How to Setup the Subscriber Notify Add-On

You can extend your LifeBots bot’s capabilities with the growing library of LifeBots specialized add-ons.

LifeBots add-ons can be purchased in the LifeBots Add-On Store at https://lifebots.cloud/store.

This article walks through setting up the Subscriber Notify add-on, which runs opt-in subscriber lists for your store or venue. Residents touch a board in-world to join, and you send them notices and items later, without using up one of their Second Life group slots.

Getting Started

• Purchase the Subscriber Notify Add-On at https://lifebots.cloud/store/addon/subscriber-notify
• Attach the add-on to one of your LifeBots bots.

Step 1: Create a Subscription Group

• Visit your LifeBots Dashboard at https://lifebots.cloud/dashboard
• Click Subscriber Notify in the ADDONS section of the Dashboard left panel
• Click New subscription group

If you see No bots have Subscriber Notify, the add-on has not been attached to a bot yet.

Under Identity, set:

• Bot: which bot the group belongs to
• Group name: residents see this on the boards and in every message, so make it recognisable
• Description (optional)

A subscription group is one list. You can run several on the same bot, for example a general store list and a separate one for a weekly event.

Step 2: Set How the Group Behaves

The Settings panel controls how the list treats your subscribers.

Setting	What It Does
Accepting new subscribers	Whether the boards will take new joins. Turn off to close a list without deleting it.
Default method	Whether notices normally go out through the bot or the drop box.
Most notices per day	A guard against sending the same list five things in an afternoon. Set 0 to remove the limit.
Quiet hours	A window when nothing is sent, set as From (SLT) and Until (SLT).

[NOTE:] Quiet hours are in SLT. Setting From 22:00 and Until 08:00 means nothing goes out overnight.

The Unsubscribe Footer

Added to the end of every message is your unsubscribe footer.

[IMPORTANT:] Tell people plainly how to stop. Someone who cannot find the exit files an abuse report instead, and that lands on your account. An easy, obvious way to leave is what separates a subscriber list from spam.

The Welcome

Switch on Say something when someone subscribes and set the Welcome message. You can also Send an item with it, such as a landmark, a discount notecard or a gift.

Welcome messages support two placeholders, which are replaced when the message is sent:

Placeholder	Becomes
{groupname}	The subscription group’s name
{firstname}	The subscriber’s first name

Step 3: Set Up Your In-World Devices

Subscriber Notify uses three kinds of in-world prim. Each is registered to a group and reports back to LifeBots.

Device	What It Is For
SubscriberTerminal	The subscription boards. Residents touch these to subscribe.
SubscriberDropbox	Holds items and hands them out. One per group.
SubscriberRemote	A remote for working the list in-world. Can be switched off when not needed.

Subscription Boards

Under Subscription boards you will see No boards linked yet until you register one. For each board set:

• Your name for it: shown here and against every subscriber who joined at this board. Only you see it, so name it after the location, such as “Main Store”.
• Object name in-world: renames the actual prim. Residents see this when it speaks to them.
• Show floating text above the prim: whether it displays hover text.

[NOTE:] Naming each board properly is what makes the numbers useful later. Because every subscriber records which board they joined at, you can see which locations actually bring people in, and therefore where another board is worth putting.

The Drop Box

The Drop box panel shows Items it is holding, or No drop box if none is registered. This is where items come from when you send something by drop box.

Step 4: Managing Subscribers

The Subscribers panel lists everyone on the list, with a status:

Status	Meaning
Receiving	Active and getting your notices
Paused	Snoozed for now, so they are skipped
Left	Unsubscribed

Each entry offers Remove from list, and someone who left can be put back with Re-subscribe.

Adding Someone by Hand

Add a subscriber takes either a pasted name or an Avatar UUID. You can paste the name however your viewer gives it, because both the display name and the username are picked out automatically.

[IMPORTANT:] Use this sparingly and only for people who have genuinely asked to join. Every subscriber record keeps an audit trail of which board they touched, in which region and parcel, and when. That record is your evidence if someone files an abuse report, and a hand-added subscriber does not have one.

Blocking Someone

Use Block to stop someone rejoining, or Block across all groups to apply it to every list you run. Blocked people appear under Blocked residents.

Step 5: Send a Notice

Click Send a notice and fill in:

• Message: the text of the notice
• Send through: the bot or the drop box for this notice, overriding the group default
• Send something: optionally attach an item, choosing an Item in the drop box when sending that way

Before sending, the compose screen previews who will actually receive it, flagging how many are paused, skipped so you know the real audience. Then click Send now.

[NOTE:] Drop box delivery is slower by nature. Second Life imposes a two second script delay on a prim sending a message, which caps one drop box at roughly 30 sends per minute. For a large list the bot method finishes considerably sooner.

Step 6: Check the Delivery Report

Under Sent notices, each notice has a Delivery report. While in progress it shows as Sending; when finished you get Everyone addressed along with anyone marked Did not arrive. With nothing sent yet you see Nothing sent yet.

Subscribers can be skipped for several reasons, including being paused, having unsubscribed, being suppressed after repeated failures, the notice being cancelled, or delivery falling inside your quiet hours.

The audience is counted when the notice starts going out, so the report reflects who it was actually sent to rather than who is subscribed now.

Deleting a Group

Delete this group asks you to type the group name to confirm. This is deliberate: deleting a group takes its subscriber list with it, and there is no way to rebuild the opt-in records.

Troubleshooting

Problem	What to Check
No boards linked yet	No terminal has been registered to this group yet.
Board not registering subscribers	Check Accepting new subscribers is on and the board is registered to the right group.
Notice sending very slowly	Drop box delivery is capped by Second Life at roughly 30 per minute. Use the bot for large lists.
Notice not going out at all	Check quiet hours, the daily notice limit, and that the bot is online.
Fewer recipients than expected	Paused and unsubscribed people are skipped. The compose preview shows the real count before you send.
Item not delivered	Check it is in the drop box, and that it is copy and transfer enabled.
No drop box	No drop box prim is registered to this group. You cannot send items by drop box until one is.
Welcome message not sent	Say something when someone subscribes is off, or no message was set.
Placeholder shows as literal text	Only {groupname} and {firstname} are replaced.
Someone keeps rejoining after removal	Removing them from the list does not stop them. Use Block.
Cannot delete a group	Type the group name exactly as it appears to confirm.