfway through a lengthy list, you can actually set this number to start somewhere in the middle and avoid spamming everyone multiple times. For example let's say it successfully IMs 100 people on your list then you stop it. You can make any changes you need and type in 100 into the description field to start at person #101 and avoid spamming 100 people again.

The IM Machines can only be operated by admins registered in the system. The IM Machines are full-perm so that you can give them to your admins to send out messages to the group or kiosk owners if you want. If someone gets their hands on an IM Machine and tries to spam your group by putting your myID value in there, it will tell them that they are not an admin and refuse to spam your group.

You can modify the contents of your IM machine after sending. You can add or remove items. Even though the IM Machine appears to reset after you make any changes, it is still working in "resend' mode, so everyone requesting a resend will get the updated contents of the IM machine.

You can calculate how long it will take an IM session using this forumula:

  1. Take the largest of a) number of IM lines or b) number of items (notecards, objects, LMs, etc.) to send out
  2. Multiply the larger of the two by 0.8 seconds

Your total is the number of seconds per person it will take.

Examples:

Your total is the total time per person. It will actually take a bit longer since this forumula does not take into account the script time itself so this is a bare minimum time. The most overhead will be the web requests to get batches of names from the web database. If the web requests are a bit slow this can make a real difference in your actual time.

Now multiply your total time per person by the size of your list. That gives you the total sending time for your IM machine, in seconds.

You can divide that by 60 to get total send time in minutes, and by 60 again to get total send time in hours.

CRASH NOTIFIER

This gadget notifies you if any object near it crashes with a script error. If you don't happen to be standing next to your server or other objects and it blows up, you'll never know! So this will email you immediately if there is a problem. Just put your email name into the .Settings card and you are good to go. Set the notifier within 20m of your server. This box actually works for any object, not just Kiosk.Net servers :) So sometimes you may get a false alarm from someone flying by with a defective HUD or from a neighboring parcel.

Crash notifiers can be picked up to be moved safely.

WATCHDOG

This gadget keeps an eye on the system and notifies you if there are ever any problems communicating to the SasTech website at http://sasun.info or problems communicating with your in-world server (for example, if the sim it is in goes down). I recommend using this at a remote location (home) to keep an eye on a server that may be elsewhere.

This box also notifies your kiosk owners if their kiosk stops communicating with the server. This can happen for a number of reasons. Most commonly, they deleted their kiosk, or picked it up to remodel or move locations. This box gives them a warning that it hasn't heard from their kiosk and to re-rez it. In some cases, land owners will disable scripts on their parcel, and this will cause the kiosks to stop working as well.

If you do not want the kiosk warnings to go out (for example if YOU own all the kiosks), you can either disable the "Kiosk Checker" script inside the watchdog, or delete it.

Note that the kiosk checker will email kiosk owners somewhere between 4-6 hours after their kiosk stops communicating.

To configure it, edit the !settings notecard.

website: this should never be changed.

myID: should be the same as your setting in the server.

myServerIDs (V9 or later): Specify the myServerIDs (as a comma list) of all the servers you want to monitor within your server group (same myID)

alertmail: where you want errors to go in case the system stops working

message: these are the IMs to send out to your kiosk owners when the kiosks stop responding.

Watchdogs can be picked up to be moved safely.

ButtonMaker

This tool will help you create definitions to use in various places in your Kiosk.Net system settings for "virtual buttons", which is simply clickable areas on a single prim/texture that cause different things to happen.

Note that there are two different buttonMakers, one of them is optimized for creating banner prim buttons. The instructions are different, depending on which buttonMaker you are using.

The common format used for virtual buttons in all the settings is as follows:

button name = face, lower left X, lower left Y, upper right X, upper right Y

An example:

green button=2, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7

This defines a button named "green button" from coordinates (0.4, 0.5) to (0.6, 0.7).

buttonMaker - banner

This version of the buttonMaker will help you create custom virtual buttons specifically for your banner prim.

Rez your buttonMaker - banner and texture the front face with your custom banner texture.

Click the buttonMaker - banner to get a menu. Click webButton to define your webButton setting. It will tell you what to do - click the lower left corner then upper right corner of your webButton on your texture. Then do the same with the TPbutton.

Once you've defined both buttons, click Done on the menu and it will give you the webButton and TPbutton settings that you can copy and paste right into your server's !Settings notecard. You'll need to delete the text "buttonMaker - banner:" before the actual button definition before using it.

Before pasting those into your server notecard, click the Test button to make sure you have good definitions. To get out of test mode, you must say "done" out loud and it will show the menu again.

You can also copy your settings to the buttonDefinitions notecard in the buttonMaker to make sure they can be read from a notecard correctly.

Once everything looks good, paste your definitions into the server's !Settings notecard, replacing the default webButton and TPbutton settings near the bottom. Save, then refresh  an attached kiosk, and test.

buttonMaker (regular)

In order to easily create a bunch of button definitions for your display textures for VIRTUAL mode, here is what you do.

First, create your texture with all the buttons that are going to be clickable on your texture.

For our example we will use this texture and create 6 clickable areas to give out different issues of Queen Couture Magazine:

Texture the front face of the ButtonMaker with your texture. Click the ButtonMaker to get a menu. Select Define from the menu to start the button definition process.

Follow the instructions spoken by the buttonMaker, it will walk you through the process step by step. Speak the name of the first button in open chat. Then click the lower left, then upper right boundaries of your button. If you have more buttons to define, speak the name of the next button, or say "done" to finish.

For this example, after clicking the Define button, I say "issue 1" to name my first button, then click the lower left corner then upper right corner of issue one:

I then say "issue 2" and repeat for the rest of the magazine images on my texture. After the last one is defined, I say "done" to the buttonMaker.

Once you are done defining your buttons, it will say in open chat your button definitions. Now, you should test your button by clicking the "Test" button from the menu, and clicking around your texture to make sure everything seems right. If not, you can always start all over. If you click a button you defined, it will say "you clicked [button name]", otherwise it will tell you the coordinates of where you clicked. When you are done testing, say "done" in open chat to end testing mode.

Once you have a good definition, you can test it further by copying the button definition output and pasting it into the "buttonDefinitions" notecard inside the buttonMaker. Be sure to remove the text "ButtonMaker: " from the beginning of each line of the buttonMaker output! Each line must start with the name of the button.

Now select "readcard" from the buttonMaker menu to load those button definitions from the card so that you can test the exact format from the notecard. This is a great way to make sure that your definitions are perfect before copying them to your notecard in the server. They will be in the exact same format, just copy from the buttonDefinitions card and paste where needed.

If you ever need to update your buttons, you can create a new texture and go through the same process again. This can be done at any time to update your kiosks, arrow textures, or banner textures.

MDOG Kiosk Dispenser

The "MDOG" (Menu Driven Object Giver) kiosk dispenser is a great way to distribute your kiosks. The basic concept is that instead of distributing kiosks, you distribute a requester gadget that gets kiosks from a server. The nice thing about this is that you can give people a menu-driven choice of kiosks, if you distribute different kinds and it is very simple to change what kiosks you are giving out via multiple distribution points (manually, SL Marketplace, in-world kiosks, etc.). Instead of giving out kiosks directly from all those places, you only need to give out ONE object - the kiosk requester, which never needs to be updated. Then all you need to do is put your kiosks into ONE place, the MDOG server, instead of all those different locations. It's a real time saver and is much less confusing to have ONE place to store your kiosks for distribution and ONE item to give out to people that want a kiosk. The requester never goes out of date, someone can re-rez it at any time and they will always get the latest version of your kiosks from your MDOG server. Note that the MDOG server is NOT KEYLESS - so like the old-fasioned servers, it CAN'T be picked up EVER or all of your kiosk requesters will stop working and there is no way to repair them. I would not consider this a major crisis since the easy way to fix this is to re-rez your MDOG server, make a new requester box, and just start giving that out instead of the old broken one. But if you keep your server in one place you will be fine.

The MDOG tool can also be used for another extremely useful function, giving customers a choice between "flavors" of the items you are giving out. For example, let's say you publish a magazine in 5 languages. Instead of giving people that click your kiosk 5 objects, or setting up your kiosk with 5 different buttons to click (which is a good alternative) instead what you can do is prepare a single MDOG object to give out to them from your Kiosk.Net server. When they rez the MDOG object, they immediately get a menu that allows them to pick which language then want. With one click they are delivered the specific language issue they want.

Note that the server and requester are pre-configured as an example magazine kiosk requester so that you have a practical example of how it works. Here's how to do a quick config to see it in action with the sample setup:

  1. Rez the server. It will tell you the server key. Copy that key from the chat window.
  2. Rez the Kiosk Requester and dismiss the menu that pops up.
  3. Edit the .settings notecard in the Requester and paste your server's key over the key in the server setting. Save.
  4. Your system is now configured. Click the Requester to see what happens and how the Requester system works.

Here's how to set up your kiosks for distribution once they are ready using the MDOG Kiosk dispenser:

SERVER

  1. Remove all of the sample objects in the server ("Queen Magazine...") and put all of the kiosks you want to give out into the server.
  2. Check the permissions of the kiosks you just put into the server and make sure they are correct.
  3. Edit the .Settings notecard in your server and set up your menu items. For each menuitem setting, specify a button name - the text that you want to appear on each menu dialog button (make your choices very short strings - no more than about 8 characters will fit on a button). Following the button name, put a comma, then the actual name of the object in the server you want to give out when someone clicks that button.
  4. You can have up to 12 buttons defined MAXIMUM.

Example:

menuitem = Standard, Queen Magazine Kiosk
menuitem = Wall, Queen Magazine Kiosk - Wall

REQUESTER

  1. Click your server and copy the server key.
  2. Edit the .Settings notecard in the requester. Put your server key into the "server = " setting.
  3. Change your title to identify your server box - this is just so you know what it is when you put it with your other servers.
  4. Enter all of the button names you specified in your server settings card. Don't copy the entire line, just the button name. The items that are in the notecard are sample items. You can have up to 12 buttons defined MAXIMUM [New: Kiosk.net 9.3 release allows unlimited]. Example: menuitem = Standard
  5. Rename the Requester object to something more appropriate.

Please note that after a button is clicked from the requester dialog menu, it will take 20 seconds for the requester to respond to another click. This is because of the built-in delay for SL objects sending email. So be patient when testing :) green number above the server is the total number of objects given out since the .Settings notecard in the server was last modified.

It is important that you NEVER pick up your kiosk requester server. If you need to move your server, please follow these instructions.

Moving a Server

When it comes to moving a server, the Kiosk.Net server and kiosks are a special case - they are keyless, which means they can easily be picked up and moved anywhere, any time. However, the other various servers in your system are NOT keyless - they depend on their key to never be changed so that the things that communicate to them can still do that. If you pick up any object in SL, and re-rez it, it gets a new key.

So here's how to move an object without changing it's key. Follow these instructions VERY carefully. The trick is to pick up the server by wearing it directly from the ground, then dropping it directly to the ground at the new location. I HIGHLY recommend rezzing a fresh copy of the server you are trying to move from your inventory and practicing on that. Note the server key, test out the process below, and click it to get the server key after you drop it at the final destination and make sure it is the SAME key. DISCLAIMER: SL as you know is not a perfect environment, and it's certainly possible that something out of anyone's control can go wrong. Give it a test run and make sure you got it down before going for the real thing.

  1. Pick up the server by right clicking, More, Wear. It will attach to your hand.
  2. Fly or teleport to your destination.
  3. TURN OFF AUTORETURN at the destination parcel.
  4. Right click on the server, and click DROP. !!DO NOT DETACH!!
  5. Check the group on the server and make sure it is set to your land group to avoid autoreturn.
  6. DOUBLE CHECK your server's group setting and turn autoreturn back on.
  7. Your server will continue functioning just fine.

SasTech Special Subscriber Kiosk

The Special Subscriber Kiosk is a special, stand-alone kiosk that only does one thing - allows people to subscribe, unsubscribe, and resend messages from your subscriber group. It is great if you do not need the full functionality of a regular kiosk, or you may want to have a separate kiosk to enhance visibility of your subscriber group, or perhaps put many of them around your store to encourage people to subscribe. It is very similar to the subscriber HUD.

The Subscriber Kiosk can be freely given out and can be set up anywhere on the grid as long as it is on land that allows scripts to run.

You can take a look at the two sample kiosks and copy the contents into any kiosk you have to create a custom kiosk. It is very easy to modify one of the sample kiosks provided in the kit to turn it into a Subscriber Kiosk.

Here's how to set one up:

If you are using one of the sample kiosks provided in the Sample Kiosks box (a full kiosk), remove the banner prim and subscriber prim and remove everything from the root prim. Relink. Make sure the kiosk is empty.

  1. Copy all contents of one of the sample Subscriber Kiosks into your new kiosk. Make sure there are three items copied.
  2. Edit the !Settings notecard and put in your myID (and your myServerID settings, if you have one). Note that this slaves that kiosk to one specific server. The subscriber gift that people get when they subscribe comes from THAT server, if you have the groupgivenew setting set in your server's !Settings notecard.
  3. Edit the "About My Group" notecard and put in a description of your group.
  4. Rename that notecard to anything you want. When a user clicks "About" from the kiosk menu, the first notecard that the kiosk finds in inventory will be given out, and only that one notecard.
  5. Manually texture the front of the kiosk with your own graphic. Textures are not automatic like they are for the regular kiosks.
  6. Rename your kiosk and save it in inventory. It is now ready to copy and distribute.

If someone clicks the kiosk that is not subscribed to your group, they get two menu items - Subscribe and About. The About button gives out the notecard in the kiosk. The purpose of that notecard is to convince potential subscribers to subscribe to your group. So this is your one chance to get them to subscribe so explain the benefits of your group clearly and succinctly! Keep it short, like the typical attention span.

If someone is a subscriber and they click the kiosk, they get a different menu. On that menu is "Unsub" and "History". Unsub will unsubscribe them and History will give them a menu of previously sent messages (archived IM machines are not shown).

Note that there is a server setting called groupgivenew where you can specify an object to give out (from that server) to new subscribers. This setting applies no matter how people subscribe - via the main kiosk, via the subscriber HUD, or via the special subscriber kiosk. So if you want to give out a welcome gift to a new subscriber, use the groupgivenew setting in your server. Note that you can give out multiple gifts by adding more groupgivenew= lines as needed, one line per item to give out. For example:

groupgivenew=Joe's Garage Landmark
groupgivenew=Joe's Cool Welcome Gifty

will give out both items to new subscribers.

New in v 4.1 of the subscriber kiosk: The number of people that have subscribed at that particular kiosk is shown in the description field.