A .ivs file contains only the script portion of an interview script (.mdd) file. Unlike a .mdd file, a .ivs file contains only plain text and can therefore be opened and edited in a text editor such as Notepad. You might want to create .ivs files so that you can store them in a version management system and easily see the differences between versions of your scripts.

To create a .ivs file, open the .mdd file in UNICOM Intelligence Professional, and then click File > Export Metadata. You can also use the Metadata Model Compare accessory to compare .mdd files: see Metadata Model Compare .

You can also import an .ivs file into UNICOM Intelligence Professional and save it as a .mdd file. To do this, click File > Import Metadata. However, a .ivs file is not a replacement for a .mdd file as it contains only a subset of the information stored in a .mdd file. For example, .ivs files do not store translations or custom properties. For that reason, do not import an .ivs file and save it with the same name as the .mdd file that you originally exported it from, because you will lose any additional information that was stored in the .mdd file.

If you try to save a .mdd file that contains syntax errors in the metadata section, UNICOM Intelligence Professional instead saves the script portion of your interview script as a .tmp.ivs file, as these types of errors cannot be saved in an .mdd file. The .tmp.ivs file is saved in the same location as your .mdd file. You can recover your latest changes by importing the .tmp.ivs file into UNICOM Intelligence Professional, but remember that the .tmp.ivs file might not contain all the information stored in your original .mdd file.