News Kiosk

Send customer updates from the website instead of relying only on group notices.

The News Kiosk gives you a web-based way to reach customers when you have store news to share. It is useful for updates that should be easier to send and easier to keep available than a normal inworld group notice.

Why it matters

Group notices require you to be online in Second Life, and they can disappear from customer inboxes quickly. With the News Kiosk, you can write the message from Allomancy Stores and let customers read it on the web when they need it.

Where to find News Kiosk

The News Kiosk lives at stores.allomancy.com/kiosk. Two header buttons take you to the related areas:

View Posts opens the Kiosk Posts page at stores.allomancy.com/kiosk/posts, which lists every post you have published.
Manage Subscribers opens the News Subscribers page at stores.allomancy.com/kiosk/subscribers.

Publishing a post

The main News Kiosk page is a compose form titled New message.

Write your message

Type your message into the New message area.

You can insert two personalization placeholders that are filled in for each recipient:

Name inserts {name}, replaced with the recipient's first name.
Username inserts {username}, replaced with the recipient's username.

An emoji picker next to the placeholder buttons lets you drop emojis into the text.

Optionally attach an item

Use the Item to deliver picker below the message to choose an item from one of your rezzed dispensers. The item is sent along with the message.

Optionally mark the item as On demand

Turn on On demand if customers should be able to retrieve the attached item again later from the website, including customers who subscribe after this post is published. Leave it off to deliver the item only at publish time.

Publish

To publish the post, click Publish

If your message contains placeholders, a Preview card below the form shows the message with your own profile substituted in, so you can see how it will look to a recipient.

Managing published posts

The Kiosk Posts page lists every post you have published. Each row shows:

Message: the post text, truncated to fit the row.
Item Attached: the dispenser item attached to the post. You can change it from the row by picking a different item.
On Demand: a toggle that flips the on-demand setting on or off for that post.
Date: when the post was published.
Action: a button that deletes the post.

The message text is not editable after publishing. To say something different, publish a new post and, if you want, delete the old one.

How customers receive your posts

Subscribers get your messages in two places:

Inworld, when they are online. The local-chat copy of the message includes an unsubscribe link.
On the Allomancy customer website, where they can read past posts in a feed that combines every store they are subscribed to. A store selector lets them narrow the feed to one store at a time.

When you attach an item to a post and turn on On demand, the customer website shows a Get item button on that post. Subscribers can click it to receive the item inworld at any time. Customers who are not currently subscribed to your store can read your posts but cannot use that button.

Customers manage their own subscription through the News Kiosk terminal you rez inworld. The terminal lets them subscribe to your store or unsubscribe later.

Every kiosk message you publish also includes an unsubscribe link in its local-chat copy, so customers can unsubscribe with a single click and do not need to find the inworld terminal again just to opt out.

Managing subscribers

The News Subscribers page is the merchant-side list of everyone currently subscribed to your kiosk. Customers can also manage their own subscription themselves, as described in How customers subscribe and unsubscribe above.

Adding a subscriber

Click the button at the top of the page, type the resident's Second Life Username, and click Add to add the subscriber.

Removing a subscriber

To remove the resident from the subscribers list, click the button on their row.

Importing subscribers from CSV

The button next to the add button opens the News Subscriber import flow. The import accepts a CSV with at least one column whose header contains name or customer (the username). A column whose header contains key or uuid is also picked up. Any other column is ignored in subscriber import mode.

The customer's profile on the Customers page shows a News Subscriber column that reflects whether they currently receive your kiosk posts. Adding or removing a subscriber here updates that column.