I upgraded my version of ui-grid to "pre-beta" 3.x, and now I'm at the same point as you. With 'showGridFooter' set to true, full row information will be displayed automatically. Specifying "footerTemplate" does nothing. I tried both "showGridFooter" and "showFooter" and was missing. Thus, the following paragraph of my answer only works for the โstableโ version of the 2.x ui-grid.
Surely, the showFooter property must be set to true. What worked for me was to add an html file to my project, which contains a div full of goodies (as you thought). Sounds like a mistake. The showGridFooter property does not work for me.
$scope.gridOptions1 = { showFooter: true, footerTemplate:'somePath/footerTemplate.html' }
Mokgra
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