Pulse character encoding?

We are having trouble with special characters in the “Default.spark” template. The template is encoded with “UTF-8 w/o BOM” character encoding. Now, the template uses variables, e.g. “message”, so I’m wondering where do I set the character encoding of the variables, which come from the server. There has to be a setting for the encoding of the server somewhere. Where is it?

EDIT to clarify: the template “Default.spark” is encoded in “UTF-8 w/o BOM”, the question is: what encoding does the server use?

EDIT: possibly relevant info: IBM Cognos CSV Files: The Encoding Mystery - Ironside Group