DEMANDROIDS GROUP INVITE SET-UP INSTRUCTIONS

These are the instructions on how to purchase, unpack, and configure a pack of Demandroids group inviter signs. These instructions are intended to be able to be followed by people who are relatively inexperienced with such things in Second Life. More experienced users will probably be able to skim through much of what follows. A very brief summary of these steps appears on the home page for the group invite system.

As you might expect, the first step is to purchase your signs. The signs are available from Shop OnRez and SL Exchange, as well as from my own in-world vendors. My main store is in my spectral clock tower in Sunnydale. At the time of this writing I have not yet started to look for other locations for my vendors, but when I do I will post a list of SLURLs to their locations on this website and put a link to that list here. If you think you might like to host one of my vendors then please IM me, Demantoid Dagger, in world, or email me at dem.dagger@hotmail.com. Vendor hosts receive 20% commission. To purchase a pack of signs from a vendor, just click on the vendor and then click on the "Pay" button in the little dialog box that pops up. The vendor will send your order to the Demandroids server to be saved in my off-world database. Due to the resources required by the droids and the fact that I receive no ongoing funding to fund further resources, new signs/systems are now only available to existing customers by directly requesting one from Demantoid Dagger via in-world instant message. A droid will be assigned the task of inviting people to your group for you. The vendor will also notify the Demandroids "distributor" of your order. It is actually the distributor rather than the vendor that will deliver your box of signs to you (there are a number of reasons for doing it this way, but this is not really the place to go into that). Be sure to click on the "Keep" button when the distributor offers you your box of signs. It will be an item called "Demandroids Group Inviter Signs (boxed)". If anything does not work as expected (e.g. if the Demandroids server is unreachable for any reason, or if the sim containing the Demandroids distributor is down, etc), then your money will be refunded to you. If this should happen, please re-try your purchase later. Most issues that are likely to interrupt this process should be resolved quickly, but there may be times when I need to manually attend to something. On those occasions it may be several hours before service is restored (if something goes wrong when I am sleeping, for instance). The vendor will tell you what is going on as the process progresses. You'll also receive an instant message from the droid assigned to you. If you bought your signs through Shop OnRez or SL Exchange, the process is little different. The item you received will be called "Demandroids Group Inviter System (boxed)" (instead of "Demandroids Group Inviter Signs (boxed)"). When you rez the box (or wear it - see Step 0 below), it will contact the Demandroids off-world systems for you, just as my vendors do, and a droid will be assigned to you. As with the vendor process, your assigned droid will send you an instant message to introduce itself.

In order for the droid to be able to invite people to join your group, the droid itself must be a member of the group, and it must also be assigned to a group role that has the ability to invite people to join the group. I recommend creating a role specifically for the droid. However, if you cannot spare a role (each group is only allowed a total of ten roles), or if you already have a role that has little or no special abilities beyond the ability to invite people to join the group, then you may want to use an your existing role for the droid. The following instructions assume that you are creating a new role. If you will be using an existing role, you can skip steps 7 through 11.

Step 0
Skip this step if you bought your box of signs from one of my vendors. If you got your box from Shop OnRez or from SL Exchange, then you will need to rez your box in order to have it register your purchase and to get a droid assigned to you. See steps 19 through 24 below for detailed instructions on how to do this, and then come back here to Step 1.

Step 1
To begin, you will need to open the Group Information dialog for your group. You can do this through the Contacts tab of the Communicate window. If you do not already have the Communicate window open, press the button labelled "Communicate" at the left hand end of the bar in the bottom of your Second Life window.

Step 2
Near the bottom of the Communicate window, click on the Contacts tab (unless you already have that tab selected). For the sake of simplicity, these screenshots only show the Contacts and Local Chat tabs. You will most likely also have at least one instant message tab (the instant message from the droid).

Step 3
At the top of the Contacts tab there is a Friends tab and a Groups tab. Click on the Groups tab.

Step 4
In the main part of the window, click on the name of the group that you want to use your group invite system with. It should then be highlighted with a coloured bar (as in the screenshot below this next one)

Step 5
Click on the Info button on the right hand side of the window. This will open the Group Information dialog.

Step 6
Click on the Members & Roles tab in the Group Information dialog.

Step 7
To create a new role, go to the Roles sub-tab. If you are going to use an existing role then you do not need to visit the Roles sub-tab and you can skip ahead to step 12.

Step 8
Click on the Create New Role button. A role called "New Role" will appear in the list of roles and be automatically selected for editing.

Step 9
Enter a name for the new role so that in the future you can easily see what the role is for. You can also optionally add a Title for the role. The Title is the text that appears above an avatar's head when they are "wearing their group tag" (ie. when this group is their active group). For this example I did not change the name from the default of "New Role" and I did not add a Title for the role.

Step 10
In the box under the heading "Allowed Abilities" near the bottom-right corner of the dialog, put a tick in the checkbox labelled "Invite People to this Group". You may also want to scroll down through the list of abilities to ensure that the remaining abilities are set as you want them. [Note that to use the droid's advanced features you may need to add more abilities to this role or assign more roles to the droid. There is more about this in the Advanced Features section below.]
Save the new role by clicking on the Apply button in the bottom-right corner of the dialog.

Step 11
Click on the Members sub-tab so that you can invite the droid to join your group in the newly created role.

Step 12
Click on the Invite New Person button. The Group Invitation dialog pops up.

Step 13
Click on the Open Person Chooser button in the Group Invitation dialog. The Choose Resident dialog pops up.

Step 14
Type the droid's name into the text box labelled "Type part of the resident's name". If you're lazy like me, you can copy the droid's name from the instant message window where the droid introduced itself and then paste the name into the Choose Resident dialog's text box.

Step 15
Click on the Find button. After a brief search, the droid's name should appear in the list box below. Depending on how Second Life is performing, this may take a little while. If the name does not appear, please check your spelling. If it still doesn't appear then there may be problems with Second Life's database systems and you may have to try it again later.

Step 16
Click on the Select button to copy the droid's name to the (currently empty) list box in the Group Invitation dialog.

Step 17
Click on the drop-down box labelled "Choose what Role to assign them to" near the bottom of the Group Invitation dialog, then choose the role for the droid from the list that drops down.

Step 18
Finally, click on the Send Invitations button to invite the droid to join your group and assign it to the correct role at the same time.

You can now close the Group Information dialog. The droid automatically accepts the group invitation and creates a configuration notecard for you to put in your signs. Click the Keep button when the droid gives you a notecard named "Demandroids config for '<your group>'" (where <your group> is the name of your group). This notecard simply contains the Second Life UUID keys of your group and of the droid itself. You may want to add further configuration options to the notecard before putting it into your signs (the available configuration parameters are listed on another webpage). To add the configuration notecard to your signs, you can simply rez the signs and then drag the notecard from your inventory on to the sign.

Step 19
Open your inventory window (unless you already have it open) by clicking on the Inventory button at the right hand end of the bar at the bottom of your Second Life window.

Step 20
Click in the text box where it says "Type here to search" and type in (or copy and paste) the word "Demandroids" (without the quotes) to find your box of signs.
If you have been here before (ie. if you did not get your box from one of my in-world vendors so you have already unpacked your box in order to get a droid assigned to you), then you can now skip down to step 25.

Step 21
Right click on the item called "Demandroids Group Inviter Signs (boxed)" or "Demandroids Group Inviter System (boxed)" in your Inventory. Alternatively, if you are in an area where you can rez objects then you can just drag the box on to the floor/ground to rez it instead of wearing it as directed in the next step. (The notecard shown in these screenshots will not appear if you came here from Step 0.)

Step 22
Click on "Wear" in the pop-up menu that appears. The box will automatically unpack itself and offer you a folder containing your signs (as well as the default texture used on them). If you have the "System" box, then it will also register your purchase with our off-world systems, as described above.

Step 23
Click on the Keep button in the inventory offer dialog. Since the name of this folder and the names of each of the signs all include the word "Demandroids" that you searched for earlier, the new folder and the three signs it contains should now appear in your inventory window. Do not worry about the fact that the signs are labelled "(no modify)". This is just because they contain a no modify script. Once you rez the signs you will in fact be able to modify them.

Step 24
Right click again on the name of the box in your inventory, but this time click on "Detach From Yourself" in the pop-up menu. If you rezzed your box on the floor/ground, pick it up by right clicking on it and then clicking "Take" in the pie menu that appears.
If you came here from Step 0, you should now go back to Step 1.

For the next part of the process you will need to be on a parcel of land where you are allowed to rez objects (or "build"). While it is actually possible to accomplish this task without rezzing your signs on the ground, explaining how to do so is much more complicated (for those who are familiar with the Second Life building tools, here is a brief rundown: wear a sign; right click on it and "Edit"; go to the "Contents" tab; drag the config notecard that the droid gave you from your inventory to the sign's contents tab; close the edit dialog; detach the sign; repeat for the other two signs). If you do not have any land of your own, you can go to one of the many public sandboxes scattered throughout the Second Life world. Note that some sandboxes (ones with this icon: in the menu bar at the top of your window) do not allow scripts to run, which would prevent your signs from working, so you need to find a sandbox that allows scripts. Here are some SLURL links to just a few:

• ITLP Sandbox (NO WEAPONS~NO SELLING~NO SOLICITING), Natoma (221, 105, 26)
• PUBLIC SANDBOX Platform - Advertise/Rent Billboard Ad Space, Mauve (116, 96, 34)
• PSG III - Mature Public Sandbox - Sandbox Rules Apply!, Hyboria (77, 170, 21)

Step 25
Drag a sign from your inventory window to the ground/floor. To drag it, click on the name of the sign in your inventory window but do not release your mouse button. While holding down the button move your mouse pointer out of the inventory window so that it is pointing at the ground/floor, and then release the mouse button. The sign appears on the ground/floor (possibly after a short delay if you are in a busy region). It will also still be listed in your inventory window because you have permission to make as many copies of each of the signs as you like.

Step 26
The sign will complain "No notecards found. No configuration information available. See http://www.demandroids.com/GroupInvite.html for more information.". This is normal (if you do not get this message, then you are either in a no scripts area, or the script is not running for some other reason). The signs are delivered to you in an "unconfigured" state because I have no way of knowing in advance what group you want to invite people to join. To configure each sign, you just need to drop the notecard that the droid gave you onto the sign. Drag the notecard from your inventory to the sign in much the same way as you dragged the sign onto the ground/floor in the previous step.

Step 27
Your sign is now configured. Test it by touching (clicking on) it. The dialog box shown below should appear. Click the "Invite me" button and you should receive a group invite from your droid. If you are in a busy sim, or if the droid itself is busy, it make take a few seconds for the group invite to pop up. Since you are most likely in the group already, you will probably want to "Decline" the inivitation on this occassion. Note that only you as the owner see this dialog. Other people touching the sign just get the group invitation directly.

Step 28
Congratulations! You now have a working group inviter sign. You are not quite finished yet, however. Only the rezzed sign is configured. The one in your inventory is still the original, unconfigured sign. You COULD just pick up the rezzed sign, but then you would have two signs in your inventory with no obvious way to tell which is the configured sign and which is the unconfigured one. There are at least three ways that you could handle this situation, but I find that the easiest way is just to delete the unconfigured sign before picking up the newly configured sign. This may seem drastic in a way, but remember that the "deleted" sign will actually still be in your trash folder (at least until you empty your trash). To delete the unconfigured sign from your inventory, just right click on it and then click on "Delete".

Step 29
To take your configured sign back into your inventory, right click on the sign and then click on "Take" in the pie menu that pops up. If you actually want to leave a sign in the spot where you rezzed it, you can instead click "More >" on the pie menu and then "Take copy". That way it is a COPY of the sign that appears in your inventory, leaving the rezzed sign where it is in-world.

Step 30
Repeat steps 25 through 29 for each of the other two signs in the folder. This is only really necessary if you will be making use of all three types of signs. You can actually leave one or two of the signs unconfigured if you do not plan to use them - you can always configure them later if you change your mind.

All that remains to be done now is to rez copies of the configured sign(s) wherever you want them. The two "solid" signs can be worn by/attached to your avatar. If you just right click one and then click "Wear", it will attach to your right eyeball attachment point and float above your head. I chose the eyeball attachment point because there aren't many other common attachments that use that point (as opposed to the skull, chin, mouth, and nose). A side effect of attaching to the eyeball is that the sign may turn oddly sometimes as your avatar moves its eyes. If this bothers you and you have a better attachment point available, you can use the "Attach to" sub-menu to select a different attachment point (after first detaching, if necessary).

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