Hi Scott,
Sorry for not responding sooner but it’s a hectic week for me at work…
A good sample of input XML file for your map to test and validate would be to get the XML message coming from your Initial Receive port (after your original Excel data has been parsed into XML format by the Spread pipeline). You can generate such a message by placing a Send port in your Orchestration after the initial Receive port and declare its type of your Spread schema, build and deploy your map project, then in the Administration console, create a new port of with a Transport Type of File and a Send Pipeline type of XMLTransmit.
Daniel.