FreePBX & Digium D70 phone side buttons

[jtbayly (Joseph)]

I’m trying to get a Digium phone to show a list of local extensions from FreePBX in its side buttons (soft keys?). I keep finding stuff about using EPM vs DPMA, but I can’t figure it out. I see how I could manually enter contacts in the soft keys to fill in the sidebar, but isn’t there a way to just show a particular group from Contact Manager or something like that? Thanks!

[jtbayly (Joseph)]

I have read and read on this.

What I understand is that Smart BLF is supposed to be able to pull an address book and fill in the side car button info. @mdavenport referred to in 2020 to a document I can no longer find, but the quoted part indicates I need to make sure to set the blf_contact_group in res_digium_phone.conf.

@malcolmd

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.

But when I went to lookup how, I saw that in 2021 @lgaetz pointed out that I’m not supposed edit that file directly at all.

@lgaetz

Do NOT edit this file as it is auto-generated by FreePBX.

So… I’m left wondering how I’m supposed to do this…

If anybody can shed any light, I’d be grateful.

[lgaetz (Lorne Gaetz)]

EPM does not support defining buttons this way. You set the button label and dial string individually in the EPM template.

[jtbayly (Joseph)]

Thank you! It’s a bit disappointing to see this feature regression, but I’m so relieved to finally have clarity on the answer to the question.

[mdavenport (Malcolm Davenport)]

I think the control you get, to lay out what you need, is a good trade compared to the inflexibility of the older functionality that didn’t have any options / blindly did a thing.
That’s certainly a matter of opinion.