Templates must be written in well-formed XML and must be XHTML compliant. Put simply, this means that every tag must have an opening and a closing tag so, for example, you must always write <br/> rather than just <br> to create a line break. If the XML in your template is not well formed, you will see an error in the IVW*.tmp log file and the default template will be used. You will also see messages in this log file if the template contains other errors such as missing attributes on template tags.

An easy way to check whether a template is well formed and XHTML compliant is to make a copy of the file with a .xml extension and then load that file into your browser. If the templates loads correctly you will know that the template’s structure is not an issue.

If you have UNICOM Intelligence Professional installed, you can use the HTML Tidy utility to ensure that your templates are valid. For more information, see Validating an interview template file.