[BROADTIME STORES]- RSD DROP 3 🎤- Changes - Oct 23, 2020

RSD DROPS

Greetings, folks. Hope everyone is doing as well as possible! We wanted to touch base ahead of tomorrow’s RSD Drop Number 3 with some updated information.
The first two drops were big successes and we want to ensure everyone is up-to-speed on our procedures ahead of what promises to be a busy day. We are making a few Drop 3 changes to make things smoother for everyone.  We have some more things to share about Preorders and several useful new features, but we will save that for next week so we can focus all your attention on RSD Drop 3.
Stay safe! Music Matters!
Cheers,

Jon


In this email:

1. RSD DROP 3 🎤 - What's New for 3
2. BROADTIME SUPPORT PROCEDURES - MANUAL 
3. SPLASH PAGES & Management 💥
4. PAST NEWSLETTERS 🗓
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1. RSD DROPS 3 🎤  

RSD DROPS

Ahead of tomorrow's RSD Drop 3, here are some friendly reminders of normal operation along with our new information about what to expect...

WHAT'S NEW FOR DROP 3 - CHANGES
 
With experience from RSD Drop 2, we are slightly changing the way we are handling Drop 3.


• Just like before titles can be sold at 1 pm EST the day of Drop 3.

• a CHANGE this time is we are NOT disabling the titles from view before 1 pm EST. This means you must wait until at least then to upload/edit your RSD inventory.

• a CHANGE this time is we are waiting until

Monday MORNING at 10 EST

to release our AEC remaining inventory feed.

(this will allow hourly updates Mon morning. We think these quantities will be more reliable. Some stores may wish to turn ON auto submit for this day. This is global for everyone.

*stores still blocking RSD products can keep them blocked. Once RSD is unblocked AEC unblocking comes with it after Mon morning)

• For stores that do dataloads/uploads with us, we are not stopping any dataloads for non-RSD product at any time

• For stores wishing to manage their RSD inventory on different schedules to suit your store needs, we are offering you the following options to unlock your own RSD inventory:

You may choose to unblock your RSD titles at the following time slots by informing us…

5 pm EST Sat, Sun, Mon, or Tuesday. (otherwise, you get 1 pm EST Sat)
(after Mon morning that unblocking comes with AEC unblocking and of course your own dataloads)

** default will be to unblock your RSD titles at 1 pm Sat, then you can edit individually, upload your data manually, or on your regular inventory schedule. If you DO NOT WANT your titles unblocked at this time you have to tell us.

Email: support@broadtime.com if you want one of the alternate timeslots for unlocking

2. BROADTIME NOTES & SUPPORT   

  • Shipping Options & In-Store Pickup

Some stores have wanted to "park" online shipping and ONLY allow for in-store pickup during RSD. This is fine but please, please DO NOT DELETE any existing Shipping Options. If you do, this will cause orders in the past to "lose" their accounting records of shipping costs and worse, possibly not enable past orders to be submitted for fulfillment. The proper way to disable shipping options you don't wish to offer (for now) is to set the cart minimum on each shipping option to an outlandishly high number, say $5000. That will keep those options greyed out on checkout. We will work on a future method to "archive" or "hide" options you want to temporarily disable.

  • Caching 

Broadtime manages caching to load pages very fast and reduce the amount of work required to generate all the pages for our sites. This also enables us to accommodate the super peak in users and page loads during an RSD event.

The way we cache pages (store them in memory) is a continual area of confusion and questions for folks. Let's revisit the topic and talk about what is new.

Normally, your browser may cache pages temporarily and you may clear your local stored pages from time to time. Broadtime runs a large caching server to frequently accessed and recently accessed pages in memory on our servers. The time in our cache may be up to an hour before we load the latest version of the page.

We empower stores to make changes to the server cache in a few ways, for when it's important that you implement and see your latest changes. These methods include:

1: Item/product page button for clearing any changes 

2: Viewing your site on the tuneportals domain to see the latest changes

3: And finally, we offer a special bookmark to clear the server cache of the page you are looking to change. You may find that here:  SERVER CACHE CLEARING BOOKMARK INSTRUCTIONS
(if having the absolute latest version of a page quickly is important to you, please learn how to use this bookmark)


What's new for caching:

We are currently testing a script that we can run to target specific pages on all of our sites. That way for things like RSD events we can target the Genre page of everyone's sites, and all the titles so we can make "your" changes visible faster than waiting out the one-hour normal timeframe (for recently viewed pages). We should be able to make this happen for the Saturday at 1 pm EST timeframe.

•  Inventory Instructions.
How do you list your RSD (or any) inventory on your Broadtime Tuneportals site, you ask? Well, we have created some step by step instructions and a video for how to do it. I encourage you to test the process with a few items and to get comfortable with the steps. You can upload items one at a time on the item's admin page, or from a list of titles via Import Inventory. 

This is for bulk uploading but you may individually edit your inventory through normal means...

IMPORTING INVENTORY
It's a few steps  So, we have created a WALKTHROUGH VIDEO and Step-by-Step instructions for you.


Video Thumbnail


We have added a link to the Store Manual at the top left corner on every page of your Admin, and we are always continuing to add more training and tutorials. 

MANUAL: https://broadtime.com/StoreManual  

EMAIL: support@broadtime.com if you want support about orders or other items.

3. SPLASH PAGE

We haven't deployed a splash page recently, so for those that may not remember, it's a page that loads "before" your regular website loads and is useful for announcing things and big releases, like we recently did for Sturgill Simpson. We may deploy another one this week.

We have had 2 settings:

either show once a day (via cookie) or lock permanently (as we did with the BLM page).

Stores have asked us for the ability to have it show every time. The way to do this is to lock it but have a continue to site hyperlink that includes the following code:

https://[domain]?ns=1

This will let you have the page appear every time.


You can always preview your Splash Page code by going to your website/Splash  as in:  https://plan9music.com/Splash

You may control it for your site by the checkbox in Site Settings:


Splash Page (click or larger)

 


4. Broadtime Manual + New Features

Manual

Our customers often forget that we have a manual for how to do some common tasks with our products. We have added some BRAND NEW content for ORDER PROCESSING now with VIDEO WALKTHROUGH TUTORIALS. 
Our newest sections are the Importing Inventory and Asset Specs.
You may explore solutions at your convenience using the manual. Remember we are here for you for support at any time!
Please email any suggestions you have to continue to improve the Manual.


 
 
Cart Updates AND NEW FEATURES we shared in our Previous  EMAILS…