Tech Support Alert: Sandbox Registration Tool Broken

Developers: our Sandbox User Registration Tool is temporarily out of service.

To create and validate new Sandbox test accounts, please follow the instructions in this Knowledge Base article: Test Sellers for the Sandbox Environment. We are currently researching fixes for the tool, but do not have an ETA as to when it will be repaired.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

API Call Warning Messages for Schema Migration Now Live

As previously announced in mid-February, U.S. developers making API calls using legacy XML API, legacy REST API, and/or eBay SDK for Windows version 2.6 will begin to receive warning messages via the API beginning today.

International developers will begin receiving these warning messages as of mid-April.

If you are still using the legacy XML API, legacy REST API, and/or eBay SDK for Windows version 2.6 or earlier as of today, you will want to log these warning messages so you can discover which of your calls are still in legacy schema. Additionally, you may want to prevent these warning messages from displaying to your customers.

Read this Knowledge Base article for further information about these API warning messages for schema migration. You can also read more about the legacy API warning messages in the Product Roadmap.

Developers using the REST API:

We have found a bug in the logging of REST API calls. Some developers using unified schema will incorrectly be informed that their calls are still "legacy". Our first fix released this past month was not comprehensive and some REST API calls using the unified schema are still being logged as legacy calls. Specifically those passing “Schema = 1” in the query string as documented in the REST API Guide instead of  “schema = 1” will receive warnings that the call is a legacy API call. We are working on a fix for this now and anticipate the fix to be released as soon as possible.

REST API developers who are still using the legacy REST API can update the REST output to unified schema by passing "schema=1" in the query string of their REST call and modifying the application to handle the new output. For more information on using unified schema in REST, see our REST API Documentation.

Developer Survey Coming in Early April

The eBay Developers Program will be conducting a survey of our members in early April. We appreciate your feedback, and will use it to improve our program to better meet your needs.

Results from past surveys of our developer community resulted in improvements to our Developer Forums and our Code Samples.

We are working with a company called OnSurvey, so please look for an email from them in early April and share your opinions with us.

RSS Technology Expanded to Search

As of mid-March, developers should be aware that eBay is adding RSS support to our eBay Search pages as part of the latest expansion of eBay's RSS ( ) offerings. eBay buyers and sellers will now be able to use RSS to create a custom RSS feed that will deliver the results of their eBay Search to any RSS reader.

As announced last November, eBay buyers and sellers can already use RSS to keep an eye on the eBay Announcement Board, eBay Discussion Boards, or listings from specific eBay Stores. Since we are integrating the RSS support with our Advanced Search pages, eBay buyers and sellers will now have complete control over how to narrow down their searches.

The eBay Developers Program also supports RSS for Developer Announcements on our Developer News Blog, for Developer System Announcements on the latest status of our Production and Sandbox environments, as well as answers to technical questions in our Developer Forums.

Read the eBay announcement for more information on how to subscribe to an RSS feed, or futher detail about eBay support for RSS.

eBay Store Category Enhancements Now Available

In late February, we announced that several enhancements for creating and managing eBay Store categories were available in the US Sandbox for developer testing. The enhancements to the SetStoreCategories and GetStoreCategoryUpdateStatus API calls are now available on eBay.com. You can read more about the call details and how to implement the new features in the API Documentation.

These enhancements allow three levels of store categories and as many as 300 categories in a store. Sellers will be able to add, delete, move, and rename store categories with a new API call, SetStoreCategories. Any existing eBay Stores categories will be treated as top level categories.

The custom category modification capability of SetStore is being deprecated going forward due to the introduction of these calls. The use of SetStore to modify store categories will be deprecated (CustomCategories input ignored) with compatibility level 449 or higher.

Read the official eBay Stores Enhancements: Category Expansion and Custom Listing Frame announcement for more information.

Checkout and the eBay Express Shopping Cart

eBay Express supports a multi-seller shopping cart and a pay-before-you-buy checkout.

The shopping cart works like most online shopping carts. For example, buyers can add multiple items from multiple sellers to a cart, and buyers pay once for all the items in their shopping cart. Unlike eBay.com, an item in a buyer’s cart is still available to be purchased by another buyer until the item has been paid for.

All payments (including credit card payments) are processed through PayPal and deposited into the seller’s PayPal account. The seller receives a single payment for each order.

We anticipate no special changes to API calls that support transactions and orders. That is, these calls will work the same way for both eBay.com and eBay Express sales.

If your application supports Third-Party Checkout (also known as Checkout Redirect), download Third Party Checkout and eBay Express for special requirements, plus information about a new Platform Notification that will be available soon.

Please note that these details are subject to change. Please keep an eye on this announcement, the newsletter, and the documentation for the latest updates.

More information on supporting eBay Express

Get Ready To Support eBay Express!

Sandbox Support for eBay Express

Find Out Which Sellers are Eligible for eBay Express

Help Sellers List Items on eBay Express

Help Sellers List Items on eBay Express

If a qualified seller’s listing includes the following features, the listing will be automatically considered for eBay Express. Use AddItem to specify the details of a listing (see AddItem Input/Output Reference.)

The table below lists the basic listing eligibility requirements and the corresponding AddItem input fields as applicable. (These fields are required in addition to fields that are normally required for any eBay.com listing). These fields are defined in the unified schema. Corresponding fields are also supported in the legacy XML API (see AddItem mappings).

These details are subject to change. Please keep an eye on this announcement, the newsletter, and the documentation for the latest updates.

Listing Criteria	AddItem Input Field(s)
List in fixed price format or Stores Inventory format.	ListingType [values StoresFixedPrice or FixedPriceItem]
Fill in the Item Condition field (choosing values like New, Used, or Refurbished) in Item Specifics. Note: When shoppers visit eBay Express and search for products of interest, the search results will return new items as the default view, with used items one click away. Some categories that don't have item condition will be included in eBay Express at launch. Other categories that don't have item condition will not be included in eBay Express at launch. Please see Item Condition Details for a list of affected categories. Except for the item condition, you are NOT required to fully support Item Specifics in order to list items on eBay Express.	AttributeSetArray Use GetCategory2CS and GetAttributesCS to determine the available item condition attribute and value IDs for the category you are using. See Specifying an Item's Condition in the eBay Web Services Guide. More details and examples related to specifying the item condition for eBay Express will be provided in a future release.
Include shipping costs - flat, calculated or free. Note: Shipping costs are required to support the new eBay Express shopping cart. For flat shipping, this means the shipping service and cost are required. For calculated shipping, all of the usual parameters (weight, originating postal code, etc.) are required.	ShippingDetails See Shipping Costs in the eBay Web Services guide. (If you only use ShippingTermsInDescription, the listing won’t be eligible for eBay Express.)
Provide a picture URL and/or gallery option.	PictureDetails See Including Pictures in a Listing in the eBay Web Services guide.
Offer PayPal as one of the payment methods. Also, use a PayPal email address that is associated with a PayPal Premier or PayPal business account. Note: From the seller's perspective, all eBay Express payments are handled by PayPal. (Buyers can pay by using PayPal or a credit card, but PayPal’s Website Payments Pro functionality makes credit card payments transparent to the seller.) Sellers can offer additional payment methods for buyers who purchase the item through eBay.com.	PaymentMethods [value PayPal] PayPalEmailAddress
Specify an eligible category as the primary or secondary category. Note: eBay Web Services (i.e., the API) does not provide a means to determine which categories are eligible for eBay Express. Most eBay.com categories will be included in eBay Express at launch. Categories not covered by PayPal Buyer Protection are excluded. See eBay Express – Supported Categories for more information.	PrimaryCategory SecondaryCategory
If you want to charge sales tax, create a tax table on eBay and use it for the listing. Note: You are not required to charge sales tax to be qualified for eBay Express. However, if you do want to charge sales tax for an item, you must use an eBay tax table. (As eBay Express payments are handled via a shopping cart, you will not be able to calculate and add sales tax during your own checkout flow.)	UseTaxTable Use the SetTaxTable and GetTaxTable calls (or the eBay Web site) for tax table creation. See Enabling Multi-jurisdiction Sales Tax in the eBay Web Services Guide.
This requirement only applies to applications that support Third-Party Checkout: If you specify Third-Party Checkout for a listing, you also need to agree to use a Platform Notification (or transaction calls) instead to process eBay Express sales. In other words, you need to configure your Third-Party Checkout listings to support two flows: When a sale from this listing occurs on the main eBay site, eBay redirects the buyer to your site for checkout processing (as usual).  When a sale from this listing occurs on eBay Express, the buyer uses the eBay Express shopping cart (with no redirect). If you are authorized to support Third-Party Checkout and you subscribe to Platform Notifications, you can receive a notification with transaction and order information. This can help you integrate eBay Express checkout data with your regular Third-Party checkout data.	ThirdPartyCheckout == true (as applicable) ThirdPartyCheckoutIntegration == true (coming soon) Also use Platform Notifications to subscribe to the new notification for Third-Party Checkout applications (coming soon). Download Third Party Checkout and eBay Express (MS Word) for more details.

More information on supporting eBay Express

Get Ready To Support eBay Express!

Sandbox Support for eBay Express

Find Out Which Sellers are Eligible for eBay Express

Checkout and the eBay Express Shopping Cart

Find Out Which Sellers are Eligible for eBay Express

As long as the seller meets a few basic requirements, their qualified eBay listings will automatically be considered for eBay Express (unless they opt out in their user preferences). You can use GetUser to predict whether the seller is likely to meet most of these requirements. (see GetUser Input/Output Reference.)

The table below lists the basic seller eligibility requirements and the corresponding GetUser output fields, as applicable. These fields are defined in the unified schema. Similar fields are also supported in the legacy XML API (see GetUser mappings).

As with any early access information, these details are subject to change. Please keep an eye on this announcement, the newsletter, and the documentation for the latest updates.

Seller Criteria	GetUser Output Field(s)
Maintain a feedback score of 100 or more, 98% positive or better (consistent with PowerSeller requirements).	FeedbackScore >= 100 PositiveFeedbackPercent >= 98.0
Maintain a public feedback profile (i.e., no private feedback).	FeedbackPrivate==false.
Be a US-registered seller.	Site == US RegistrationAddress.CountryName == US Canada registered sellers can use eBay Express when they list items on the US site and ship from the US. Site=Canada RegistrationAddress.CountryName == Canada or CA
Support your listings with a PayPal Premier or PayPal Business account. That is, use a PayPal email address that is associated with a PayPal Premier or PayPal business account.	See your PayPal account settings on paypal.com. (A seller can have multiple PayPal accounts, and they can specify the email address for any of these accounts in a given listing. GetUser only returns data for one PayPal account, so this data cannot necessarily be used to predict a seller’s eligibility in the context of a particular listing.)
On the PayPal site, set your PayPal account to ship to unconfirmed addresses, or make sale-by-sale decisions on paypal.com.	See your PayPal account settings on paypal.com.

More information on supporting eBay Express

Get Ready To Support eBay Express!

Sandbox Support for eBay Express

Help Sellers List Items on eBay Express

Checkout and the eBay Express Shopping Cart

Sandbox Support for eBay Express

eBay Express is scheduled to launch in the US in Spring 2006, but you can start modifying your applications today to support the new site.

The unified schema and the legacy XML API already support nearly all of the fields that make a seller qualified to list on eBay Express, and nearly all the fields that make a listing eligible to appear on eBay Express. See Checking a Seller's Eligibility for eBay Express and Listing Items on eBay Express for more detail.

Additional schema changes are coming soon to add support for items that are normally listed with Third-Party Checkout. See Listing Items on eBay Express and Checkout and the eBay Express Shopping Cart for more detail.

Sandbox Support for eBay Express

The Sandbox UI (the Web site interface) will not fully support eBay Express at launch. For example, the Sandbox UI will not support the full buyer experience at launch.

However, the Sandbox API will provide full support for all the new API functionality that is available at launch.

More Information about supporting eBay Express

Get Ready To Support eBay Express!

Find Out Which Sellers are Eligible for eBay Express

Help Sellers List Items on eBay Express

Checkout and the eBay Express Shopping Cart

Get Ready to Support eBay Express!

eBay Express (express.ebay.com) is a new specialty site where customers can buy new, fixed-price goods in a more conventional e-commerce experience. The site is scheduled to launch in the US in Spring 2006.

With the introduction of this new site, all fixed price listings will still be shown on eBay.com—plus a portion of these fixed price and Stores Inventory format listings will also be shown on eBay Express.

For Buyers: You'll find great deals from reputable merchants on new, name brand, and hard-to-find merchandise. You can purchase products right away—for just about everything you could need or want, from designer jeans, to a complete home theater system. Everything on eBay Express is available for immediate purchase at a fixed price so you're assured of getting the items you want now, with no bidding and no waiting for auctions to end. Buyers can pay for everything—including shipping—in a single, secure payment using PayPal or their credit card. Both methods are safe and secure and processed by PayPal.

For Sellers: Selling on eBay Express is essentially the same as selling on eBay.com. The seller just needs to meet certain eligibility criteria, and they need to include certain features for their eBay listings to qualify for eBay Express.

For Developers: If your application already supports most of the common eBay selling features, you should able to use the same Sell Your Item flow (and the same AddItem fields) that you already support. See below for details. (If you offer Third-Party Checkout, you need to make some changes to your application, as described below.)

Communication with buyers, sellers, and eBay (i.e., Ask Seller a Question and end-of-listing emails) remains the same too. In fact, the main difference is that sellers have more exposure to top buyers and convenience-oriented buyers—at no additional cost.

Developers can read more for general information and FAQs about eBay Express, or look below for further details about supporting eBay Express using eBay Web Services.

More Information about supporting eBay Express

Sandbox Support for eBay Express

Find Out Which Sellers are Eligible for eBay Express

Help Sellers List Items on eBay Express

Checkout and the eBay Express Shopping Cart

Upcoming Scheduled Downtime for Developers Program Website

We will be taking a 30-minute maintenance window on Thursday, March 9th, starting at 11 PM US Pacific time. During this time, eBay Operations will be upgrading a firewall.

The Developers Program website at developer.ebay.com will not be available during this maintenace.

Here are some examples of the downtime maintenance window in local time for the following locations:

US:   Thursday Mar 9, 11PM ending by 11:30PM
UK:   Friday Mar 10, 7AM ending by 7:30AM
DE:   Friday Mar 10, 8AM ending by 8:30AM
India: Friday March 10, 12:30PM ending by 1PM

Thanks in advance for your understanding while we execute this upgrade.

API Call Warning Messages for Schema Migration

As of late March, U.S. developers still making API calls in the legacy XML API, legacy REST API and/or eBay SDK for Windows version 2.6 or earlier will begin receiving warning messages via the API.

International developers will begin receiving these warning messages as of mid-April whenever an API call that is not compliant with the unified schema is made.

If you are still using the legacy XML API, legacy REST API, and/or eBay SDK for Windows version 2.6 or earlier as of these dates, you will want to log these warning messages so you can discover which of your calls are not yet compliant with the unified schema. Additionally, you may want to prevent these warning messages from displaying to your customers.

Developer Forums Aligning with Unified Schema

January 26th Update: The update to our Developer Forums is now complete.

To better service the technical support needs of our developer community as you continue migrating to the unified schema by our June 1, 2006 deadline, we are announcing a a restructuring of our Developer Forums that will be more closely aligned with your development efforts.

We have been observing that most question threads and answers being posted about the unified schema in our XML API, SOAP API and Schema Migration forums would benefit any developer using - or migrating to - the unified schema.

Under the new structure, all forums supporting development on the unified schema will be in technical forums monitored by our Developer Technical Support team:

• the SOAP API forum will become the eBay Web Services forum, assisting XML, SOAP and REST developers working with the unified schema
• the XML API forum will become the Legacy API forum, continuing to assist developers working on migrating to the unified schema
• threads from the Schema Migration forum will merge into the Legacy API forum, continuing to assist developers working on migrating to the unified schema

We are planning on completing this re-alignment by early February 2006. All existing threads will continue to exist and be searchable in the Developer Forums. If you have set email watches on any of these threads, they will continue to work in the eBay API forum.

Remember that eBay Developer Technical Support monitors our technical Developer Forums, but we also have Live Chat or Support Request options if you require immediate technical support, or if you require assistance with complex issues. Developers using these technical support options know they are big time savers!

Please let us know if you have any thoughts or concerns about our aligning the Developer Forums more closely with your development using the unified schema. We are continuing to act on developer input on how we can provide the best possible range of technical support options for our eBay developer community.

O'Reilly Article about eBay Developer Challenge 2006

eBay Technical Evangelist Alan Lewis has published an article on O'Reilly about the eBay Developer Challenge 2006.

"You've been able to access the eBay platform via web services since 2001. Recently, we removed all of the fees for using these APIs. To celebrate, eBay and O'Reilly are sponsoring a coding contest for applications built on eBay web services: the eBay Developer Challenge 2006. This contest gives us a chance to say thanks to our developers, and to encourage the development of great tools that the eBay community will love. Contest winners will be announced in March 2006 at O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference."

Read the article, then get busy coding your entry for the eBay Developer Challenge 2006. Entries are due by January 31, 2006. For complete details, see Official Rules.

Ask the Program Manager about New Pricing

The eBay Developers Program unveiled our new pricing model today. Membership, Standard Application certification and all API calls using the unified schema are all now free of charge.  Members will continue to be charged API usage fees at their previous rates for any calls using the legacy schema.

Our Program Manager of the eBay Developers Program, Tina Mazzei, will be hosting four (4) special "Office Hours with the Program Manager" sessions in the Developer Coffee Talk forum over the next two weeks to answer your questions.

Developers can post questions to the Developer Coffee Talk forum at any time, and Tina will be there to answer them on:

• Monday, Nov 14, 2005, 12noon - 2PM PST   
• Tuesday, Nov 15, 2005, 9AM - 11AM  PST   
• Thursday, Nov 17, 2005, 9AM - 11AM  PST 
• Tuesday, Nov 22, 2005, 9AM - 11AM  PST   

Developers can review the chart on our Benefits and Fees page, see how your membership benefits have been enhanced, as well as read our press release on our new pricing model for more information.

Learn the latest information and share your knowledge of eBay Web Services in the Developer Forums.

What Can You Do in a Weekend?

Labor Day Weekend 1995. A developer spends the weekend coding the application that becomes the company we know today as eBay.  A developer, opening a worldwide marketplace through a single innovative idea.

So, what can you do in a weekend?

Enter your innovative application in the eBay Developer Challenge 2006 to show off your skills*. You could win $5,000, or many other great prizes. Or gather a team together of up to four (4) developers to compete for a set of matching Xbox 360™ game consoles. Either way, if you’re a Grand Prize winner, your application will be featured in a demo at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego, California, March 6-9, 2006.

Developers can enter to compete for the Best Original Application by an Individual category, or enter your team of up to four (4) developers to compete for the Best Open Source Collaboration by a Team category.

If you're looking for an idea to build, then consider a tool for eBay buyers or affiliates.  Applications submitted may, but don’t have to, fall under one of these three main areas:

1. Category/vertical search (re-mix eBay to help people find things more efficiently)
2. Web mash-up (re-mix eBay with another Web service)
3. Multi-platform (integrate eBay with Skype, PayPal, Outlook, GNOME, TiVo, etc.) applications

eBay Developer Challenge 2006: Innovate with O'Reilly and eBay Web Services. Read the press release here, or the email from Developers Program Director Greg Isaacs sent out to our developer community today announcing this and other exciting changes for the eBay Developers Program.

*"The eBay Developer Challenge 2006" ("Contest") begins at 12:00 AM PT November 14, 2005 and ends at 11:59 PM PT January 31, 2006. Contest is open to confirmed registered members of the eBay Developers Program, who are legal residents of the United States and the District of Columbia, 18 years of age and older. Void in Puerto Rico and where prohibited by law. For complete details see Official Rules.

Enhanced Membership Pricing - It's Free!

We are excited to announce changes to the pricing structure of the eBay Developers Program, effective November 14, 2005.  These changes will make it even easier for developers to innovate and make money building applications using eBay Web Services. 

With these changes, membership in the eBay Developers Program and Standard Application certification are now free.  API calls using the unified schema are also provided free. Members will continue to be charged API usage fees at their previous rates for any calls using the legacy schema. In addition, all members of the program will now have access to Developer Live Chat, live technical support with an eBay Developer Technical Support engineer, at the low cost of $75/hour, or $250 for four (4) hours.

We are making these changes to thank our current members for their great contributions and to remove cost as a barrier to innovating and building a business on the eBay platform.  To learn more about these changes, read the press release or the email from Developers Program Director Greg Isaacs.

If you have any questions or feedback you would like to share about this announcement, our Program Manager, Tina Mazzei, will be hosting four (4) special "Office Hours with the Program Manager" sessions in the Developer Coffee Talk forum over the next two weeks to answer your questions. Meanwhile, if you’d like to read more about the new pricing structure, review the chart on our Benefits and Fees page, or see how your membership benefits have been enhanced.

XML API Trivia Game Today!

Today, Tuesday, October 25th, is the day for the XML API-based trivia game in the XML API forum  at 10:00 AM PST/1:00 PM EST.

Are you a Legacy XML developer or a developer just getting started with migrating to the new unified schema? This game is designed for you. Race against others to answer questions related to the new schema XML API documentation.

We will be awarding *small and fun* prizes to the first developer to answer each question correctly. There will be a maximum of two (2) prizes awarded per developer to give everyone a shot at the fun. (Learn more about how eBay celebrates Pinks Day.)

The first question will appear in a pink message box like this at 10:00 AM PST/1:00 PM EST. There will be a new question every half hour after that until 2:00PM PST/5:00PM EST.

Are you ready??

Minimum Compatibility Requirement as of June 2006

As we have been communicating since February 2005, eBay will no longer support the legacy schema after June 1, 2006.

Our legacy schema cut-off deadline is June 1, 2006. All applications using eBay Web Services will be required to use the new unified schema after this date.

In addition, all applications using eBay Web Services will be required to have a minimum compatibility level of 415 by June 1, 2006. Any application making calls using versions 413 or older will not be eligible for technical support from our Developer Technical Support team after June 1, 2006.

Our minimum compatibility cut-off deadline for applications using versions 413 and older is June 1, 2006. All applications will be required to have a minimum compatibility level of version 415 after this date.

Want to know more? See the Current Compatibility Level page for more details.

Remember to Check System Announcements

If you're not checking System Announcements, you are missing critical information about the status of ongoing issues relating to the Sandbox and the API Production Servers.

System Announcements are the first resource for developers on the status of ongoing issues relating to the Sandbox and the API Production Servers. Developers should check System Announcements before reporting any urgent production system issues such as latency, unavailability, errors or call failures.

System Announcements are updated when a new announcement is posted, when new information is available on an existing announcement, or if the status of an announcement changes. System Announcements are also sorted by Last Updated, so developers can quickly see the latest status changes at top of their screen. Resolved issues are clearly marked in the Issue Title and Issue History.

Please make it a habit to check System Announcements often, or get email status alerts by logging in to the Developer Forums, and then selecting the Watch This Question button at the top of each category page. You will receive an email to your eBay User ID email address whenever updates are made to this category.

System Announcements are separated into 6 categories:

• Production Environment
• Sandbox Environment
• XML Interface
• SOAP Interface
• eBay SDK for Windows
• eBay SDK for Java

For example, developers interested in receiving status alerts about the Production Environment would click on the Watch This Question button, then select the Notify via email frequency that best meets their needs: Immediately, Daily or Weekly. Remember to click on the Save Watch button to enable this feature.

Learn the latest information and share your knowledge of the eBay API in the eBay Developer Forums.

Community Codebase Scheduled Downtime: Saturday, Oct 1st

eBay Community Codebase will be down for scheduled maintenance during a period of time between 8:00AM - 8:00PM PDT on Saturday, October 1, 2005.

During this maintenance window, projects in the codebase will be inaccessible.

In the meantime, take a look at what's happening on eBay Community Codebase, the development environment where developers can work collaboratively on open source projects to build innovative applications using eBay Web Services. Our codebase guidelines have more information for interested developers.

Don't Miss Out on Critical Information about your eBay Application

If you originally opted out of receiving the eBay Developers Program Newsletter during registration and want to opt back in to get critical information about building and maintaining your eBay Web Services application, log-in to the Edit Membership Info page under My Account using your Developers Program User ID.

From there, click on the name of your Business, Developer, or Accounts Payable contacts, then add or remove each from receiving the newsletter by checking or unchecking the appropriate boxes. You can also Add New Contact, if you’d like someone new in your company to receive the eBay Developers Program Newsletter under the same account.

While you’re there, be sure to update your email address of record to make sure you are receiving important program information to the email account of your choice.

Remember to set eBay email addresses as trusted sources in your SPAM filters - you could be missing out on critical information about your building and maintaining your eBay Web Services application.

Auth & Auth Tokens: Upcoming 18-month Expiration

Authentication & Authorization (Auth & Auth) tokens have an 18-month maximum life before they expire and become invalid. To re-validate the token, users must be prompted to go through your application's Auth & Auth flow again.

eBay introduced Auth & Auth in April 2004. Developers of applications where users have not been prompted to authenticate since April 2004 will be impacted. Users of these applications will begin to encounter expired Auth & Auth tokens beginning in October 2005.

Developer Impact: In order to prevent a disruption of service, please make sure your application correctly handles expired tokens and sends the seller back through Auth & Auth to re-validate the token. You may wish to proactively check the expiration date of your tokens, and let affected users know when their token will expire. These users can then complete the Auth & Auth process before they are confronted with an invalidated Auth & Auth token.

For more information on Auth & Auth, please consult the eBay Web Services documentation.

Trust and Safety Account Protection Restrictions

When Trust and Safety identifies that an innocent user's account has been accessed by someone attempting to commit fraud, the password for that account is immediately changed to random characters.  This password change prevents the cybercriminal from using the account for malicious purposes.

Trust and Safety would like to remind developers that this can result in a confusing user experience for users of third party applications.  There may be a situation where someone is using a third party tool and gets blocked on a particular action even though they were not blocked on the previous action.

In the case that a block action occurs, eBay will pass the reason code to you through the API:

1)      Messaging will come back in the response XML

• If the action was blocked, the API will return an error with error code & message
• If the action was not blocked, but a warning or education message was triggered, it will come back as a warning with error code & message

2)      Some messages from eBay to the user will be retrievable via GetMyMessages API, which could be related to the action that was blocked.  These are emails that were sent to the seller which may indicate that they were blocked from listing, etc. (See below for more information.)

• These would also be any other messages emailed to the seller from eBay that is part of the My Messages mailbox

In the case that your tool is blocked from performing a specific action for one of your users, we encourage you to either pass the block reason along to your users or have the user check their email (or their eBay My Messages) to determine the problem with their account.

We understand that this is an inconvenience to both the tools developers and to our members.  We apologize for any problems that this causes, but hope that you understand that these are necessary actions to maintain the security of the eBay marketplace.

Resolved: Log-in Issues with Developer Forums

On July 13, members may have intermittently experienced difficulties trying to sign in to the Developer Forums. As of 22:45 PDT on July 13, we have resolved this issue, and you should be able to access the Developer Forums without any problems.

Thank you for your patience.

Log-in Issues with Developer Forums

1:00PM PDT

We're currently seeing some intermittent issues of with logging into with the Developer Forums. Threads and posts are still available for viewing at this time.

We're working to resolve these as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.

Developer Forums Scheduled Maintenance

Please be advised that the Developer Forums will be unavailable sometime between 10 - 60 minutes during a scheduled maintenance window this Wednesday, June 29th, scheduled to begin at 11:00 PM US PDT.

Thank you for your understanding while we provide a better experience in our Developer Forums.

Developer Forums Scheduled Maintenance

Please be advised that the Developer Forums will be unavailable sometime between 10 - 60 minutes during a scheduled maintenance window this Thursday, June 30th, scheduled to begin at 11:00 PM US PDT.

Thank you for your understanding while we provide a better experience in our Developer Forums.

Sandbox Outage Notice

OUTAGE NOTICE - The Sandbox will be unavailable between approximately 21:00 PDT and 22:00 PDT on Tuesday, May 24th

Check Out the eBay SDK for Windows 3.0 Beta

eBay has released the eBay SDK for Windows 3.0 Beta with new documentation.

The eBay SDK for Windows 3.0 Beta is built on the eBay SOAP API and is fully compatible with the new schema. This means requests and responses are validated against a schema, but you have the ease of development that comes with a Windows class library. The eBay SDK for Windows 3.0 Beta is NOT backward compatible with previous versions of the SDK.

This SDK Beta is an excellent resource for developers to experiment with the new schema using the SDK; however, because this release is a beta, we recommend that you use it for testing in the Sandbox only. Do not use this version of the eBay SDK for Windows to manage production data in a live application.

The features and functionality in this beta release may change in the final release, and backwards-incompatible changes may be made between this beta release and the final 3.0 release. The official launch of the eBay SDK for Windows 3.0 will be in June 2005.

The eBay SDK for Windows 3.0 Beta includes a developer guide with step-by-step instructions, complete library reference, and samples. For new developers, the developer guide has a new Getting Started section that shows how to make your first .NET call to the eBay site. Advanced developers will appreciate the API call library guide.

Tell us what you think about:

• the Windows SDK 3.0 Beta in the Windows SDK forum
  the SDK documentation in the Documentation forum

Preparing for IP-Based Sender Authentication

In the coming months, eBay is encouraging our Developers Program members to modify their email systems to comply with emerging technology standards designed to close loopholes in SMTP that are easily exploited today by phishers and fraudulent spammers.

To that end, eBay has already set up a Sender ID Framework and published our IP addresses. In May, eBay will be altering our member-to-member emails (i.e. Ask Seller a Question, Contact eBay Member, etc.), which currently spoof our domain by setting the FROM address to the user’s email address to comply with these standards.

Authentication is an emerging method for the receiver to authenticate the identity of the sender. If the identity of the sender can’t be verified, then email service providers (ESP) may reject the message, or put the message through additional filters to determine if it should be delivered to the recipient. ESPs are pursing two primary methods of authentication: IP-based (SPF and Sender ID) and cryptographic or signature-based (Yahoo!’s Domain Keys and Cisco’s Identified Internet Mail - IIM).

The first to gain broad industry adoption is Sender ID Framework, or SIDF, an IP-based solution that combines Microsoft’s Caller ID for email proposal with Meng Wong’s Sender Policy Framework (SFP) to fight return-path address forgery and make it easier to identify spoofs. Domain owners identify sending mail servers in DNS.  SMTP receivers verify the envelope sender address against this information, and can distinguish authentic messages from forgeries before any message data is transmitted. SIDF adds another layer of authentication to your outgoing email and protects against phishing attacks on your brand. Some ISPs, like AOL, require SIDF to be implemented to be considered for their white lists.

There are two (2) key things you need to do to ensure delivery:

Set up a Sender Protocol Framework (SIDF/SPF). This is an additional step to verify an email sender’s identity. The protocol is fairly easy to set up; your network administrator should be able to do it quickly based on instructions found here.

Match ‘from’ address to published domains. Don’t ‘spoof’ your own emails. Make sure that the domain in your from address matches to your published list of IP addresses.

eBay SDK for Windows 2.6.2 Released

We have released an update to our eBay SDK for Windows.  eBay SDK for Windows 2.6.2 is a bug fix release to resolve a list of issues.

You can download the package and read the documentation and release notes in our Windows Developer Center.

The list of issues that have been resolved can be found in the Release Notes and on the System Announcement Board.

Motors Payment Method Changes

There are some changes in the Motors payment methods validations that will go live during the week of 03/21/05 - 03/25/05. These will affect Motor vehicle sales for US and CA sites.

There will be only five (5) valid payment methods accepted in a listing:

• Cashier's Check
• Personal Check
• See Desc
• CashInPerson
• LoanCheck

Other changes:

• Credit Card payments are no longer valid
• Deposit can only be specified through PayPal
• PayPal can only be used for the deposit - an additional payment method (eg. cash, LoanCheck) must be defined for the balance, even for AutoPay items
• Seller must have a linked PayPal account
• No deposit is available in CA (Canada)
• Unlike all other scenarios, PayPal will not be added automatically if seller has PayPal preference set

There will be two (2) new time limits as described:

• DaysToFullPayment - valid values are 3, 7, 10 ,14 - automatic default is 7 if not specified
• HoursToDeposit - valid values are 24, 48, 72 - automatic default is 48 if not specified

Increased Support for Individual Tier Members

We have increased developer support in our Developer Forums.

Our Forums are open to all program members, but Individual tier members in particular benefit because they are entitled to developer support in our Developer Forums only.

To take advantage of Live Help or a Jumpstart Package that offers one-on-one support with eBay Developer Technical Support, developers can upgrade to the Commercial tier.

We have also launched two new Developer Forums to facilitate changes going on with our Community and our platform:

• Web Services Schema Migration forum - Get answers about the unified eBay Web Services schema from eBay product experts
• International Development forum - Contact our International Team about growing opportunities on non-US eBay sites

Learn the latest information and share your knowledge of the eBay API in the Developer Forums.

View the eBay Web Services Launch Webinar

On February 17th, the eBay Developers Program presented a Web Services Launch Webinar on important changes to the eBay Developers Program, including the new unified Web Services schema, the new developer support model and new developer marketing logos and handbook.

Thank you to the 100+ developers who attended and asked great questions that made this webinar a success. If you were not able to attend the webinar, view the archive copy of the webinar presentation with audio.

Please direct questions after viewing and listening to the webinar to our Web Services Schema Migration forum or our Product Feedback forum.

Letter from Greg Isaacs

Dear eBay Developers,

As we begin 2005, I am more energized than ever by the opportunities available to and innovation created by eBay's developer community. In only a few short years you have made eBay the leading Web Services platform and accounted for 20% of eBay's U.S. annual listing volume by making selling and buying on eBay far more efficient. In addition, you have extended the reach and positively changed the user experience of the eBay marketplace with cutting edge solutions ranging from affiliate to wireless/interactive television applications.

In order to build upon our collective success, we need to continue soliciting your feedback and truly listen to and understand what will make you successful. Then we need to intelligently execute on your feedback by working with you to implement these ideas. That is how truly successful ecosystems work - one cannot thrive without the other.

As part of the process of listening and subsequently building infrastructure and programs to make you successful, I am pleased to announce three major changes to the eBay Developers Program. These changes are based on feedback received from our annual developers' survey as well as continued one-on-one dialogues with many of you:

Launching of eBay Web Services

eBay currently utilizes two distinct schemas: one for XML and our SDK for Windows (legacy schema); and another for SOAP and our SDK for Java (eBay Web Services). From March 2005 to June 2006, we will be unifying these two schemas into our current eBay Web Services approach, culminating in the deprecation of our legacy schema in June 2006.

The benefits of this change to you are numerous. First, eBay will be able to more quickly roll out features in eBay Web Services thereby increasing the parity between eBay site features and your applications. Second, this change will allow our Developer Technical Support team to diagnose and respond to issues much faster. Finally, developers using Web Services-enabled languages and development environments will be able to leverage a vast set of third-party tools that will make application development faster and more efficient. For more information about this launch, visit http://two11.fairmarket.net/Scripts/ListingInfo.asp?LotNo=77521165&SiteCatNo=236518

Enhancements to eBay Developer Technical Support

In order to improve the level of support and responsiveness to you, eBay Developer Technical Support is migrating from its current email-based system to a real-time live model. This shift will allow Commercial tier developers to speak with an eBay Developer Technical Support engineer live to receive valuable design and technical advice. With this change we are also reducing the cost of support from approximately $100 to $75 per hour and adding a Jumpstart package with four hours of support for $250. In fact, depending on your Commercial tier, developers will receive between one to four hours of free technical support.

We believe this shows our continued commitment to your development success. In addition, to help build upon the strong momentum of developers using the Forums as a mechanism for peer-to-peer support, eBay Developer Technical Support will increase its level of postings to ensure a large majority of your questions get answered in a timely fashion. For more information on increased support, visit http://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/support/index.asp

Modifications to Developer Marketing

We created a Marketing Handbook (http://developer.ebay.com/DevProgram/marketinghandbook.pdf) to help you out with marketing to the eBay community. We included information about how to create success stories, how to write and distribute a press release, and how to get more involved in the eBay community. We're also introducing a new "Member of eBay Developers Program" logo you can use on your website and in marketing materials to designate your affiliation with the program (http://developer.ebay.com/DevProgram/memberlogo.asp). In addition, there's a new "eBay Compatible Application" logo that Commercial tier members can use when marketing applications to the eBay community (http://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/compatibleapplogo.asp). This logo replaces the eBay Certified Developer logo you may already be using, so if you are a Commercial tier member with a certified application, be sure to use the new logo.

Please join us for a 90-minute webinar on February 17th beginning at 11:00 AM PST for details on these changes as well as a Q&A session – sign up for the webinar at http://registration.mshow.com/eBay_WebServices_Webinar/

I am extremely enthusiastic about these changes and look forward to sharing new beneficial announcements with you at eBay Live in June 2005. While I realize we all have come a long way in a short time, I also understand we have a lot more work to do together. We are tackling difficult problems, many of which haven't been faced previously. However, I am very fortunate to work with a talented group of colleagues and third party developers as we tackle these problems together.

I look forward to mutual success in 2005 and beyond,

Greg Isaacs

eBay Developers Program

Announcing eBay Web Services – A Unified Schema for the eBay Developer Community

Consistent with our efforts to provide the eBay Developer Community with a world-class development architecture, eBay is rolling out a unified API schema that supports software development across all platforms and languages. The unified API schema supports development in XML, SOAP, .NET and Java, and includes support for the eBay SDKs for Windows and Java. This new schema — called “eBay Web Services” — is based on the existing eBay SOAP schema currently used by developers building applications using SOAP or the eBay SDK for Java.

Over the next 18 months, the legacy XML schema – the schema used by those developing on platforms other than SOAP or the eBay SDK for Java – will be phased out, culminating in deprecation of the legacy schema on June 1, 2006. Although the legacy schema will be deprecated, eBay will continue to fully support development in XML, .NET, and all other platforms and languages with a new underlying format based on the eBay Web Services schema.

Get the details on this exciting development as well as information about other product updates on the eBay Developers Program Roadmap website.

Join us February 17th from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PST for a 90-minute webinar with details about this announcement as well as a Q&A session.

Progress on Platform Notifications in the Sandbox

We are working to provide you with Platform Notifications in the Sandbox.  As part of that effort, standard eBay administrative emails, such as End Of Auction, will start going out. You may already be receiving these emails if you list items to the Sandbox.  You may also be receiving Platform Notifications if you recently used the SetNotificationPreferences API call.

We will require additional time to reliably implement Sandbox Platform Notifications. Over that period, Platform Notifications and administrative emails will be intermittent. Please be patient with us as we release this much requested feature.

Combatting Phishing by Reducing Email Address Access

March 17, 2005 Update: We currently anticipate this change rolling the week of April 18, 2005.

Phishing, the practice of sending fake emails to obtain personal information, has become an increasing problem on the Internet. To protect our members from receiving fraudulent emails we are decreasing the number of email addresses shown on the eBay site and, therefore, available through the eBay API.

Currently, email addresses for all transactions within the last 90 days are available. As of late March mid-April, the 90 day limit will be reduced to 14 days. This will impact both the eBay site and applications using eBay’s API. We will communicate specific dates for this change in the near future.

New API Billing Address

In order to more effectively process your payment checks and money orders, we are changing the API Billing address for these payment methods. Payments sent to the new address will go directly to the accounting group that processes API Billing payments.

Starting in February 2005, our new address will be:

                                     eBay API Billing
                                     eBay, Inc.
                                     P.O. Box 5819
                                     San Jose, CA 95150 

This address change will be reflected on the Developers Program website and communications in January 2005.

For those of you who pay via PayPal or electronic funds, the current PayPal email address and electronic funds address are correct and will remain unchanged.

Want It Now - New Format Launching December 3rd

eBay is launching a new format called Want It Now. Want It Now enables buyers to post descriptions of items they have been unable to find on eBay, and enables sellers to respond with items that match these descriptions.

Beginning December 3rd, Want It Now will be accessible via http://www.ebay.com/wantitnow.

Want It Now Functionality

Buyers provide a title, description and category for their Want It Now post. Once completed, sellers have the ability to browse the post and respond using the item number of an eBay listing; sellers may respond to posts with either auction or fixed price listings. Buyers then review the responses to their post and follow the standard eBay process of bidding on or purchasing the matching item if desired.

Want It Now will be available on International eBay Sites on 1/11/2005. API support is currently unavailable for Want It Now but will likely be available in Q2 2005.

Want It Now Benefits

Want It Now delivers several benefits to buyers and sellers. For buyers, the new format saves time and improves the experience of finding items on eBay. For sellers, Want It Now provides an opportunity to attract new buyers, improve conversion rates and increase sales.

[Updated 12/3 to include details on the international release date.]

Changes to Distance-Based Searching

We are making a variety of changes to improve distance-based search. As part of this, we are changing the way that sellers opt into proximity searching. Specifically, all items added with a valid ZIP or postal code will be included in distance-based searches. Items without ZIP or postal codes will not be included.

This is a backwards incompatible change, but we believe you will only need to make minor fixes to your applications. This change will also allow us to allow International proximity searching.

For the AddItem API family we are deprecating on input the [IncludeInProximitySearch] tag. This tag can still be included, but we will ignore the tag/value on input. Going forward, if the item is added with a valid ZIP code, it will be included in Proximity Search automatically. More information is available in the docs.

In the near future, sellers will be able to delete a ZIP code – this is part of the Relist API Enhancements project. Deleting the ZIP code will opt the item out of distance-based searching.

Adding new tag [StandardLocation] to Get calls.  If the tag is emitted, it means the location is system-generated, based on a valid ZIP. If the tag is not emitted, it means the seller entered a custom location (i.e. free text). See the docs for additional details.

Sandbox 3rd Party Signin Flow Down

3rd party Auth & Auth Signin Flow is currently down in the Sandbox. We are working on this issue and will post an update as soon as it is resolved.

As of 4 pm Pacific, this is now fixed.

Important Update for SOAP and Java SDK Developers

This is an important note for all SOAP and eBay SDK for Java developers. The latest SOAP WSDL is not backward compatible.

Java developers using SOAP directly should update to the latest WSDL, 383, as soon as possible. Developers using the eBay SDK for Java should refer to Article 211 in the Knowledge Base for more information. That document will walk you through a self-healing procedure, which will update the SDK for you.

.NET developers should not have any problems with the new release, and can update to version 383 at their leisure.

If you have any questions or problems, please post them the SDK areas in our member forums. eBay will monitor this board and provide assistance.

We apologize for the inconvenience and late notice of this change. Ironically, these changes are intended to improve future backwards compatibility.

For more information on the latest SOAP release, please see our earlier blog post and the SOAP documentation on the Developer Zone. (Note: while that page may still say the current version is 377, the documentation and release notes have been updated to cover 383.)

[Updated on Monday to clarify which categories of developers are affected.]

New SDK for Windows Provides Critical Bug Fixes

A new version of the eBay SDK for Windows has been released. The new version is 2.5.1787. The release notes below apply to the 1787 release. You can download the release here or discuss this release in our developer forums.

If you previously downloaded the 1761 release (eBaySDK_v2.5_1761.exe), please do not use it, since it contains a number of critical bugs in the Integration Library and Attributes Library.

Here are the release notes for the 1787 release:

1. Two new columns have been added to the CheckoutDetails table. The columns are AutoPay, which is type int and allows NULL, and CheckoutRedirect, which is type int and allows NULL. You will have to manually create these two new schema elements if you do not create a completely new SDK Integration database. The installation package does not have any automated database schema update or schema update script. For complete details, please see the CreateBaySchema.sql file in the Database\SQL Server folder of your SDK installation.
2. Automatic pay and checkout redirect are newly supported features. They are supported in both the API Call Library and by the Integration Library. Please see the API documentation for details on the Automatic pay feature. Checkout redirect is only available to enterprise tier developers.
3. There is a new database connection timeout setting in the Integration Library. The default database connection timeout is 30 seconds. If you are using separate physical database and application servers, or if you are running more than 3 SDK Integration threads under heavy load (frequent use of Synchronizer calls with large volume users), then we suggest increasing this timeout value as needed. To manually set the timeout, insert a row into the AppData table as follows:
   insert into AppData values('Connection Timeout','30',-1,-1,-1)
   Replace the second parameter (30) with your value for the database connection timeout in seconds.

Reminder: UTF-8 Conversion

A reminder that starting November 1, 2004, new application certifications will require UTF-8 input. Existing applications are required to be UTF-8 compliant by May 15, 2005. More information is available in an earlier post, and guidelines and samples will be forthcoming in the next few months.

Webinar: Changes to Unpaid Item and Item Not Received Functionality

Please join us on October 26 for a webinar to discuss updates to the Unpaid Item process and new API calls for the Item Not Received process. These calls will go live early in January 2005. The webinar will review the new process, discuss the new API calls, and answer your questions to help your transition. These new processes will impact all sellers using third-party selling tools.

The webinar will take place at 9:30 AM Pacific (GMT-8) on Tuesday, October 26.

Reminder: Register now to attend this webinar; click here to register.

New Stores Links Policy

With the introduction of a number of eBay Stores enhancements over the past few months, including Custom Headers and Custom Pages, we are adding a new section to the eBay Links Policy to help sellers better understand what links are permitted within their eBay Store. Please note the following changes that are effective today:

Links within eBay Stores
The links that sellers may include on their eBay Store home page or other Store Custom Pages are listed below:

• Links to your email address that enable potential buyers to ask questions via email about items in your store.
• Links to your on-eBay pages and items.
• Up to 10 links to other sellers’ eBay Store pages, as long as you have the permission of those other sellers.
• Links to off-eBay pages that provide information about your store or service; however, the pages may not advertise any specific off-eBay items or contain any links to pages that offer items off-eBay.

We will also no longer allow new eBay Store names to be a URL (i.e. a Web address such as www.yourstorename.com). Existing Store sellers who have a URL as their store name will be exempt from this change.

Any links other than those listed above are not permitted.

In addition, a number of members have asked us to clarify our Links policy as it applies to Live Chat technology. The current Links Policy does not permit Live Chat links from the item page; only links from an About Me page are allowed. We have added text to make the policy clearer on this issue.

For the complete policy or for additional information please read our Links Policy and Links Policy FAQ.

Windows SDK Bug

There is a critical bug in the Windows SDK, v2.5_1704, that affects the IEBaySynchronizer.UpdateSalesFromEBay method. The DataValue for the DataKey = 'GST/GSE Buffer Time' in the AppData table is interpreted correctly as minutes for UpdatePricesFromEBay, but is interpreted incorrectly as hours in UpdateSalesFromEBay. This means that the default buffer time for UpdateSalesFromEBay is 2 hours and you will see a 2 hour delay in sales reported.

If you are running version 1704, please download version 1724 instead.

Solutions Directory Outage

We are in the process of updating the Solutions Directory. As a result, it will be temporarily down today, September 20th, starting at 2PM Pacific and should return by 6PM. During this time, you will not be able to view or edit your listings.

Upcoming Migration to UTF-8

The eBay XML API currently supports both UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1 string encoding formats. eBay is in the process of transitioning all of its back-end systems to UTF-8 in order to provide a robust platform to build international applications for our solution providers.

Requirements for the new migration will include:

• Starting November 1, new application certifications will require UTF-8 input
• Existing applications will be given time to migrate existing code; the date is to be determined
• Solution providers sending in ISO-8859-1 encoded requests should not send in non-ASCII characters
• Guidelines for UTF-8 compliant applications will be posted on the eBay Developer Web site
• Code samples will be provided to illustrate the conversion of ISO-8859-1 data to UTF-8

This notification is to allow you time to begin planning any upgrades your application may need. We'll provide more details soon.

Site Announcement: International 3rd Party Signin Errors

Some international sites are exhibiting errors during the 3rd party Auth & Auth signin process. This issue is being investigated and we will post updates as more information is available. Sites known to be affected so far are Germany and UK. Please look for updates on the eBay Developer Website Announcement Boards at: http://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/community/Annboards.asp

Changes to View Item Page

In late Q4 2004/early Q1 2005, eBay will be modifying our view item pages. In order to ensure you are not impacted, make sure your applications do not: 1) use <noscript>, 2) have tables that use malformed HTML, and 3) use Flash where there are no targets specified.

You can view additional details here.

Blocking Active Browser Content

On August 9th, eBay will make a change to way items are displayed in the browser. This change will look for strings that are normally disallowed at the Sell Your Item page. It will block any strings that have been obfuscated via scripting languages. We suggest you preview your items after these changes are made to insure that your scripts are continuing to function as you think they should. When disallowed elements are detected, the item will still be visible, but the blocked content will not render.

This is a security enhancement intended to protect eBay users. Note that this is an enforcement of existing policy; circumventing the change will no longer work.

Changes to View Item Page

This week, we will be changing the way the item description area of the view item page displays. This change will improve the view item page performance for members. Because the item description content will be now be cached by browsers, buyers and sellers will see noticeable speed improvements when they view the same item more than once, or when they refresh a view item page. This is especially important during the last few minutes of a listing, or when members are on slow dialup connections.

As a result of this change, sellers who have used HTML tags to customize the item page outside the item description area (to change font color for links outside the item description, for instance) will now only be able to customize the area within the item description. Any active listings, or listings that have been created in a listing tool such as Turbo Lister but not yet uploaded, will automatically be adjusted.

Unpaid Item Launch

We are transitioning to a new unpaid item (UPI) process. If you're posting to our non-paying bidder (NPB) forms or making NPB API calls, you must update your application to support the new process.

The current NPB functionality is planned to be shut down at 10AM Pacific (GMT-8) on July 11. The new UPI will be available at 6AM Pacific on July 12. Please adjust your programs accordingly. These times are subject to change. Be sure to check the blog for any last-minute updates.

For more information about UPI, including a webinar presentation and API documentation, click here. You can find API documentation on the UPI process here.

Update: The unpaid item process is now live; UPI functionality is available through the eBay Web interface as well as the API.

Planned Sandbox Outage: July 16 1-3 AM

There will be a planned outage of the Sandbox on Friday, July 16th from 1 am - 3 am Pacific time. This is necessary to lay the framework to bring the Sandbox into closer feature parity with the main eBay.com site. (Note: An earlier version of this post said July 9th. That outage has been delayed a week. There are not two outages.)

Reminder: New Unpaid Item Process

eBay's new unpaid item process will go live on July 12 (please note this date has been changed from the week of July 5). Documentation and sandbox support are available. In case you missed it, eBay’s Amjad Hanif presented an overview of the new Unpaid Item process. The webinar reviews the new process, discusses the four new API calls, and provides details on what eBay is doing to help your transition. Be sure to check it out here. (Please note this webinar has the old date of the cutover.)

AutoPay Shipping Service Change

As of API release e367, the API requires a valid shipping service for AutoPay items. This will require that CheckoutDetailsSpecified be enabled and shipping details defined in all AddItem requests that have the AutoPay feature enabled. Additionally, any items that were previously listed with AutoPay enabled, but without CheckoutDetailsSpecified will fail when revised or relisted unless valid shipping details are added.

Reminder: Authentication & Authorization

July 1, 2004 is the final date for you to update your application to use Auth & Auth. If you have not made this change by this date, your application will break. For further details, click here.

Developer Website Outage Complete

The Developers Program website is now available. Our outage was completed successfully. Thank you for your patience.

New SOAP WSDL Available

For those of you working with the SOAP API preview release, be advised that we are launching the eBay SOAP API this week. Based on your feedback, we have improved the interface for the SOAP schema which deals with shipping features. The new schema for shipping features will not be backwards compatible with the SOAP preview release. Get more information (including the updated WSDL) when it becomes available later this week at the SOAP API Information and Download Page located here.

New Online Dispute Resolution Process Live

The new Online Dispute Resolution process will go live on July 12. Documentation and API calls related to this process are now available in the sandbox for developers. You can see the sandbox documentation here.

To hear a webinar that introduces the new process, discusses the four new API calls, and provides details on what eBay is doing to help your transition click here.

New Unpaid Item Automation Policy

This new policy pertains to the new unpaid item/online dispute resolution features slated to go live next month. These features are currently available in the sandbox.

Do not automate the closing of a dispute except in the following cases:

• The buyer is not a registered user.
• The seller has designated countries that he will ship to in such a way that they appear checked in a list and the buyer has requested shipping to a country not checked on this list.
• The buyer does not respond in any way for a full seven days after the dispute is initiated.

If there is any kind of buyer response, this second step requesting that the dispute be closed must not be automated. In the past, automating this step has resulted in a significant number of false claims, and eBay prohibits this.

Some Payment Methods No Longer Accepted

As of version 361 of the API, the COD payment method will no longer be valid for the United States (US), US eBay Motors, United Kingdom (UK), and Canada (CA) eBay sites. The PaymentOtherOnline and Escrow payment methods will no longer be valid as input arguments for any sites. If an invalid payment method is specified in AddItem requests (and related requests), an error will be returned. This change will go into effect as of v361 of the API for all compatibility levels. This change will occur during the week of June 14, 2004 for the US site and during the week of July 5, 2004 for international sites.

Zip Code Search

Starting next week, we will start phasing in a new feature that will allow members to sort their search results by distance from their ZIP code. This will replace the ability to search by Regions and for "Items Near Me", and will give buyers a better way to find items that are within a preferred distance, or those that are more difficult to ship. We will be introducing this feature in two phases.

Phase One - How This Affects Sellers
Next week, sellers will be asked to provide their ZIP code during the listing process instead of their Region. To make this as easy as possible for sellers, we will pre-populate the seller's ZIP code on file for new listings. Sellers will still be able to specify their Item Location. Please note that ZIP codes will not be shown anywhere on the item page or in search or listings.

Phase Two - How This Affects Buyers
Near the end of June, buyers will be able to sort by "Distance: nearest first" in search and listings by using the drop-down menu directly above the listings. Items across country borders (such as those located in Canada) will now also be included in this distance sort. A new distance filter will also be added to Advanced Search.

The distances provided will be in 5-mile increments and are direct distances, not driving distances. Turbo Lister will support this feature in late June, and it will be added to eBay Motors in July.

Please Note: Once the distances sort and filter has been fully introduced to the site in phase two, members who have Saved Searches using "Items Near Me" will have to update them (due to "Items Near Me" being removed). During the transition period (from mid-June to around the beginning of July), new listings will also not be returned when "Items Near Me" is used.

Retrieving Item Specifics and Other Data Together

As of API version 361 (due to be released later this week), when you call GetItem with a detail level of 16, it will return item specifics, pre-filled item information, and all the data that is returned at detail level 0. If you call GetItem with a detail level of 30, it will retrieve cumulative data for all detail levels, including item Specifics and pre-filled item information. This means you no longer need to make two GetItem calls to retrieve all the item data.

Item Specifics Changes in Clothing

Based on feedback from our community of buyers and sellers, we are updating the Item Specifics in the Men's and Women's Clothing, Shoes & Accessories areas. The updates are currently scheduled to go live to the site for sellers on July 7th and for buyers on July 14th.

Here is an overview of the changes that will be made:

1. Extended size runs in the Men’s Clothing to include Big & Tall
2. Updates to the styles in Women’s Clothing
3. Addition of New for the Condition Item Specific
4. Update to the styles in Men’s Shoes and Women’s Shoes
5. Removal of Color in domains where buyer usage is low

API Version 361 Updates

Two important updates for developers using the API Version 361:

1. COD is invalid for sites Core, motor, UK, and CA and AU.
2. <PaymentOtherOnline> and <Escrow> are invalid for all sites.

Reminder: PayPal Buyer Credit Webinar Wednesday

Don't forget to join us for the PayPal Buyer Credit webinar Wednesday June 9 at 9:30AM Pacific (GMT-8). This webinar will cover PayPal Buyer Credit, an important new payment option available for eBay buyers and available via the eBay API.

The webinar is free to attend, but you must register in advance. Click here to register.

Keeping Up With eBay via Email and Weblogs

eBay provides a number of useful ways to help you keep up with new features and system status updates. If you prefer to receive updates in email, there are two ways to receive them:

 
• To receive general information about eBay system status and promotions, join the eBay Announcements group.  
• For eBay Developers Program information via email, subscribe by setting a preference on your Membership Info. You'll need to log in with your eBay Developers Program user name and password to get to this page.

Because email isn't always the most convenient or effective way to get the latest information, the Developers Program provides a weblog (which you're reading right now). PayPal also has a weblog located at http://paypal.typepad.com.

To receive convenient, prompt notification of changes in current eBay status, new features and promotions, you can use automatic weblog reader software (sometimes known as a "weblog aggregator"). Using a Weblog aggregator, you can subscribe to news feeds that provide timely information without gunking up your email inbox. The weblog reader checks all the weblogs you've subscribed to automatically, so you don't have to check back repeatedly looking for new information — when there's something new on the weblog, your weblog reader will tell you. It's quite handy.

We recommend that all eBay Developers use weblog aggregator technology to get the latest information about eBay integration and the ever-changing eBay marketplace.

Windows users who have the .NET Framework installed should check out SharpReader, a free stand-alone application, or NewsGator, a convenient Outlook add-in. (There are many other weblog aggregators out there; you should use the one that fits your habits and operating system of choice.)

Once you've chosen an aggregator, you'll need to point it to one or more links. Here are the links for eBay weblog feeds:

 
• eBay Announcements
 
• eBay System Status
 
• eBay Developers Program
 
• Paypal Developers Program

We recommend that developers subscribe to all four feeds, and ensure that at least one person on your team take responsibility for checking the feeds for important information on a regular basis.

For more information on weblog aggregators, check out "How To Speed-Read the Net," a great introduction to weblog reader technology, on Slate.com.

PayPal Buyer Credit Webinar

Please join us on June 9th for a webinar to discuss PayPal Buyer Credit, a new payment option debuting later this month. In this webinar you'll learn about the new API calls that will support Buyer Credit and how you can integrate them into your eBay API application.

This webinar will take place at 9:30AM Pacific time (GMT-8) on June 9, 2004. To attend this webinar, you must register in advance. Click here to register.

Changes in Diamond Listings

Over the past year buyers and sellers have expressed frustration at the growing number of Cubic Zirconia and simulated diamonds that are being listed under the diamond categories on eBay.

In response to this, the Jewelry & Watches team has worked with the community to come up with a solution to keep the diamonds category clear of Cubic Zirconia and simulants. In coming weeks Cubic Zirconia and simulant listings will not be allowed in the Diamond categories.

View the complete announcement on the eBay discussion boards here.

Start Creating Solutions Directory Listings Now!

The new Solutions Directory, officially launching at the eBay Developers Conference, is ready for Commercial API License members to start creating their listings!

What is the Solutions Directory?
You haven't heard? Check out our preview at http://developer.ebay.com/devprogram/nondeveloper/SolutionDirectoryFAQ.asp

How do I start?
If you are at an Enterprise, Professional or Basic membership tier, your Solutions Directory Listing Mangement page is in the Manage My Account section of the Developer Zone http://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/account/SolutionsDirectory.asp The on-page instructions will guide you through creation of your listing(s). Make sure you read the Policy and Procedures closely. http://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/account/SDPolicyGuide.asp Some key points to keep in mind are:

• Enterprise members can have 5 listings, Professional members can have 3 and Basic members get 1 listing


• Your solution must be live and a product marketed to eBay users


• Listings are free but will be approved for compliance to the Policy and Proceedures prior to going live

Where can I see what my listing looks like?
The Solutions Directory is made of 2 parts: the Developer Zone pages which let members create, update and remove their listings and the actual directory on www.ebay.com where the eBay community will search and browse through your listings.

The Developer Zone pages are live now, so that you can begin creating your listings immediately. Between June 14th-17th, you will be provided a private URL to review your listings in the live, but still non-public directory. You should review, update and resubmit your changes during this week to ensure your listings are perfect.

By June 22nd, we will make the Solutions Directory URL accessible by the general eBay community and start publicizing your solutions!

Here's a mockup example so you can plan for the directory layout (click to enlarge):

What if I'm Individual Tier?
Individual API members who wish to start selling solutions to the eBay community must upgrade to a Commercial API license. Once you upgrade, access to the Solutions Directory Listing Management pages will become available to you. Upgrade today!

June 2, 2004 in Alerts | Permalink | Comments (0)