Please verify this approach for controlling Guitar Rig 5

Just want to make sure that I'm not doing this some old school way.

I have Guitar Rig 5.  I want to use the MIDI output from my PODxt to control it.  I want to use Guitar Rig's controller mapping rather than ACT because ACT is flaky and there's a handful of parameters (e.g., next/previous tag) that I think would be very hard to map with ACT.

Near as I can tell, the accepted approach is to:
 - configure GR5 as an instrument
 - insert it on the desired audio track
 - create a MIDI track that listens to the POD MIDI and outputs to the GR5 instance

Given the capabilities of Sonar X1 today, is there a cleaner way of doing this?

I'm considering picking up one of the MKII FBVs which will let me set up the MIDI controls how I want them to be.  I just want to make sure that I am happy with how the control routing works before shelling out the green.

Andy