I have implemented it within the home (not basic) screen of Maya. I can reach the items by mouse, not within the menu list, but it's ok.
But it seems that there are problems with special characters like "ß".
The line <hyperlinkParameter>siteas Erste|search:Lindenstraße|return:Locked</hyperlinkParameter>
returns an error because of the included "ß".
I just added a label to myHome.xml with ßß in it and it loads and displays them just fine (Blue3Wide). Are you saving your xml files with correct encoding? (UTF-8 with BOM)