I said "plugins and keygroups" in my original post, but also nothing for drum kits.
For the sake of making testing and help easier, I'm loading the default template "DeepHouse."
My external controller is a Zendrum, and I agree it shouldn't matter because MENU>MIDI MONITOR (and the app named MIDI MONITOR) all verify the expected MIDI input. The Force and controller are both on a mioXM hub, but the monitoring functions already mentioned should rule out any misconfiguration there.
In Preferences>MIDI/SYNC, my choices for input (and output) ports are "FORCE" and "Remote." I assume the "FORCE" name comes from my giving that name to the relevant DIN's on the mioXM. I'm not sure what "Remote" means in this context, but I enable both "GLOBAL" and "TRACK" on both. I also enable "ENABLE MIDI PORTS WHEN DISCOVERED."
And...to respond further to the help posts, when I went to describe the details of what I'm doing in the matrix to set up MIDI input, I find it's now working. I have no way to trace back what my error might have been when I first posted, and I SWEAR
I did all the same things then, including starting with a clean DeepHouse to troubleshoot. Here's what I've discovered for track settings:
GLOBAL in the INPUT PORTS setting makes the track's MIDI INPUT PORT, MIDI INPUT CHANNEL, and MIDI MONITOR settings irrelevant. The controller keeps triggering the track even if you turn any or all of these off. Enabling TRACK in the INPUT PORTS setting is what you want, leading to expected combinations of behavior for multiple simultaneously controlled tracks. Aside from the obvious TRACK SETTINGS choices for MIDI INPUT PORT and MIDI INPUT CHANNEL, I have to set MIDI MONITOR to "In" or "Merge"; "Auto" doesn't work.
Some of my triggers trigger nothing on the drum track, which obviously has a particular set of 16 notes assigned to its pads. I figure the manual will document those notes, and maybe I can assign them.
Thanks for this help. Working more methodically based on your suggestions cleared the error even if I can't remember just what the error was.