Grid template files are XML files that determine how a grid will appear on the interview page, and are an alternative to defining styles for grid questions in the metadata or routing sections of the script (see Grids). The statements or tags that you can use in your grid templates are defined in an XML schema file called mrigf.xsd. If you install the UNICOM Intelligence Developer Documentation Library, you will find it in the Scripts\Interview\Templates in the folder in which you installed the DDL.

If you have an XML authoring tool such as XML Spy that supports schemas, you can validate your grid template against the schema to ensure that the XML code you have written is valid. If you do not have an XML authoring tool, you can work with any text editor of your choice, but you will be responsible for ensuring that the code you write is correct. If you want to validate your grid templates, you can download a free XML schema validator from http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema.

The interviewing program comes with a number of predefined grid templates. You may find that you can use these templates as they are or with a little alteration, in which case you will not need to build your own templates.

XML tags look and behave the same as HTML tags. In fact, if you are familiar with XML or HTML you may recognize many of the tags. All tags in a grid template are case sensitive and must be entered exactly as shown in this section. Mistyping tags in any way causes the grid to be displayed in the default format. If you have a schema validator, it will flag any statements where the case of a tag is incorrect as errors.

You can create any number of grid templates, related either to individual questions or to groups of similar questions. You can call the grid template files anything you like as long as they have a .xml extension.