This thread appears because I received a direct message from @mcgrathr.
Unsolicited Direct Messages soliciting an answer to a question aren’t a good idea on a community forum, because, if you send such a thing, it means that you’re relying on one single person to see your question, and for that one single person to provide a response to that question. A community forum is most beneficial when questions are asked publicly, so that anyone can respond, and so that anyone else who stumbles on the same question in the future, can see those responses.
That said, the gist of the question, as I understand it, is, given that one is writing their own configuration files for a D-Series phone, and where they’d like to load some contacts onto the phone so that they show up in the Contacts app, and where they’d like one or more of those contacts to be mapped to BLF keys, and where, crucially, they’d like the LED indicators on the phone to do things depending on the device state of the mapped contact…
“how do I make that last bit happen?”
or so to speak.
Per:
https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/DIGIUM/Contacts
under the “Rapid Dial Keys” section, there’s a note that says:
Rapid Dial, or BLF, key subscriptions are set using the phone configuration parameter:
* blf_contact_group
This parameter, whether configured in res_digium_phone.conf for DPMA or in the blf_contact_group setting in XML, **must** be set to the group_name of the contacts group for which you wish subscriptions to be made. Subscriptions **cannot** be made to more than one group_name. Subscriptions **will not be made** if the blf_contact_group parameter is undefined. If you have skipped this step, you **will not** have blinking lights. The use of Smart BLF capabilities is not independent of this setting; this setting **must** still be used for deployments using Smart BLF BLF Items lists.
So, make sure your blf_contact_group setting in the phone’s config matches the contacts group_name from your contacts file, for the items which you want SUBSCRIBEs to happen.
And, of course, you’ll need to actually set the subscribe_to setting within the contact itself, so that the phone knows where to subscribe.