Reparsing an xml string with groovy

Let's tr another approach. I originally wanted to just use a property transfer, but the response is escaped:


 
     
        <activation id="a724-af8a-d172-4720-8605" returnCode="success" description="" name="Avocent Management Platform Server" version="4.0"/><activation id="5607-390a-7b73-42ff-ace2" returnCode="success" description="" name="Avocent Management Platform Console - 500 pack" version="4.0"/><activation id="2626-c91a-22a4-4cf5-bd38" returnCode="errcode.licensing.error.activate.invalid.activationid" description="Flexera Error: major.minor.sys (50040.41147.14)    License generator error: No component(s): file C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\vcg36457.prd line 12
[Incident# 0050-82906] operationName=sHandleActivation. flxActSvrActivationSend failed. activationID=2626-c91a-22a4-4cf5-bd38 CommServer=https://fno-test.avocent.com:8888/flexnet/services/ActivationService?wsdl" name="Avocent Management Platform Reporting" version="4.0"/>
     
 


I'm doing a multistep proeprty transfer.
1st step:
Source: activateLicenses  Property: response
declare namespace ns2='http://ws.licensing.amp.avocent.com';
//ns2:activateLicensesResponse/out

Target: Properties  property responseXML

produces:
[]

I then create a second transfer:
source: Properties  Property: responseXML
I want to get the ID attribute from each activation tag, however
/activation[1]/@id

results in:
[error: Unexepected element: EMPTY_TAG]

I also tried:
/activation[0]/@id just to make sure this wasn't indexed from 0, no difference.

I know the response out tag is escaped. Is there a way to grab the id attribute from each
activation tag even though this appears to be text now?

Would appreciate any help you can offer.